Royal Treat closes after 41 years in Rehoboth Beach
With summer just around the corner, a four-decade tradition in Rehoboth Beach has announced it will not be reopening for the season.
Located just feet from the Boardwalk on Wilmington Avenue, the family-owned and -operated Royal Treat made the announcement on its Facebook page May 4.
“We would like to thank all customers and staff for a memorable 41 seasons. It is with great sadness that we announce that we will not be opening this year. We would like to thank the community for the amazing support and friendship over an amazing run,” reads the post.
For the first 40 years, the Royal Treat was a breakfast eatery that closed at 11:30 a.m. daily, then reopened at 1 p.m. as an ice cream parlor for the rest of the day. Last year, it served only ice cream.
“It’s been coming for a couple of years now,” said Scott Fornwalt, who ran the operation with his parents Ed and Doris Fornwalt, and sister Debbie Zentmeyer. “It’s kind of a little project that turned into a success.”
Nearing 70 himself, Scott said his parents can no longer participate in running the business, his sister is helping take care of his parents, and the next generation of family members is graduating college and doing their own thing.
“I pretty much knew by the end of last summer that we weren’t going to be reopening,” Scott said. “We had started telling some of our regulars last year.”
Traditionally, the Royal Treat opens in early May and closes soon after Labor Day.
Scott said he would have been in Rehoboth all April getting the place ready.
“It’s an old place that needed plenty of maintenance,” he said.
Living in Maine for years, Scott has been the opposite of the typical snowbird. Instead of spending winters in warm climates and then heading north during the summer months, he’s spent his winters in Maine and worked in Rehoboth during the summer. He said he’s got a job working part time as a lobsterman.
“I’m anxious to spend the summer up here,” he said, adding that he’ll still be in Rehoboth from time to time. “I made a lot of good friends over the years.”
Chris Flood has been working for the Cape Gazette since early 2014. He currently covers Rehoboth Beach and Henlopen Acres, but has also covered Dewey Beach and the state government. He covers environmental stories, business stories and random stories on subjects he finds interesting, and he also writes a column called Choppin’ Wood that runs every other week. Additionally, Flood moonlights as the company’s circulation manager, which primarily means fixing boxes that are jammed with coins during daylight hours, but sometimes means delivering papers in the middle of the night. He’s a graduate of the University of Maine and the Landing School of Boat Building & Design.
