Every Storefront on the Surfside Beach Pier Finally Has a Business In It

Last Friday morning, firefighters in full gear climbed the stairs of the Surfside Beach Pier 26 times, representing the 2,200 steps first responders carried up the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The next day, Business Square filled with food, music, and a dunking booth for the sixth annual Celebrate Surfside Beach Festival. Both events used the pier and the blocks around it as a stage, and neither one would have looked the same two years ago, when the pier itself was still filling in its last empty storefront.

That storefront is empty no longer. Surf Diner, the breakfast and seafood spot that anchored the old pier before Hurricane Matthew tore it apart in 2016, is back in business, joining The Whistling Duck, Perry's Bait and Tackle, and Drippy's Ice Cream as full tenants. For the first time since the storm, every space on the Surfside Beach Pier has a business running out of it. If you have lived here through the wait, you already sense what that means for how the town works this fall. If you have not been paying attention, here is the timeline that explains what changed and why it matters more than a single restaurant reopening.

Ten Years From Splinters to a Full Roster

The old wooden pier scattered along the Atlantic when Hurricane Matthew hit in 2016. It took until March 2024 for the town to debut its replacement, a new all-concrete structure that officials say is one of a kind on the South Carolina coast, engineered by a team that included LSP3, Collins Engineering, Consensus, and Intercoastal Marine Construction. The date was chosen deliberately: it marked the 60th anniversary of Surfside Beach's incorporation in 1964.

A rebuilt pier is not the same as a working pier, though. Getting businesses back into the new structure took another two years.

That is close to a decade from storm to full occupancy. For a two-mile beach town that prides itself on staying low-key, it is a reminder that even small, well-run places take real time to rebuild what a hurricane erases in an afternoon.

Why the Diner Was the Last Piece

Surf Diner was not a new concept trying to find its footing. It had been a fixture on the old pier since 2013, and residents who ate breakfast there for years wanted it back exactly as it was. The rebuild dragged on well past its own promises. Last September the town council grew frustrated enough that it voted to hire an attorney to review the restaurant's 30 year lease, after the diner had reserved its space for more than a year without opening or paying rent.

Longtime resident Sharon Knee, who remembered the diner from before Matthew, put the frustration plainly to a local news crew last fall.

"I don't understand the wait. I think it should open."

By this February, the outlook had shifted. Mayor Robert Krouse told WMBF News the restaurant had secured its certificate of occupancy and the owners had settled what they owed. Locals like Kristin Grega were ready to see it happen.

"It's been a long time coming. We're definitely glad to see it opening, looking forward to supporting a local business."

The diner is open now, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner again from the same deck where regulars used to watch the waves before the storm.

What You'll Actually Find Out There Now

If you have not walked the pier in a while, here is the current lineup:

• Surf Diner, back on the pier serving breakfast through dinner, with the ocean view that made it a favorite before 2016
• The Whistling Duck, a wine and charcuterie spot with seating directly over the shoreline
• Perry's Bait and Tackle, which sells the wristbands you need to fish off the pier: $12 for a day, $45 for a week, $150 for the year, with rod rentals available for an extra $25
• Drippy's Ice Cream, open since 2024 for the walk after dinner
• A rotating set of kiosks, including a juice stand the town approved this year

The pier itself runs 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., weather permitting, which means the fishing and the dining schedules now actually overlap for the first time since the rebuild.

The town also gave the pier a new identity to go with its new tenants. On December 22, it unveiled a logo designed by Hanna McCutchen, a Kingstree native who has vacationed on the Grand Strand her whole life and entered the town's design contest through a beach-focused Facebook group. The artwork shows a sunrise over the pier, a fisherman, a boat on the horizon, and a Red Drum, the fish native to these waters, alongside the words "Established in 1953," a nod to the year the original wooden pier first went up.

The Pier Just Proved It Can Carry the Fall Calendar

The last two weeks were the clearest evidence yet that a fully tenanted pier changes what the town can host. The End of Summer Fireworks Festival lit up the pier earlier this month. The stair climb used its stairs for a memorial that draws firefighters and residents from across the county, according to Visit Myrtle Beach's rundown of the town's fall events. And the festival on Business Square, running from 4th Avenue South to Surfside Drive, filled the blocks that lead straight to the pier's entrance.

None of that requires the pier to have restaurants in it. But a town that can send people to watch fireworks from the pier, then feed them a full dinner at Whistling Duck or breakfast at Surf Diner the next morning, is offering a different kind of weekend than a town where the pier is just a place to fish.

The rest of the fall calendar moves half a mile inland to Memorial Park, where the weekly rhythm continues regardless of what is happening at the water. The Tuesday Farmers Market runs through mid-December, and the Thursday Arts and Crafts Market, run by My Olive Shack, continues into early November. Still ahead this season: the Fall Family Festival on October 3, Halloween Festivities on October 31, and the 17th annual Turkey Trot on November 26, a 5K and kids' dash that starts at 11 Ocean Boulevard South, the same address where Surf Diner now serves breakfast every morning.

That address is not a coincidence worth overthinking, but it is worth noticing. The pier has become the fixed point the rest of the calendar orbits, in a way it simply could not while half its storefronts sat empty.

What This Actually Means If You Live Here

If you have spent the past few years hearing "it's almost open" about the diner, the wait is over, and it changed more than your breakfast options. The pier now functions as a year round destination rather than a seasonal fishing stop, and the town's own calendar, from the stair climb to the Turkey Trot, is increasingly built around that fact. Memorial Park still carries the weekly routine of markets and crafts, but the pier has become the place where the town's biggest single days happen.

For a two-mile stretch of coastline that has spent a decade rebuilding one piece at a time, that is worth sitting on the deck at Surf Diner to appreciate, coffee in hand, waves underneath you.

If you are already part of this community and want more of what makes Surfside Beach worth staying in, Coastal Beach Homes keeps a close eye on the neighborhood beyond the market reports, because Jan and Dan Sitter live and work here too. Whether you are thinking about your next move or just want to know what is happening around town, Start Your Coastal Home Search whenever you are ready.