Molly's Reach restaurant from "The Beachcombers" is up for sale

Sometimes art imitates life and sometimes it’s the other way around.

Such is the case with the fake but now real restaurant Molly’s Reach in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast of BC.

Molly’s Reach was a restaurant centrally featured in the long-running Canadian show The Beachcombers, which aired for 19 years from 1972 to 1999. The set then opened as an actual functioning restaurant in 1995, giving fans of the CBC TV show a real place to visit and dine on fare like fish and chips, burgers, and milkshakes.

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Back in 2019, CBC reported that Molly’s Reach was up for sale for a listing price of $379,000 – this price was for the business only, not the property, which, at the time, was estimated as being worth upwards of $1.5 million.

Daryn Wright/Daily Hive

Daryn Wright/Daily Hive

The restaurant was then purchased by several Gibsons locals – including Tim Bedford, who also co-owns Drift Cafe in Bistro up the road – and reopened in 2021.

Now, Molly’s Reach is up for sale again, according to a realtor listing online.

Listed at $299,999 – down $79,000 from the last time it was sold – with a monthly lease cost of $8,500 all in, the famous restaurant could be yours to carry on the Beachcombers legacy.

“The restaurant has 60 interior seats, 24 patio seats, and is 2,000+ sq ft,” the listing notes.

Daryn Wright/Daily Hive

Dished was able to get in touch with Bedford about the sale, who said that him and his partner Stephanie Heinz, who have three children together, have chosen to sell one of their restaurants in order to “regain a bit of that parenting time while our kids are at such wonderfully formative ages.”

“Having the restaurants [Molly’s Reach and Drift Cafe and Bistro] has really taken away my time and ability to be available for my kids,” Bedford adds.

Even decades after the show was on the air, Molly’s Reach continues to attract visitors from all over the world, but its waterfront setting and solid menu (which includes a hefty and perfectly crispy fried chicken sandwich, as seen above) are appealing even for those who never watched the show that inspired it.

The fake restaurant has become something incredibly real – here’s hoping the next owners are able to continue the story for the decades to come.