Oceanside Locals Are Focus For New Owners Of The Surf Club Restaurant

OCEANSIDE, CA – It’s been a busy summer in Oceanside but that did not stop one local family from transforming the restaurant formerly known as Hello Betty, into a new beach-inspired eatery.

Located in downtown Oceanside on the corner of Mission and Myers, The Surf Club is a two-story restaurant serving classic beach eats including tacos, salads, bowls, and more. The family-friendly venue has a laid-back vibe with pool tables and live music on Fridays through Sundays on the rooftop and ground floor. A series of events, chef pop-ups, and more are planned throughout the summer until further plans are developed next year.

The Surf Club was acquired and rebranded in June 2024 by Oceanside raised brothers Kevin and Alvin Mansour through their family-owned business, Oram Holdings. This acquisition is a full-circle moment, bringing the brothers back to the neighborhood they grew up in. The family has operated many businesses throughout Oceanside for over 40 years and owns the Haunted Head Saloon on North Tremont Street.

Oram Holdings also acquired the SpringHill Suites Oceanside Beach Hotel, located next to The Surf Club. The hotel features a recently opened all-natural wine shop called the “Board House Natural Wines” and is collaborating with Always Hungry Grocery & Goods for an extended pop-up experience offering craft beach snacks and goods. Oram also operates The Guild Hotel downtown San Diego along with the forthcoming Granger Hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter.

I sat down with co-owner Kevin Mansour to find out what’s in store for The Surf Club and SpringHill Suites.

“We really want to take a different approach in Oceanside. Our plan is to reverse engineer what we're going to do here. We want to listen to what the community wants before we put a vision together. You can't build community without involving the locals.

Sure, you can build a fancy restaurant, and you might do well with tourists, but you can’t build community overnight with locals. We're looking at doing a community event and invite local people and businesses and get everybody together and listen to what everyone wants.

Of course, our plans need to be cohesive in a way where the hotel is part of the community, too. It's not just the restaurant. We believe we can drive a better sense of community because we've been here for 40 plus years. My family has a deep emotional connection to the community.

I think we have the most underrated beach possibly in America. I would challenge anybody to show us a beach and a harbor like this with such a diverse culture. There's a very authentic community here.

We're trying to bring people together through collaborations with other chefs and other restaurants. We have a pop-up going on at our Board House shop and Always Hungry Grocery. So for me collaboration is one way to bring people together and reach a wider audience from families and people of all age groups.

We are not rushing to make radical changes but starting with rebranding the restaurant with more of a casual local focus and adding live music because I always believe music brings people together.

My goal is also to activate the Roof Terrace for more community activities and not just be a bar. We're in discussions to do our own version of a food market, not a farmers market, but where you can find different vendors serving a wide range of food. But we've only been here for less than two months, so there's a lot that we want to do.”

Can you share more about how your family got started in Oceanside?

"Right here, Mission avenue is where it all started. Our names are on the Pier, so we're one of the old families from the 80s. It started with my dad owning Mike's liquor on Mission Avenue. And then the other Mike’s on Coast Highway and South Oceanside Wags liquor. We also owned Bell's liquor before it became Fairview Market.

We sold the stores last year and then we took over the Haunted Head which continued our 40 plus years in Oceanside. So it's a full circle moment for us to go from where we started to here and all on the same street on Mission Avenue. Although we have businesses throughout San Diego, everything started here and we believe we owe it to the city to do everything we can to create a year round place for locals.

I understand you are exploring ways to bring access for locals to the hotel in addition to the restaurant.

We have a rooftop pool for hotel guests but we’d like to open it up more for locals. Like passes for locals to come, hang out at the pool. So that's something that we're turning on very soon with Resort pass. The idea is whether you want to have a private pool experience with an ocean view or work out of the gym and get a discount to eat here or even get a room for a few hours to shower or nap and have a little mini staycation, but at a very reasonable rate.

We’d love to activate our event spaces more to bring people together. We have a lot of space to bring hundreds of people together, so the goal is to bring multiple things here, not just have a hotel and restaurant but have multiple venues and multiple reasons from comedy to music to watching major sporting events.

We're open to any creative idea so if anybody is interested, I encourage them to reach out at info@surfcluboceanside.com

For more information visit their website: Surf Club Oceanside