For the third time in just 5 years, the State will be looking for someone to operate the restaurants at six state parks.

The Tourism Department announced today that Lookout Kitchen will be closing its restaurants at six state parks at the end of this month.

The restaurants closed in July, when the State said Lookout failed to make payments, and then re-opened just a week later when the two sides said they had worked out a deal.

But now, that deal seems to have fallen through.

The Tourism Department says it will issue a Request for Proposal for a new restaurant vendor in the coming weeks and that it plans to reopen the restaurants as soon as possible.

In the meantime, the departments says they’ll have what they call ‘grab-and-go’ food options.

Lookout operated the restaurant locations at Beavers Bend, Lake Murray, Robbers Cave, Roman Nose, Sequoyah, and Quartz Mountain parks.

This is not the first time the state has struggled to find a restaurant vendor.

As you might recall, Swadley’s restaurants ran the state park restaurants from 2020 to 2022, and closed after mismanagement and fraud allegations.

A criminal trial is still pending in that case.