Chick-fil-A's first-ever restaurant — a 56-year-old location in an Atlanta mall — is closing

Business Insider ^ | 5-19-23 | Grace Dean

[dynachrome]

Chick-fil-A's oldest restaurant, which opened in an Atlanta mall 56 years ago, is closing.

The restaurant, located in the food court of Greenbriar Mall to the southwest of the city, is set to shut for good at 4 p.m. on Saturday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Printed-out signs posted at the location don't give reasons for the closure.

Chick-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy opened the restaurant in 1967 in what was one of the first indoor malls in the Southeast. He'd previously set up a diner in Atlanta called The Dwarf Grill, later renamed The Dwarf House, with his brother Ben.

"At the time, the concept of a shopping mall restaurant was groundbreaking," Chick-fil-A says in a history of the Greenbriar Mall store, describing it as a "pioneer in the modern-day food court."

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I do not think that all Malls will disappear. There will be shrinkage and downsizing, but many malls and shopping Meccas will remain. It’s not like newspapers which are clearly moribund in their paper instantiation.

[wardaddy]

You’d be wrong

The food court at cool springs mall in Nashville booms

See post 9 here for the issue

Demographics

Something those of you in whitelandia don’t deal with

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

From wikipedia:

Greenbriar’s zip code 30331 was more than 95% African American at the 2000 census.

[wardaddy]

Yes from downtown south though the goblins infest buckhead malls as well

Weird thing about blacks in Atlanta is they have their middle class suburban towns too they dominate

While not hood they stil have issues

Fun fact

The richest black zip code in America has a higher crime rate than the poor white zip code

Basically somewhere in Maryland and eastern KY

But freepers keep clinging to platitudes

Fine with me empirical realities don’t get in the way of self serving bias much here

Never has lol

[Responsibility2nd]

I see.

That mall sounds like a place where Popeye’s might thrive. Is there a Chuck E. Cheese on the premises?

[Aquamarine]

I used to eat there over 50 years ago am surprised it’s still there.

[Repeal The 17th]

The first Chik-fil-A was the Dwarf Grill (now the Dwarf House),
a restaurant opened by S. Truett Cathy, in 1946.
The restaurant is located in Hapeville, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta,
near the location of the now-demolished Ford Atlanta Assembly Plant,
for many years a source of many of the restaurant’s patrons.

The restaurant in Greenbriar Mall didn’t open until 1967.

[wardaddy]

I hate qualifying my screeds about race but since I’m such a sweetie I will

I’m a Deep South man raised in black culture as much as white plus I have African and Haitian and Jamaican experience extensively

In my home state of Mississippi

Yeah that one

There are black counties in the delta squashed by the agribusiness of Bunge and ADM and Cargill etc that are poor AF but have rather low crime rates and the more affluent employing whites live safely on plantations and farms etc and private schools they call academies

Different kind of black many still believe and fear the lord even if they get rowdy on weekends and don’t marry much

Or memories of night riders keeping order lingers 70 years later

They are not as a rule hostile or as violent

I have been known to wander alone on a Friday night into a sea of 100s of them and treated warmly

So there you are

I’m sure the rural black belt of South Georgia has similar areas

[COBOL2Java]

There was a great episode on the History Channel which presented the story of S. Truett Cathy. It talked about his Dwarf Grill, and how, shortly after the Atlanta airport was built, one day his delivery guy brought in several boxes of chicken breasts which Delta had ordered but rejected because they were too big for their airplane trays. Offered Cathy a super discount if he’d take the chicken.

Cathy was like “What am I gonna do with chicken breasts?”

The rest, as they say, is history...

[JusPasenThru]

You got me singing the Sunflower River Blues.

[D Rider]

I believe that. Rural people are like that.

[wardaddy]

They have a Chik Fil a and chuckie is about 500 yards away on Mallory