Roy’s Grill reopens in Rossville
Retro diner Roy’s Grill reopens in Rossville
A Rossville, Georgia, landmark has reopened with a new owner but an old 1950s look and menu.
Roy’s Grill, an iconic Highway 27 diner that first opened during the Depression in 1934, reopened over the weekend with a revived look and menu by Rossville business owner Denise Evans.
“I’ve had several businesses and I was looking for a location in Rossville when I saw Roy’s Grill and I guess Roy’s and I were just supposed to be together,” Evans said Monday as her crew served lunch following Saturday’s grand reopening. “It was an historical treasure that needed to be brought back.”
Evans bought the abandoned diner last fall and began to renovate the restaurant, which she thinks has not been operated since 2014 despite some attempts five years ago to revive the diner. But she kept the name, look and photographs on the wall to keep its distinctive history.
“Everything is still made from scratch and home made,” Evans said.
To give the 12-person staff a historic look, Evans decided to outfit the employees with the dress of the 1950s. The male employees are sporting Roy’s original uniforms from the 1930s, Evans said.
“We want to bring back to Rossville and Rossville boulevard an atmosphere that was easier time,” she said. “We want to bring back family fun and wholesale, locally owned business that we hope can revitalize the area.”
But doing so hasn’t necessarily proven easy. The diner had to be renovated and its equipment replaced or rebuilt before Roy’s could reopen. But even then, the new owner ran into difficulty Monday when an oven didn’t work right and lunches were delayed.
Ultimately, to correct the problem, the restaurant scrapped its dinner Monday night.
Once the problems are resolved, Roy’s Diner will be open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. most days, but as the sign says on its wall, it will always be closed on Sunday for church.
The menu features a variety of breakfast staples, sandwiches, hamburgers and a blue plate luncheon featuring a different meat every day. The diner also features a soda-jerk fountain with the classic 1950s’-style floats, malts, banana splits and milkshakes.
“We also try to honor Georgia and Chattanooga,” Evans said. “We offer several pimento cheese items because pimento cheese was originally started in Griffin, Georgia and we also offer both fried Little Debbie and fried MoonPie sundaes in honor of those Chattanooga businesses which started around the same time as Roy’s.”
Evans said in talking with local residents, it became clear folks still wanted an old-fashion diner on Rossville Boulevard so she has tried to keep the same feel that the 59-seat eatery has had for nearly a century.”
“It’s been amazing to see the support we’ve gotten from the community so far,” she said.
Roy’s Grill is one of a pair of North Georgia eateries to reopen in the past week. Just to the south in Fort Oglethorpe, the Wendy’s restaurant at Battlefield Parkway and Lafayette Road reopened last Thursday, five months after the JAE Restaurant Group acquired the Wendy’s outlet and five others in the Chattanooga area.
JAE began in 1993 in Hialeah, Florida and has grown into one of the biggest Wendy’s franchisees with more than 200 restaurants in Florida, Tennessee, New Mexico and Texas.