Franke’s Cafeteria in Little Rock closes

Franke’s Cafeteria, which opened a century ago in downtown Little Rock, has closed its location in the Regions Center Building at 400 W. Capitol Ave.

Bob Perell, manager of the Franke’s location at 11121 N. Rodney Parham Road in west Little Rock, confirmed the unexpected closure of the downtown location Thursday morning.

“It’s an ownership decision — that’s all I can say,” he said.

Perell said for the time being, the subsidiary Sack It sandwich shop will remain open for breakfast and lunch.

The bank building’s property management office said it sent out a note to building tenants informing them of the unexpected closure of the longtime tenant and that a redevelopment plan for the space has been in progress for some time.

The phone number for Franke’s downtown had not yet been disconnected as of Thursday morning, but nobody answered the phone during business hours. Business owner Abraham Delgado did not respond by deadline to a message seeking comment.

Franke’s opened a Conway branch May 23 in the former Dixie Cafe building at 1101 Fendley Drive. That location and the one on Rodney Parham Road remain open.

Just before noon Thursday, Doris Rancifer and Angeria Graves sat outside Franke’s at a plastic table. They work in the building and said they went to the restaurant for lunch several times a week. When they saw the sign announcing that the restaurant was closed Thursday, they sat down outside, unsure where else they would go.

“It had great food and nice people,” Rancifer said. “I’m trying to figure out why it closed because it always had a decent number of people in here.”

Next door at Morrison’s Capitol Barber Shop, owner Bill Dickinson reclined in the waiting room, chatting with patrons and others about the restaurant’s closure.

Dickinson said he ate at Franke’s almost every day since it opened in that location in 1989, and before that, he ate at a previous downtown location.

“The only time I eat vegetables is over there,” he joked.

He said he remembered when Franke’s opened next door, and it regularly had a line out the door.

He said the restaurant probably closed because it needs to re-brand into something more modern. Menu items like fried chicken with squash or baked fish with okra were maybe designed for a different generation.

Rancifer and Graves said the restaurant had mostly middle-aged and older customers, but they figured that was who the restaurant should have expected to eat there.

For lunch Thursday, the pair debated going next door to Sack It, where they’d gone many times as well, but the line was long. It was a side effect, Rancifer assumed, of Franke’s being closed.

“You see how the line is going to be extra long,” she said. “It’s going to be rough.”

As customers filtered through Sack It, nearly every one asked the cashier about what had happened to the restaurant next door.