For years, Greenbrier Restaurant represented the heart of a rural southern Limestone County community known more for its cotton fields on a stretch of road between Huntsville and Decatur.
Many of the farms and residents who lived there have since disappeared and have been replaced by auto workers, construction workers and plant workers with industries such as Mazda-Toyota Manufacturing, Polaris and Amazon making their homes on former farming land.
Yet Greenbrier Restaurant still maintains its small-town feel, serving up catfish, barbecue, shrimp and hushpuppies to those who stop by.
Restaurant owner Jerry Evans recently participated in a question-and-answer session with the Lede, discussing how the restaurant continues to thrive in a time of change for the community.
Can you tell us about some of the history of the restaurant? When did it open?
Jack Webb built one room, which is actually the kitchen, back in 1952. At that time, it was just a curbside service. It didn’t have anything indoors. Over the years, he built one room at a time.
He used to, back in the early days, have bands come in and play on top of the roof to try to bring in crowds. They would have like a hundred-dollar first prize award, and a second and a third place award. About a year ago, I had a guy come in and said he did a comedy routine. And he said he won first place one night on the top of the building.
This was the main drag (Old Highway 20) between Huntsville and Decatur. Over the years, then you had Highway 20 and of course (Interstate) 565.
We came in in 1987 and built the bathrooms and the new dining room. My mother started in the restaurant business in 1971 down at Catfish Inn seven miles west of Athens on (U.S.) 72. We started that when I was 11 years old. That’s how we got into the restaurant business.
Judge (James Edwin) Horton’s family has always owned the building. We rent it from them. They wouldn’t sell the building. And I don’t blame them.
How much impact has the Mazda-Toyota manufacturing plant, Polaris and others that have located here had on the business?
Believe it or not, and some people can’t understand it, Mazda-Toyota has pretty much had no impact on us. They don’t have but about 40 minutes for lunch. They can’t get out of the parking lot in that length of time. They have several cafeterias over there. And they either have to go to their cafeteria or have to brown bag it, one of the two. I don’t think we’ve had the first person from Mazda-Toyota today.
We get more business from Polaris and the other plants. We actually get more business from Cummings Research Park and the (Redstone) Arsenal.
They (Mazda-Toyota) haven’t had that much effect on us. But they put in the roads because of it. The roads hurt us for a while because so many of the roads were closed. Now they’ve opened up. They are nice now. For the past few years, it was kind of a pain in the butt to get around out here. A lot of people just kind of gave up trying to find us.
As far as the community, how has it been impacted by all the industries?
Tremendously. It depends on what mile radius you want to talk about. About all that’s left in the Greenbrier community now is the two churches and us.
Most of the houses are gone. Industrial has moved in. We used to have a lot of farmers. There’s not that much dirt being plowed these days.
It has changed the dynamic for us. They say you want to draw your clientele within a five-mile radius. That’s the general rule of thumb. If that was the case for us, we wouldn’t have anything because we don’t have hardly any housing within five miles of us.
There’s about to be some apartments and housing spring up, but right now, we don’t have hardly anything.
You mentioned having customers from cummings Research Park and the Arsenal. How do people find out about Greenbrier Restaurant?
Word of mouth. We don’t really do any kind of advertising in the traditional sense. Most of ours is word of mouth, which is the best kind of advertising you can have. And we’re dependent on it. Historically speaking, we’ve had an older clientele. … It’s replenished itself with new people over the years. We have a really broad mix of clientele. We’ve got construction workers. We’ve got the coat and tie folks from Cummings Research Park and Redstone. It’s actually a good thing. You don’t want to be dependent on one segment. It’s worked out well for us.
How has the restaurant kept up with all the changes?
Eating out is a habit. A lot of the people got out of the habit of coming here during COVID. We’re still impacted by it, but business is coming back pretty strong.
Through the years, like I’ve said, we’ve had an older clientele than other restaurants. A lot of that is because of our menu. Catfish, barbecue, those kinds of things are more of an older clientele type menu. But we also have chicken fingers and cheeseburgers and stuff that kids eat today. We have a full menu all the way around.
We’ve survived the downturn of the economy and the bad road situation. The thing that’s hurting all of us right now is the labor situation. We couldn’t do a whole lot more than what we’re doing with the amount of labor that we have. That’s true across the board for all restaurants.
We’ve been fortunate. The Lord has blessed us. Right now, we’ve got full time and part time about 25-30 employees. We could use probably twice that.
Scott Turner reports from Huntsville for the Lede.
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