56 Beloved American Restaurants That Have Closed Their Doors

S&W Cafeteria was based in North Carolina, and it was a cafeteria-style restaurant specializing in Southern-style food at low prices. One of the furthest Northern branches was in Washington, D.C., which opened in 1934. Southern congressmen like Richard Russell and Clyde Hoey often dropped in.

S&W didn’t have the big financial backing that companies like McDonald’s, BJs, and Burger King did – though it did enjoy a culturally iconic status that helped it with publicity. Frank Odell Sherill founded the company and has stayed with it for much of its lifetime. S&W went out of business sometime in the 1990s.