At a pancake house geared for breakfast, Ol’ South wins friends with family dinners
Breakfast is the hardest-hit part of the restaurant business, and you can tell it at Ol’ South Pancake House.
In a year when new brunch restaurants were opening and others were expanding, the morning meal was cut out last month when Americans started working at home to avoid coronavirus.
Ol’ South’s business was down 85% as first as its regular crowd skipped breakfast, owner Rex Benson said.
“It has been truly devastating,” he said.
But then the restaurant shifted its attention to cooking $19.99 family dinner packs for four people — $5 each — with entrees such as chicken-fried steak or chicken and grilled chicken pasta Alfredo.
“We have had to completely rethink every aspect of our business,” Benson said.
Along with morning German pancakes, diners started coming to pick up pork chop dinners with two vegetables and rolls, or fried catfish.
“In the last two weeks, the local community has been really helping support our local restaurants,” Benson said.
Ol’ South’s four-for-$19.99 is one of the cheapest dinners in town, rivaling the budget-minded Day Break Cafe and beating other home cooking spots such as West Side Cafe.
Ol’ South set up dedicated curbside delivery with assigned parking spaces and added more sanitizing in the kitchen.
Benson said he expects the next few weeks will be “a ramp-up time of trust” as customers start coming out.
“I feel sure that we will get our sense of ‘Fort Worth strong community’ back,” he said.
Ol’ South is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner (but not 24 hours right now) at 1509 S. University Drive, 817-336-0311, olsouthpancakehouse.com.
This story was originally published April 21, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
