restaurant founded 1972 headquarters nashville tennessee number of locations 50 area served united states products country style food parent captain d s website grandys.com grandy s country cookin shortened to grandy s is a homestyle cooking and comfort food restaurant chain based in nashville tennessee . known for their homestyle meals grandy s specializes in a hearty country breakfast while the lunch and dinner meals feature fried chicken country fried steaks catfish and eight homestyle vegetables complemented with fresh baked biscuits dinner rolls and their much heralded sinnamon rolls . contents 1 biography 2 location states 3 see also 4 references 5 external links biography edit grandy s was founded in 1972 by walter e. johnson and rex e. sanders who became friends while working together as teenagers at a dallas texas cafeteria . after launching and selling a successful chain of restaurants the two young men created grandy s hoping to combine the efficiency of fast food with the ambiance of a full service restaurant . under the ownership of saga foods inc. a multi concept restaurant firm who acquired grandy s in 1983 1 grandy s experienced its greatest growth surge primarily in the 1980s having at its zenith almost 200 stores . a buyout of saga by marriott corporation led to a sell off of the grandy s chain along with other concepts owned by saga to american restaurant group . 2 in the late 1990s grandy s now over 20 years old began to close older locations and remote markets that were underperforming . they retreated to the core markets of texas and oklahoma with a strong presence in southern indiana and northern kentucky . in 2000 american restaurant group sold grandy s and three other subsidiaries to spectrum restaurant group . 3 spectrum filed for bankruptcy in 2006 and put grandy s up for sale . 4 souper salad acquired grandy s in 2007 . 5 souper salad filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and sold grandy s to captain d s. 6 7 in july 2004 steve butts and brian bowen left grandy s and thus leaving the restaurant chain without an executive to lead the chain . that started the loss of sales and number of units . monty whitehurst took over without experience running a restaurant chain . within 12 months the chain lost 18 stores and same store sales dropped 32 % . also under whitehurst many of grandy s locations were exposed on local television stations for failing health inspections . this caused sales to drop . during the g8 meetings of 2004 held on sea island georgia the brunswick georgia store had the exclusive contract to provide food for the secret service batf georgia state patrol and other law enforcement agencies protecting the leaders . then president of the us george w. bush visited the command center and personally thanked all of the catering staff for their work . as of january 2016 grandy s is franchised in seven states with 50 restaurants . half of these locations are in the dallas fort worth metroplex . location states edit texas 35 oklahoma 5 indiana 3 kentucky 2 louisiana 2 new mexico 2 georgia 1 see also edit list of chicken restaurants references edit saga plans to buy grandy s of dallas newport beach firm acquires restaurant chains from marriott american restaurant group to sell 4 units to cut debt troubled spectrum files for chapter 11 souper salad buys grandy s souper salad files for bankruptcy protection souper salad and grandy s sold to captain d s lnc ventures external links edit official website v t e sun capital partners portfolio as of august 10 2013 retail catalog and direct marketing hickory farms department stores shopko grocery & convenience marsh supermarkets specialty and apparel bonmarch dreams gordmans jacques vert the limited sharps bedrooms restaurants boston market friendly s johnny rockets smokey bones souplantation consumer products apparel american rec kelty kellwood company general kraco loud technologies food and beverage creekstone farms premium beef industrial coveris advanced coatings retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title grandy % 27s & oldid 743836444 categories private equity portfolio companiesfast food chains of the united statescompanies based in nashville tennesseeregional restaurant chains in the united statesrestaurants established in 1972poultry restaurants navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 11 october 2016 at 15 01 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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