- December 20, 2024
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A Sarasota institution, The Waffle Stop, is closing after 74 years.
A sign in the restaurant, at 660 S. Washington Blvd., just south of Main Street downtown, indicates the last day of business will be Dec. 31. Owner and waitress, Dolly Hollinger, says she will be retiring.
Early Friday morning, a sign-in book sat on the counter by the cash register encouraging diners to write goodbye notes. The restaurant otherwise sat nearly empty, save for two people eating eggs in a booth next to the back door.
Hollinger, who has worked for The Waffle Stop since 1991, said the closure was for several reasons — one relatively familiar in hospitality: finding and retaining employees.
The restaurant, a classic diner amid the growth of downtown Sarasota, has been around for decades but made its reputation and built its foundation off of two meals served in 1956.
That’s the year when Elvis Presley came to town to play a show at the Florida Theater, now the Sarasota Opera House.
These days it’s hard to believe a world existed where Presley wasn’t a household name, but this was Feb. 16 — months before he made his debut on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Sept. 9. On that day an estimated 83% of American households tuned in to watch a performance that the New York Times described in his obituary as “so scandalous that the cameras showed him only from the waist up, lest his wiggling hips show.”
But when the soon-to-be King showed up at The Waffle Stop a few months earlier, waitress and owner Edith Barr Dunn had no idea who she was serving. To her, he was just a young man who ordered three eggs, three pieces of bacon, pan-fried potatoes, two orders of toast and three glasses of milk.
He came the next day and ate the same meal.
The most memorable part of the first meal was the 50-cent tip.
“He gave her a picture, and he signed it,” Hollinger told the Sarasota Observer in 2020. “She threw it away because he wasn’t popular yet. … She regretted it ever since.”
Regardless, because of those meals The Waffle Stop has become synonymous with Elvis Presley.
For years now fans have flocked to Sarasota for a chance to eat where he ate.
The small eatery is festooned with memorabilia featuring Presley and its website feels more like a fan page than the digital front for the business. Hollinger told the Observer in 2020 that much of the memorabilia decorating the restaurant were gifts from people around the world.
Talking to a pair of customers in the restaurant Friday, Dec. 20, Hollinger said she had 10 days to sell or donate the lot of Elvis artifacts, and she wasn't sure where it would all be headed.
But beyond the Elvis appearances, The Waffle Stop has been a popular destination for generations of locals as well.
It was first opened in 1951 by Barr Dunn’s parents — Jimmy and Sue Jones — and sister and brother-in-law — Nell and Rich Shenkel.
Barr Dunn, who died in 2015 at 94, would go on to own and operate other restaurants in the area: Barr’s Restaurant on North Tamiami Trail and Shenkel’s on Longboat Key.
But The Waffle Stop continued on for 70 years, surviving storms and pandemics and economic downturns, becoming a Sarasota mainstay.
Who knows if that all would have happened if Elvis Presley had stopped to eat somewhere else on that February day in 1956.
But Hollinger, for one, credits the King of rock and roll, telling the Observer in 2020 that his visit would define The Waffle Stop.
