Chick-fil-A’s first-ever restaurant — a 56-year-old location in an Atlanta mall — is closing

• Chick-fil-A’s oldest restaurant is closing on Sunday after 56 years of operation, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
• The restaurant in Greenbriar Mall, Atlanta, first opened in 1967 and sold chicken sandwiches for $0.59.
• Chick-fil-A describes the restaurant as a “pioneer in the modern-day food court.”

Chick-fil-A’s oldest restaurant, which opened in an Atlanta mall 56 years ago, is closing.

The restaurant, located in the food court of Greenbriar Mall to the southwest of the city, is set to shut for good at 4 p.m. on Saturday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Printed-out signs posted at the location don’t give reasons for the closure.

Chick-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy opened the restaurant in 1967 in what was one of the first indoor malls in the Southeast. He’d previously set up a diner in Atlanta called The Dwarf Grill, later renamed The Dwarf House, with his brother Ben.

“At the time, the concept of a shopping mall restaurant was groundbreaking,” Chick-fil-A says in a history of the Greenbriar Mall store, describing it as a “pioneer in the modern-day food court.”

When it opened, the 384-square-foot restaurant — roughly the size of a two-car garage — sold its chicken sandwiches for just $0.59. Other items available included fries, chicken salads, coleslaw, lemon pie, and lemonade.

Staff served customers in a uniform made up of candy-striped aprons, ascots, so-called “soda jerk” hats, and ties, Chick-fil-A says. As with Chick-fil-A locations today, the restaurant was closed on Sundays.

The restaurant later relocated to a larger spot in the mall.

Chick-fil-A’s first free-standing restaurant didn’t open until nearly two decades later in North Druid Hills, northeast Atlanta. The fried-chicken chain now has more than 2,700 locations.