Green Frog: The Little-Known Lunch Counter Predecessor To Red Lobster

Odds are, the list of your favorite eateries is filled with restaurants that are both young and old. Some places will allow you to test your tastebuds with new flavors, while others will deliver the comforting classics that you've come to know and love. However, aren't both types of restaurants really the same, just at different points of development?

Sometimes, it takes a bit for restaurateurs to find business identities that will translate to widespread success. The popular fast food franchise Panda Express, which serves up hot platters of sweet, salty, Americanized Chinese food, was once a more traditional Chinese restaurant that went by the name of Panda Inn. The ubiquitous fast-casual franchise Applebee's once went by the wordy title T.J. Applebee's Rx for Edibles & Elixirs. Before the colossal crustacean chain Red Lobster made a huge splash on the seafood restaurant scene, there was a little lunch counter in Waycross, Georgia that bore an amphibious appellative.

In the mid-1930s, when he was still a young man, Bill Darden decided to get into the restaurant business and opened a small, 25-seat lunch counter, which was called The Green Frog. This little diner was a local hub for decades, expanding to several times its original size, and would eventually become one of the oldest operating restaurants in the city. The company's tagline was "service with a hop". The Green Frog enjoyed a long life as a beloved local joint with convenient curbside service. However, the restaurant served its last lunch in 1981.

Those of you who are familiar with Bill Darden know not to fret too much about his future following the closure of The Green Frog. Darden would eventually try his hand in the seafood space. Several decades after starting The Green Frog, he opened the first Red Lobster. Inspired by the success of the seafood restaurant chain, General Mills offered to purchase the company, including in the offer an executive role for Darden within the company. He agreed and went on to oversee major growth in General Mills' restaurant division. Darden Restaurants currently oversees a number of different restaurant franchises, including Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse.

Today, if you were looking for a reason to praise the charitable nature of Red Lobster, you might point to the fact that servers at the seafood chain purposefully give out the wrong number of Cheddar Bay Biscuits in your table's basket, so that everyone gets a few extra bites of the delicious cheesy creations. However, the franchise's predecessor, The Green Frog, was a much more direct charitable force in the Georgian community.

Waycross, Georgia, the home of The Green Frog, is deep in the South. When Darden opened the restaurant, segregationist Jim Crow laws were still in effect, but Darden refused to follow them, allowing people of all races to dine at his restaurant. As he began to expand his Red Lobster franchise, he hired a diverse workforce. In a TikTok video, history teacher Ernest Crim III (@mrcrim3) notes that Darden should be praised for standing against the unjust laws, and also their fantastic biscuits.