Bill Smith’s Cafe closed over the summer after being open in McKinney for 66 years.
The restaurant was McKinney’s second-oldest restaurant, behind Baker’s Drive In, which opened two years earlier, in 1954. Bill Smith’s Cafe is believed to be McKinney’s oldest restaurant continuously owned by the same family.
Owner Bill Smith told WFAA he’s closing the restaurant to focus on his health. The 83-year-old restaurateur has been running the diner for nearly 40 years, when he took over for his parents, Bill and Jeanette Smith.
The aging building is expected to be torn down and replaced by a car wash.
The restaurant looks out over a bustling Highway 380, but when it opened 66 years ago, the Smith family was told it was “too far out of town to do any business,” Bill Smith told WFAA. The cafe managed to maintain its small-town charm until the end. The servers called customers “honey” and remembered their orders from last time. The nostalgic menu listed eggs and pancakes in the morning; and chicken-fried steak, grilled cheese and slices of pie in the afternoons.
In 2016, Smith told Community Impact that he estimates that more than 60 million eggs have been cracked at his homey cafe.
“The locals take this place for granted,” wrote Allen resident Joel Blaylock in The Dallas Morning News in 2007. “We assume it will always be here. It may not be. And you’d certainly miss the way it used to be.”
Indeed.
Bill Smith’s Cafe was at 1510 W. University Drive, McKinney. It closed July 31, 2022.
