25. S&W Cafeteria

S&W Cafeteria was based in North Carolina, and it was a cafeteria-style restaurant that specialized in Southern-style food at low prices. One of the furthest Northern branches was in Washington, D.C., where it opened in 1934. Southern congressmen like Richard Russell and Clyde Hoey often dropped in.

S&W didn’t have the big financial backing that companies like McDonald’s, BJs, and Burger King did – though it did enjoy a culturally iconic status that helped it with publicity. Frank Odell Sherill founded the company and stayed with it through much of its lifetime. S&W went out of business sometime in the 1990s.