Granny Shaffer’s Family Restaurant, which serves a popular dish from another historic restaurant in southwest Missouri, recently marked its 50th year in business in Joplin.
The restaurant sits at 2728 N. Range Line Road, which is bypass U.S. 66 alignment from 1956 to 1972.
According to the Joplin Globe:
Pies, one of its top-selling items, are still made from scratch with lard crusts and real fruit rather than jellylike fruit filling.
There also are the made-from-scratch bread and hot rolls, fried chicken, chicken and noodles, ham and beans, and countless other menu items. In addition, the restaurant is known for country fried steaks, cut by hand by founder David Shaffer, who at age 85 still does that work and performs other duties at the restaurant.
Another big seller is catfish, which is made according to Greg Dowd’s recipe from the Dowd’s restaurant that once existed in Neosho.
A Dowd’s Catfish House also still operates in Lebanon, Missouri.
David and Karen Shaffer and their three children started in the restaurant business in a former Dog ‘N Suds in nearby Webb City, Missouri. They soon rechristened it as Shaffer’s Big Q Burgers.
A box of family recipes given to Karen Shaffer in 1977 by her Aunt Louise led to the idea that she could expand the business with home-cooked meals. It became the first Granny Shaffer’s in 1983 when they added to the front of the building and began offering breakfast and pies. From then on, Karen Shaffer was known as “Granny.”
In the 1980s, the restaurant moved to its current Joplin location and was renamed Granny Shaffer’s Family Restaurant.
Karen died in 2005, but the family still uses her recipes and others from the family.
(Image of the Granny Shaffer’s Family Restaurant logo)