Morrison's Cafeteria

Morrison's Cafeterias was a chain of cafeteria-style restaurants, located in the Southeastern United States with a concentration of locations in Georgia and Florida. Generally found in shopping malls, Morrison's primary competition was Piccadilly Cafeterias. It was particularly popular in Florida, with its high proportion of retirees. At its peak, the company operated 151 restaurants under the Morrison's name in 13 states.

The company began as a single cafeteria opened in 1929 in Mobile, Alabama by J. A. Morrison. By 1950 the company had expanded to 17 locations, and steadily grew throughout the Southeast over the next two decades. After winning a contract to cater to the cast and crew of the film The Greatest Show on Earth, Morrison's branched out into catering contracts for schools, corporate dining facilities, and hospitals.

An ill-fated attempt to diversify into non-dining businesses in the 1960s was reversed through sell-offs by new management in the early 1980s. In 1982, Morrison's acquired the 15-unit Ruby Tuesday chain, and used this acquisition as the launching pad for several other restaurants concepts such as L&N Seafood Grill, Silver Spoon Café, Mozzarella's, and Tia's Tex-Mex. It also acquired three other food-contract firms. By the mid-1990s, the new restaurant concepts — particularly Ruby Tuesday — were doing far better than the original cafeteria chain. Because of this, Morrison's decided to split the company into three new firms: Morrison's Fresh Cooking, the cafeteria chain; Ruby Tuesday, Inc., which also included the other casual dining concepts; and Morrison Health Care, which took over the food contracts for hospitals (the educational and business contracts had been previously sold to a competitor).

In 1996, Morrison's Fresh Cooking — unable to withstand the loss in popularity of cafeterias in general — sold out to Piccadilly Cafeterias. A large number of the former Morrison's locations outside of Florida and Georgia have since been closed by Piccadilly.