It’s impossible not to leave Babe’s Chicken Dinner House with a full belly and a big smile. Babe’s has been delighting diners with southern comfort food and Texas hospitality since 1993. This iconic local chain started in a historic building in downtown Roanoke and has grown to 10 locations across the Metroplex. Paul Vinyard, who started Babe’s Chicken Dinner House with his wife, Mary Beth, says the goal has always been to give the last customer a meal just as good as the first.
If the line out the door and numerous accolades are any indication, they’ve triumphed. Babe’s has won awards like “Best Family Restaurant In Texas” from “Official Best of America” and been featured on Food Network’s “Best Thing I Ever Ate.”
As one of the first restaurants in Roanoke, Babe’s played a key role in the city being officially named by the Texas House of Representatives as “The Unique Dining Capital of Texas” in 2009. This past spring, Roanoke Mayor Scooter Gierisch issued a proclamation declaring April 25 as Babe’s Chicken Dinner House of Roanoke Day.
There are no menus here — you simply pick your main course of fried chicken, chicken fried steak or fried chicken tenders. Then, make room for dish upon dish of all-you-can-eat homestyle sides like mashed potatoes, cream gravy and Grandma’s corn. The golden-fried goodness and full-flavored fixings put Babe’s on the map 30 years ago, and this local chicken shop is still doing country cooking right.
A FRIED CHICKEN LEGACY BEGINS
Long before Babe’s, Paul had an appetite for business — specifically the restaurant business. Growing up, Paul remembers sitting at the dinner table talking with his dad. He learned from his father that if you do your job right, you can make a lot of people happy.
“The restaurant business can be complicated and demand a lot,” Paul says. “But it’s an addicting career. I love it.”
After graduating from Texas Tech University, Paul launched his career in the restaurant business, eventually opening several restaurants across Texas and Oklahoma. Today, he runs Babe’s and three other restaurant concepts with his children, Joel Vinyard and Tiffany Vinyard-Wheeless.
Although Mary Beth — aka “Babe” — passed away in 2008, her legacy lives on in nearly every recipe at this eponymous restaurant, from the corn to the cobbler. In the restaurant’s early years, Mary Beth would be in the kitchen with flour-dusted hands, training employees how to make a good biscuit.
“She was such a great cook,” Paul says. “She’d make pot roast with hot-water cornbread and gravy. That was one of my favorite meals. A lot of what she knew she learned from my mother, who was another great cook.”
Getting Babe’s off the ground required Mary Beth’s cooking skills and a hearty helping of resourceful ingenuity. They opened Babe’s in a building on Oak Street constructed in 1908. The location had housed various businesses over the years, including a hardware store, grocery store and plant shop.
When Paul and Mary Beth arrived, they made the most of what they had.
“Most everything that went on the wall was either something we had at the house or something I created sitting at the table,” Paul says. “We mounted some pictures on old serving trays because I couldn’t afford frames for them.”
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Paul got the restaurant looking good, but he had to resolve a pesky problem — guests kept swiping squeeze bottles of honey right off the tables.
“A friend in the restaurant business suggested I started selling the honey,” he says. “Sure enough, as soon as we started selling it, people stopped stealing it.”
Now, guests can peruse a veritable country store at the checkout counter. Babe’s sells everything from honey to sorghum cane syrup and strawberry preserves. The restaurant also offers curbside pickup, a pandemic-era offering that still amounts to about 25% of Babe’s business.
“Our restaurants were not built to have easy curbside,” Paul says. “But our managers got industrious and figured out how to make it happen.”
GATHERINGS THAT RUN THE GAMUT
In addition to all of the fried chicken and sides, Babe’s is known for its lively atmosphere. With wait staff singing and dancing to the hokey pokey — and guests encouraged to join in — you can always count on a good time at Babe’s. The place is a great destination for any occasion, from birthday parties to dinners with friends.
Tiffany says the restaurant’s down-home cooking and relaxed environment remind her of her own childhood dinners, and she’s glad that Babe’s is a bright spot in the community.
“We get so much enjoyment out of having people have such a great time here. On a Friday night, it’s electric because the music is loud, kids are jumping up to do the hokey pokey and everyone is passing around food,” she says. “It’s wonderful to see such love between family and friends.”
Paul says Babe’s is also, interestingly, a popular place for groups to enjoy a meal together after a funeral.
“They arrive somber, but I’ve found they all welcome the opportunity to laugh again,” he says. “They might be seeing kinfolk they haven’t seen for years and remembering the person who’s not there. They have as much fun as anybody who comes in because it’s a release from what they’ve been through. They turn out to be some of the best guests.”
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GUIDED BY THE GOLDEN RULE
When he reflects on Babe’s Chicken Dinner House over the past 30 years, Paul attributes much of the restaurant’s success to following the Golden Rule — “Treat others as you would want to be treated.”
“We try to emphasize this in everything we do, from how our employees treat our guests to how we treat our employees,” Paul says. “It has served us well.”
Paul is especially proud of his team members and has always aspired to help them grow.
“We’ve hired many young people,” he says. “Seeing them develop and become exceptional people is one of the greatest rewards.”
Most of all, though, Paul is proud of his family and grateful he gets to work with his son and daughter every day.
“So often, kids grow up, marry somebody and move away,” he says. “We all live locally and work together. It’s such a joy for me as a father.”
When he’s around town, Paul says people sometimes recognize that he’s with Babe’s. When they do, they gush about their fantastic experience, whether it was at the Roanoke restaurant or one of the other locations.
“They never tell me what a terrible time they had,” he says. “This goes back to making a lot of people happy. When you can make other people happy, it makes you happy.”
At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all a-bout.