On the corner of King Street and Hardin Street, there is a white, wooden building with columns adorning the front. Walk up a stone pathway surrounded by a garden of flora and fauna to enter a place that preserves the past in its food and multifaceted history.
Dan’l Boone Inn was not always a southern family-style restaurant. It was built in 1925 on land worth approximately $1.38 million, according to Watauga tax records. It began as Boone’s first hospital and was a residence and office to Dr. R.K. Bingham.
The building was then a housing option for App State professors, or what App State was known as then, Appalachian State Teachers College.
Daniel Boone Inn didn’t only serve as housing in the early days of the establishment. In the Sept. 13, 1977, edition of The Appalachian, it was reported that Daniel Boone Inn acted as a boarding house for students as another option as opposed to on-campus housing.
The housing option hosted approximately 40 students, and it was coined “living at Daniel Boone.”
The students featured in the 1977 article, written by Staff Writer Jocelyn Clayton, described it as “quieter than the dorms” and a place where “everybody gets along real good.” One student said it was closer to the dining hall than the other dorms. What every interviewee mentioned in common was the homey atmosphere.
The homey atmosphere of the establishment remained when the Whitaker family bought the building in 1959 and changed it into a family-style restaurant, most famous for its biscuits.
Ordering at the restaurant is different from other places, as patrons pay a flat fee and receive everything on the breakfast or dinner menu depending on the time of day they visit. All dinner meals start with a salad if it is summertime or soup if it is wintertime.
Daniel Boone Inn also does catering and takeout, and Richard Coffey — the head chef of the restaurant and employee for almost 39 years — said older generations tend to opt for dining in and students tend to opt for takeout. Coffey uses his family’s recipes in the restaurant.
“My mom’s and my grandparents’ chicken and dumpling recipe, we use that in the winter,” Coffey said. “And then a lot of the food we have here I had at home all the time.”
In keeping with the family tradition, the female servers are required to wear dresses that resemble southern, prairie tradition and an apron around the bottom half of the dress.
Coffey said that while the uniform has changed over the years, it has always reflected older generations to honor the tradition of southern women wearing dresses and aprons in the kitchen.
Sarah Fredenburg, a 2024 Watauga High School graduate and server at the restaurant, said she conducts herself in a professional but friendly manner to follow along with the family-style food and atmosphere of the restaurant.
“The hardest part would be the fast-paced work of the environment with it being a high-demand restaurant,” Fredenburg said. “The most rewarding would be the outside connections you can make with people you work with, the financial benefits and improving communication skills with customers.”
Fredenburg said she has served customers who have dined at Daniel Boone Inn since the 1970s and who admire the tradition the restaurant upholds.
While Daniel Boone Inn has held strong amid changing owners and services offered, it has not been free of challenges.
Server and hostess Jenny Cole said during the COVID-19 pandemic, Daniel Boone Inn had to shut down for four months and she lived from paycheck to paycheck. Regardless, Cole said the current owner, Jeff Shellman, worked to continue the family Daniel Boone Inn fostered even when quarantine protocols hit.
“He emailed everybody and said ‘You need a box of food? Drive through the parking lot,’ and that’s what he did for us every week,” Cole said. “He had food we could really use, food like cereal and eggs and loaf bread and stuff like that because college kids don’t cook but they can handle macaroni and cheese.”
Cole added she was living with her granddaughter at the time and though it was hard, Shellman did everything he could to assuage employees and keep their spirits up.
“He takes good care of us,” Cole said. “We’re his team and he looks after us and he’s been one of the greatest people you could ever work for for sure.”