Blue Boar Cafeterias

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Blue Boar Cafeterias is a chain of cafeteria restaurants based in Louisville, Kentucky. Once a major presence in metro Louisville and still remembered for its old downtown location, the Blue Boar chain has declined to only two remaining locations as of 2006.

The Blue Boar chain shared common ownership with Britling Cafeterias in Birmingham, Alabama and Memphis, Tennessee, and B&W Cafeterias in Nashville, Tennessee. Both of those chains have closed, with Blue Boar the remaining remnant of the company.

As with its corporate siblings, Blue Boar was a Louisville institution, best known for its flagship location downtown. Its heyday was the 1930s through the 1950s. The company expanded into suburban locations in the 1960s and 1970s, including a location in "The Mall," the first enclosed shopping mall in the state. (This location later moved to Oxmoor Center, a newer mall just across the Watterson Expressway.) Facing increased competition from fast food outlets and changing lifestyles, the chain went into decline, and gradually closed locations down to the remaining two restaurants today. Unlike Britling, it stayed with the cafeteria format and did not convert to an all-you-can-eat buffet format.

There was also a Blue Boar cafeteria located on Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland, Ohio in the 1930s. It is unclear on whether there was any connection between that location and the Louisville company.

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