A fire that broke out late Thursday at Ferrell’s won’t mean the end of the tiny restaurant that’s been serving cheeseburgers and chili on Main Street since 1936.
It will reopen, owner Phillip Ferrell said Friday afternoon in a telephone interview with Hoptown Chronicle.
“We’ll get busy on it in the next week or two, and we’ll see what it takes,” he said.
Ferrell said he expects repairs can be made within a few months. The footprint of the building and the interior layout won’t change, he said.
The fire broke out at about 11:30 p.m., and 15 Hopkinsville firefighters responded to the call. Capt. Michael Pendleton told WKMS the fire started at the grill. No one was hurt, but the restaurant’s interior was heavily damaged.
Phillip Ferrell’s parents, the late David and Cecil Ferrell, opened the restaurant at 10th and Main streets in 1936 and called it Ferrell’s Snappy Service.
At one time, there were several Ferrell’s restaurants – all started by David Ferrell and four of his brothers during the Depression. They were in Hopkinsville, Cadiz, Madisonville, Bowling Green, Owensboro, Henderson and Clarksville, Tennessee.
Only three remain, in Hopkinsville, Cadiz and Madisonville, and Phillip Ferrell owns and operations all of them.
In 2016, Ferrell leased the restaurants to another operator, but he took back control of all three in January.
“I was not satisfied with the way they were taking care of things,” Ferrell said. “They were never sold. They were leased. But it’s still in litigation, so I really can’t say more about it.”
The Madisonville restaurant recently reopened following repairs for a fire there.
“It took us 90 days to redo that one,” Ferrell said.
Ferrell, 71, started working for his parents when he was 13 years old. His first job was washing dishes. In high school and college, he was a cook.
Open around the clock for generations of patrons, the Hopkinsville Ferrell’s has been a mainstay in downtown. It is the oldest business in the heart of town.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
