Community Corner

What Happened to Douglasville Diner?

One hint might be that the owners took the "Diner" part of the sign with them. Tell us your thoughts about the diner in our comments section below this article.

On March 6, I received an email from an avid Douglasville Patch viewer that said the Douglasville Diner was closing its doors. The subject line read: Douglasville Diner RIP. The Patch viewer said he was there the night they closed their doors and that movers were there cleaning the place out.

I found it hard to believe because they had just opened the place on May 24 and had clearly spent a lot of money for the sign and the remodel of the former . However, this Patch viewer snapped a photo of the sign on the door (attached), with his cell phone. The sign read, "We would like to thank all of our customers for your patronage. We will be closing our doors at 4 p.m. on March 5." Initially the sign said 5 p.m. but someone was apparently anxious to get going and crossed out the 5 p.m., changing it to 4 p.m.

One of our blog writers, wrote a piece on July 22, titled, . "All in all, the diner was a disgrace," she concluded. "It embarrasses me to see my hometown’s name on the building after the experience I had. I would suggest maybe opening a smaller, much smaller, dessert bar and changing the name to possibly the Douglasville Bakery. This is not what the doctor ordered."

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The blog received 58 comments and 39 Facebook recommends. Some people agreed with her and some people didn't.

On Aug. 25, Sara Ray of the , shared an article with Patch about the diner joining the Chamber. "The locally-famous Carrollton Diner has taken its popularity to the next level and owner Dimitrios Goumas opened Douglasville Diner located at 9579 Highway 5 in Douglasville," reads the article.

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Upon finding out the diner was closing, I wanted to do a story and thought I would go to the Carrollton location and ask the owners what happened. So I Googled the Carrollton location to find the address. What I found, instead, was a website called thecarrolltonmenu.com. They were reporting, "Our predictions were right with the possible closing of the Carrollton Diner at The Carrollton Crossroads shopping center. As of Feb 9th The Carrollton Diner has closed."

So they actually closed their Carrollton location before the Douglasville one.

Coincidentally, I was recently meeting someone at the location where the diner used to be and ran into Rome Smith. He is a route supervisor for Auto-Chlor System. It's a commercial dishwashing and sanitation systems business. He was sitting outside the diner building in his truck and I struck up a conversation with him.

He said his company has a commercial dishwashing unit in the building that is worth about $6,000 and there are outstanding invoices worth $743.67 that the diner owners owe. He said his company was given a one-day notice that the diner was closing. An Auto-Chlor System representative arrived about an hour late and the diner doors were locked.

He said the diner owners left no forwarding address and his home office will turn the matter over to a collections agency.

I've talked to several people around town and there are a lot of rumors but no facts as to what happened to the diner. The overall consences seems to be that the diner's demise wasn't business related but family related in some way. I did manage to turn up a phone number for the owner but there is never an answer and the voicemail has been constantly full.

There is another rumor that the family plans to open a diner somewhere in Alabama. There's no proof of that but I did notice one interesting fact that might validate that rumor. The diner sign once read, "Douglasville Diner," which lit up in bright red letters. I guess each word was its own sign because all that is remaining of the sign today is a bright red "Douglasville." Apparently they took the word "Diner" with them.

Tell us your thoughts about the diner in our comments section below this article.


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