Sometimes, a unique place to eat is difficult to find. One such eatery in Elizabethtown sits on the busiest highway in the city, hidden in full view.
Located at 1085 North Dixie Highway, The Café at Swope Toyota is a bona fide full-service eatery that is an extension of the automobile dealer’s showroom. The café, which opened in 2016, features a floor-to-wall chalkboard menu listing the breakfast and lunch offerings.
The Swope name is synonymous with selling cars in Kentucky, with brothers Sam and Bill Swope opening their first dealerships in the 1950s in Elizabethtown and Winchester. Car sales became a family enterprise. When Bill’s son Carl began planning his new Toyota dealership in Elizabethtown in 1986, general manager Kathy McCubbin was ready to push her idea of a café located just off the main showroom floor.
Carl’s brother Bob, who ran the nearby Ford dealership for years, laughed when he recalled that Carl thought it was a crazy idea in the beginning. But Carl has since changed his mind.
“I will never build another dealership without hospitality,” Carl said. “We initially thought about a pastry display and coffee, but Kathy wanted more.”
With a background in car sales and 21 years with Swope, McCubbin found herself immersed in the restaurant business. “I went everywhere looking at small restaurants across Kentucky and Tennessee to see what made them unique,” she said. “We saw another car dealership that did the dessert and coffee thing, but we decided to do it up right.”
Raised in Green County in a family of seven, McCubbin had a strong work ethic, so adding restaurant manager to her already-busy schedule was not out of her comfort zone. “Something like we have here had been on my mind for years,” she continued. “In the beginning, The Whistle Stop restaurant [in Glendale] helped us get off to a good start. We wanted an atmosphere in which the community could relax and enjoy without the pressure of thinking they had to buy a car if they came here.”
That atmosphere McCubbin mentioned is front and center. With the café’s expansive view of Freeman Lake and a large well-positioned fireplace, visitors may forget they are in an automobile showroom.
Signage for the café is scant. Pulling into the parking lot, one may not notice the single small sign reading “Café” with a red arrow pointing to the right. Customers enter the café at the rear. “We had to follow some rules and regulations with signage for Toyota and the city,” McCubbin explained.
If you sell something good, people will find you. And so far, the local Kiwanis and Rotary clubs are finding their way once a week to the upstairs community room to enjoy meals.
“We even had large motorcycle clubs that we put up there,” McCubbin said. “It’s also where we added an extra kitchen that takes care of the catering business that has grown here.”
The motorcycle group had been visiting the Swope’s Cars of Yesteryear Museum across Dixie Highway. In 1999, Bill Swope opened a 60-car museum of his collection of 1900-1960 classics. Admission to the museum, which has a vintage car library, is free. And yes, cameras are permitted.
“It’s our way of showing our appreciation to the community,” Carl said.
The Café at Swope Toyota
1085 North Dixie Highway, Elizabethtown
270.505.4966
swopetoyota.com/
cafe-deli-swope-toyota
Monday–Friday, 7AM–3PM
Saturday, 7AM–2PM
Breakfast, 7–10:30AM
Swope Cars of
Yesteryear Museum
1100 North Dixie Highway, Elizabethtown
swopemuseum.com
Monday–Saturday, 10AM–5PM