Skip to content
Menu Garden and Gun logo

Subscribe Now

  • Food & Drink
  • Home & Garden
  • Arts & Culture
  • Travel
  • Music
  • Sporting
  • Magazine
  • More
    • Back Porch Sessions
    • Made in the South Awards
    • Event Party Pics
    • Specialty sales program
    • Good Dog Photo Contest
  • Shop our store
  • Visit our restaurants
  • Read our books
  • Get our newsletters
  • Attend our events
  • Join the G&G Society
  • G&G Land
Subscribe today and save.
Get a Print Subscription Get a Digital Subscription Give a Gift Manage Your Subscription

Keep up with Garden and Gun logoGarden and Gun

Sign Up for Our Newsletters

1 of 15

A Day at the Varsity

Frank Gordy founded the Varsity, originally dubbed the Yellow Jacket, in 1928, serving students near Georgia Tech’s downtown Atlanta campus. “Frank’s uncle had a gas station on Luckie Street, and he rented out a lean-to up against it. It was big enough for a pot of chili and a cooler of Coke,” Weiser says. Within a year, Gordy bought the property on North Avenue and Spring Street where the Varsity sits now—and already had an eye on expanding to other cities. “I changed the name to the Varsity because I couldn’t very well open a Yellow Jacket restaurant in Athens,” he explains in What’ll Ya Have: A History of the Varsity.

photo: Mary Caroline Russell

Garden and Gun logo
  • Food & Drink
    • Recipes
    • Drinks
    • Taste of the South
  • Home & Garden
    • Homes & Architecture
    • Gardens
    • The Goods
    • Entertaining
  • Arts & Culture
    • Arts & Entertainment
    • Books
    • Style & Fashion
    • Goings On
  • Sporting
    • Land & Conservation
    • The Sporting Life
    • Good Dogs
  • Travel
  • Music
    • Back Porch Sessions
    • Artists
    • Songs & Playlists
  • Magazine
  • More
    • G&G Society
    • Event Party Pics
    • Whole Hog Podcast
    • Back Porch Sessions
    • Made in the South Awards
  • Subscribe

  • Newsletter Signup
  • Search
  • Shop our store
  • Visit our restaurants
  • Read our books
  • Get our newsletters
  • Attend our events
  • Join the G&G Society
  • G&G Land
Garden and Gun logo

Subscribe today and save.

Get a Print Subscription Get a Digital Subscription Give a Gift Manage Your Subscription
Garden and Gun logo

Subscribe today and save.

Get a Print Subscription Get a Digital Subscription Give a Gift Manage Your Subscription