The first Sonny’s BBQ restaurant opened in Florida in 1968. Floyd “Sonny” Tillman and his wife, Lucille, opened the original Sonny’s Real Pit-Bar-B-Q on Waldo Road in Gainesville on April 17, 1968.
The restaurant began as a single Southern-style barbecue operation, serving staples such as pork, beef, ribs, chicken, beans, and other sides. Its Gainesville birthplace is sometimes overlooked because the chain later expanded throughout the Southeast and eventually moved its headquarters elsewhere in Florida.
Sonny’s began franchising in 1977, nine years after the original restaurant opened. By 1988, it had grown to 77 restaurants in six states. The company was sold to Bob Yarmuth in 1991, and the name was shortened from Sonny’s Real Pit-Bar-B-Q to Sonny’s BBQ in 2013.
The other options are plausible only because Sonny’s has operated restaurants across several Southern states, including Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. They were expansion markets, not the chain’s founding state.