HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) – College students are back in Harrisonburg, bringing increased business to local restaurants.<\/p>\n
Ron Copeland, owner of The Little Grill, said the restaurant tends to see a lot more faces during the school year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe students are sort of the cream on top, really,\u201d Copeland said. \u201cI think it\u2019s the locals that are our bread and butter, but then when the students come back, we\u2019re able to make a little more money and be a little more viable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copeland said that during the week business is slower, but on weekends it\u2019s a lot busier. He said the restaurant is unique and even though every student may have their own reasoning why they enjoy The Little Grill, he thinks it has a lot to do with the many years of dedicated and friendly service to the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, when I walked in here as a freshman, I never looked back,\u201d he said. \u201cI loved it, and people just fall in love with it. I think it\u2019s been a restaurant since 1940, cooking breakfast and making coffee every single day for 86 years, and there\u2019s something about that that is really special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Louis Gibson, a waiter at The Little Grill, said he\u2019s noticed an increase in traffic flow and in tips, especially during move-in week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the first weekend JMU was back, we made over $1,500 more than we did the weekend before, and so we\u2019re definitely seeing that tip percentage,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cThat\u2019s great because we\u2019re definitely working a lot harder to get parties out the door, get more people in, so it\u2019s definitely paying off.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Gibson, it isn\u2019t just the increase in business that excited him, \u201cit\u2019s all authenticity and great service, great food,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing about this place is fake or processed,\u201d he said. \u201cThe servers are all authentic, have their own personality … and especially me, I strive in creating a connection, and that\u2019s the most incredible part is like walking away from the shift, being like, \u2018wow … I met so many new people.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Copeland encouraged the community to download The Little Grill\u2019s app on Apple and Google\u2019s app stores so customers can check the wait time and get on the wait list before they arrive.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 WHSV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) – College students are back in Harrisonburg, bringing increased business to local restaurants. Ron Copeland, owner of The Little Grill, said the restaurant tends to see a lot more faces during the school year. \u201cThe students are sort of the cream on top, really,\u201d Copeland said. \u201cI think it\u2019s the locals that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7,8,13368,13372,13377,13373,13369,13371,13376,13374,13370,13375],"class_list":["post-17483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-restaurants","tag-restaurant","tag-restaurants","tag-whsv","tag-whsv-3","tag-whsv-3-news","tag-whsv-news","tag-whsv-tv","tag-whsv-tv-3","tag-whsv-tv-3-news","tag-whsv-tv-news","tag-whsv-tv3","tag-whsv-tv3-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@dnc\/117175635402497538","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/restaurants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}