Page 70 - Wayne County

They had been married a few years when Eddie bought the restaurant. When Brenda was 27, she went to work for her father-in-law. When she began working at the Dairy Ranch, it didn’t take her long to start viewing the customers as her extended family. She noticed the relationships she developed as an employee, and her job became something more than just a way of drawing a paycheck. She didn’t realize how attached she was to the Dairy Ranch until she enrolled in classes at Altamaha Tech. She went to school one quarter and made very good grades. “But I felt like the restaurant business was what I wanted to do,” she recalls. Brenda left school and returned to the Dairy Ranch.

In those days, she did a little bit of everything. She took orders, worked the register, let customers know when their orders were ready, she cooked – you name it, she did it. Her myriad tasks so many years ago prepared her for what she would have to do once she bought the restaurant, though she didn’t know it at the time. As the 1980s ended, Eddie Lane began talking about retiring. He had put in many years of long hours at the Dairy

ABOVE Current owner Brenda Lane began working at the Dairy Ranch soon after her father-in-law purchased it. When he began talking of retirement, Brenda took the opportunity to step in and take over as the new owner. BELOW Brenda says her employees and regular customers are like extended family.