GALESBURG, Ill. — Judy's Family Cafe is well known in the Galesburg community, serving breakfast and lunch at its current location since 2019. Now, it's known by millions across the country thanks to TikTok.
Known as @judysfamilycafe on the social media platform, the restaurant's TikTok account has nearly 100,000 followers and millions of likes — with their most popular video racking in 12 million views. The owner, Jingjie "Judy" Wang," is the star of the show.
Due to the restaurant's growing popularity online, they've started seeing a lot of new faces from outside of the Galesburg community.
"Today, we had, like, one customer from Chicago. The driver has to go to Des Moines, so they stop by here and get pancakes," Wang said.
As a result, space fills up fast.
"We started doing social media, and we've been (serving) a lot of new people and all our regular customers, sometimes they come, they don't have a table," she said. "They have to wait and our parking lot always so full...So we think 'What we gonna do, you know?'"
The solution? Moving to a larger location! Judy's current location at 1195 N Broad St. seats 80 customers. Their new place downtown at 51 N. Prairie St. will be able to serve double that number.
Judy's Family Cafe serves a variety of food, from her well-known pancakes to Asian cuisine. The restaurant is open seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.