Late last summer, I told y’all about the Heinz Black Kitchen Initiative, which aims to provide support to Black entrepreneurs looking to expand in the restaurant industry. Well, at least one local business was paying attention.
The great news is that Bag Lady’s Fry Joint at 1402 Buchanan St. is the recipient of a $20,000 grant from the initiative, intended to help co-founders Brandon and James Littleton be a part of Heinz’s efforts to preserve and celebrate Black culinary traditions. Despite the fact that COVID threw a huge wrench in their plans to expand from a food truck operation to a freestanding restaurant, Fry Lady’s Bag Joint persevered, opening their own brick-and-mortar to serve outstanding loaded fries alongside burgers, chicken tenders and wings, wraps and innovative funnel cake fries to their legions of fans.
Bag Lady's Brandon and James Middleton
The Littletons are joined by three other Tennessee recipients of Heinz’s largesse. In Memphis, Miss Crumpy’s down-home catering service was recognized, along with the iconic Payne’s Bar-B-Que, a family-run pit that has served some of the best smoked meats in the city out of a small cinderblock building on Lamar Avenue for more than half a century.
The fourth Tennessee grantee is a Chattanoogan I have written about before here on Bites. Kenyatta Ashford operates Neutral Ground, a modern New Orleans-Style po’boy and yakamein restaurant that I’m obsessed with, but which has struggled to find a permanent home in the ’Noog. Hopefully, this infusion of cash will help out with those efforts.
The Heinz Black Kitchen Initiative is a collaboration between Heinz, The LEE Initiative and Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice). Congratulations to all the recipients!
