EPISODE 1 – SOUL FOOD
A talented young cook who impresses crowds with her flavorful creations must reevaluate her menu after adverse customer reactions.
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Legacy of Recipes
FROM a very young age, cute little Althea remembers peeling potatoes and frosting cupcakes in the kitchen beside her talented corpulent mother, Ruby. The only child of a single-parent family, Althea is a fourth-generation African-American from Alabama.
When her mother married, the family moved to California, but her husband prematurely succumbed to a heart attack. Althea didn’t have time to bond with him, but she sensed her mother’s heartbreak.
To provide for her family, Ruby began baking peach cobblers when her daughter was 10 years old. As orders increased, she rented a storefront in an African-American neighborhood. This eventually expanded into a full-service coffee shop serving three meals a day.
Althea learned how to defend herself while growing up in a tough neighborhood. The few campus dustups pale in comparison to dusting pans in the kitchen. Through her teenage years, Althea’s role as a home cook took on new dimensions when she learned to bake biscuits from scratch, roast breakfast potatoes named after her mother, and fry the family’s signature golden brown chicken.
Of all the meals that Althea became adept at preparing, she has most enjoyed combining supper proteins with breakfast fixins. At the age of 17, Althea became a line cook at the 1950s-style Ruby’s Soul Food Coffee Shop.
Changing Hands
Although Ruby is loved by all, her stamina begins decreasing, so she reduces her hours and days in the restaurant. At age 23, gorgeous Althea, with long locks of curly brown hair, inherits ownership of the establishment that fills patrons’ bellies with joy, carrying on the family legacy.
Customer compliments are plentiful. “The food is so good, I wanna eat the fork.” “You have me sucking the marrow from the chicken bones.” “My heart stops while enjoying every delectable breakfast bite.”
The last comment encourages Althea to rename the restaurant to Heart-Stop Cafe and shorten the hours. To Ruby, the name has negative connotations, but Althea argues the positive aspects while the two sip coffee after the shop closes.
“It’s a place to find love, primarily of food, but a youthful crowd might discover romance.”
“This is your inheritance,” Ruby concedes. “As the owner, you take responsibility for the choices you feel are best.”
Althea leaves the discussion with the weight of the future on her shoulders. By serving only breakfast from 6 o’clock in the morning until 3 o’clock in the afternoon, even with early meal prep and after-hours cleanup, she can be home by 6 o’clock in the evening.
The hearty menu now consists of creamy grits dripping with butter, spicy beans, and rice, or Ruby potatoes with either smothered pork chops, fried chicken, or sausage patties. Eggs prepared any style with toast, cornbread, hot cakes, or Belgian waffle complete an order. The display case features a variety of mouth-watering desserts.
She begins grinding a special blend of coffee beans onsite for the best cup of coffee in town. The new menu and decorations with more natural window light and comfortable booths provide a fresh atmosphere that has customers lining up for breakfast with one-hour wait times.
Ruby does not contest the changes, feeling that her daughter has a better understanding of the younger generation. To lend support, the matriarch helps out a few days a week during the lunch hour. Althea has entrusted a line cook with all the recipes, giving her time to greet and establish a rapport with guests.
Customer Reactions
It’s risky to alter a 12-year-old establishment so extensively. However, the streamlined menu reduces food inventory waste, permitting the use of the freshest ingredients. Althea stresses that the same legacy of good taste remains within each bite. To her delight, even long-time customers praise the new menu items.
A younger crowd who prefers breakfast on their way to work clear the booths by 9 o’clock. Their social media posts ignite a whole new group of regulars. Lunchtime is always packed, requiring Althea to impose a one-hour dining limit. Senior citizens and self-employed fill the restaurant for the remainder of the day.
The most frequent customer complaint is that it’s too difficult to decide which breakfast options to choose. They’re all so good that customers come day after day to try every combination imaginable.
An aroma of fresh coffee, pies, and colorful breakfasts wafts through the bustling dining room. While smiling and greeting customers, Althea’s beauty does not escape their notice. With no time for love, she becomes adept at tactfully declining flirtations. A mysteriously handsome guest, who calls himself Romeo, attempts to swoon her with a pickup line during his meal order.
“I have a taste for a sumptuous plate of Althea, after work to resuscitate my aching heart.”
“I’m sorry. She’s not on the menu. Please choose another protein.”
“You can’t keep denying my offers. What can I do to make you spend some time with me?”
“We spend time every day you visit the restaurant. Why don’t you try our peach cobbler? It’s me on a spoon,” an expression she often uses to promote her dessert.
With a profitable and busy restaurant, Althea begins planning to open a second location. Her banker is more than willing to provide the necessary funding, but she is uncertain where the new restaurant should be. A nearby inner-city location could shorten wait times for local customers. A distant location would expand the business with totally new visitors.
Her indecisiveness delays any decision for several months. Meanwhile, Martin, an attractive young man in her apartment building begins daily flirtations that keep her blushing.
She aims to leave the restaurant by 9 o’clock in the evening after experimenting with new recipes and prepping ingredients for pies to bake in the morning. Each evening she senses someone lurking in the parking lot.
Declining Business Health
In the small back office, while examining her profit-and-loss statements, Althea notices a trend after their first year at Heart-Stop Cafe. Although profitable, the volume of orders is down by 5 percent from the early months.
By continuing to engage customers in conversations, she recognizes that many long-time customers aren’t returning as often, if at all. Further inquiries at the tables reveal that the seniors are receiving unfavorable lab results during routine physical examinations. Youthful visitors are replacing the old-timers.
Some customers report problems with diabetes, an elevation in cholesterol, or heart-related incidents. Althea wonders if there’s a correlation with their consumption of her food.
Her tasty recipes make generous use of salt, sugar, and butter. Fried foods and sausages can elevate cholesterol. So she decides to have a lab provide nutritional information on the meals Heart-Stop Cafe serves. The results are shocking.
Within the sterile offsite facility, she learns that the average plate of food contains over 3,000 milligrams of sodium and 50 percent more than the daily requirement of fat that people should consume. She is literally selling heart-stopping food!
This revelation becomes more real when her mother phones with the news that a dear customer suffered a stroke following week-long tachycardia resulting from cholesterol elevation. Ruby visits 65-year-old William in the hospital with flashbacks of her husband’s demise.
For many weeks, tears of guilt soak the pillows of both Ruby and Althea. William’s recovery is slow but steady. Althea keeps in touch over the phone and assists him with rehabilitation after work, but this adverse reaction isn’t the only thing endangering the business.
Continued…
Return twice weekly for miniseries. Any relation to actual persons or events is coincidental. Login provides the most immersive experience. About 2500 total words. Audio may include sound effects that alter reading time. Cinematic materials are available with ClinicalNovellas Cinematic membership. Story includes one or more generative AI images to help readers visualize scenes.
