Ten years. That is how long Jackie Griffin has been feeding Knoxville with some of the best soul food in the South. For years, people have traveled from across the county and other cities to dine at her tables. Soon, they will travel downtown. From the small kitchen in her first restaurant on the east side of town to her current location at 1008 East Woodland, soon, Jackie’s Dream will open in the new Smokey’s Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee. As successful as she is, Jackie Griffin will tell you it has not been easy being an African American businesswoman.
Griffin sat down between lunch and dinner rush to share some of her magnificent story and the goals and dreams she has for the restaurant location, with the ribbon cutting set to open in July. She spoke of the dream to start her own restaurant after spending many years as a chef in other spaces. The path was easy. As she worked to build her business, she often felt undervalued and unappreciated, some did not take her seriously due to her gender, yet here she sits in her own space feeding hundreds every day from all social classes. Saying, “You have to go through to get to the sunshine.” Everyone eats at Jackie’s—church leaders, city and county government, the rich and the poor—she feeds them all. The phone rings consistently throughout the day as call-in orders come in and drivers keep a revolving door of pickups for delivery. The menu is full of choices with a daily special: plates loaded with succulent collard greens, hot chicken, macaroni and cheese; fried okra are placed before hungry patrons that Jackie calls family.
It is in the spirit of family that Jackie plans a few soft openings before the big ribbon cutting. Griffin plans to hold a night for her regulars who have been faithfully coming for ten years, even through the pandemic. She has a customer who brings his elderly father in every Sunday to dine with him in her space. There is the gentleman who eats his lunch there every day except Monday and Tuesday, because she is closed on those days. The tables are full as the server smiles and greets you when you come in and tells you to sit where you please. No reservations needed at Jackie’s. A humble woman who likes to give hugs to her customers, she says she has been working hard, blinders on, staying focused, but now she is starting to feel excited. Jackie has a message she wants to share: “I want everyone to come to the new space. I want you all to feel welcome. In here like always, you will be treated like family.”
The Smokey’s Stadium is being built in East Knoxville near the Old City. It will open in April of this year. The stadium will hold seven thousand people for baseball and soccer games and will have the capacity to hold 15,000 for concerts. Surrounding the stadium will be luxury condominiums and new apartment housing of over four hundred units, all within walking distance of Jackie’s Dream restaurant.
