Justin Fox Burks
Peggy Brown
If you’re a fan of Peggy Brown’s meatloaf, greens, sweet potato pie, and other dishes at her restaurant, Peggy’s Healthy Home Cooking, soon you’ll be able to order her food online.
“Peggy’s Pies and More” is slated to debut in August, says Brown.
She decided to open an online business because people who ate at the restaurant called and asked how they could get a pan of her greens or other soul food items. She told them she couldn’t send her food through the mail. Someone then told her, “Why don’t you start your own online store?”
Brown already had been sending her food home with people. A woman in San Francisco “brings her cooler,” Brown says. “She’ll buy eight plates to take home with her.”
And, she says, “Another man in Georgia, I’ll prepare food and put it in half size pans. I’ll do greens, yams, lima beans, black-eyed peas, meatloaf, salisbury steak. I’ll freeze it and he comes with his cooler and picks it up and goes back to Georgia.”
So, Brown decided to open her own online store. She will put 10 items online. Customers can order the food, which will be frozen, through PayPal. The food will be shipped overnight by FedEx.
Peggy’s Pies and More is at 634 Bellevue at Lamar, which is near her restaurant at 326 South Cleveland, “I’m setting it up now even as we speak. Refrigerator, freezers, and all the stuff we have to have.
“We’re getting with different companies to find out the best containers to ship it in so when you put it in the microwave you get a fresh cooked pot of greens,” she says.
She hasn’t figured out prices for everything, but the pies “will probably bring $19.95.”
Shipping will be included in the price of the pies and other dishes.
They haven’t yet set up a web address, but the site will feature photos of all her cuisine.
Note: the pies, for now, will strictly be Brown’s sweet potato pies, but not just her regular sweet potato pie. You also can order her pineapple sweet potato pie, coconut sweet potato pie, and rum raisin sweet potato pie. “And we’re doing what you call ‘praline and pecan sweet potato pie,’” Brown notes.