“I grew up in Birmingham and went to Auburn. During the summers, I went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and cooked in kitchens for summer jobs. I liked it and started working at a nice restaurant in Auburn. I opened a restaurant that broke even and someone bought it. I moved back to Birmingham and took a job with a construction company doing estimates and project management. I wanted to go back to Wyoming, but I had to marry a southern girl first. I met my wife and took her out there. She fell in love with the mountains and we stayed. I worked for a food distributor and the smells of a walk-in cooler made me miss restaurants so I started working with the best chef around. It was baptism by fire, but I loved it. Jackson Hole became unaffordable and we planned to move to Oxford, Mississippi, where my wife is from, and open a restaurant. We were on the way to cross-country skiing and she asked what we were going to do outside in Oxford. We realized we couldn’t move there. We looked at places out west and Fairhope because there are a lot of things on the coast to do. I had been to Fairhope once and Molly had driven through it once. We rented a house off Fairhope Avenue and stayed for a week with our one-year-old. We loved it and the kindness of people.

We drove across the country, and moved to Fairhope not knowing much about it. We have been here for four years, and opened Ox three years ago. I am a planner. I made my wife taste menu items long before I had a restaurant. I had the budget and the name. It was going to be Ox Kitchen in Oxford. The name would mean oxbow lakes if we stayed out west. The location changed to Fairhope, but we kept the name. The hardest part of starting a restaurant is the risk. There is no fall back plan if the economy goes down. Or if you do all of the work, get everything up to code, and no one walks in. We didn’t know anyone in Fairhope, so we hit it hard on social media and took care of our customers. It worked.

Coronavirus is unchartered territory. There is a huge responsibility for serving food. Our first responsibility is to be safe. That means extra hours a day cleaning. I get here earlier and stay later to clean. My employees take their temperature every morning and text it to me. I have a guy come in with a super sprayer and clean the kitchen even better than I can. We are doing okay. I haven’t had to let anyone go and they are getting enough hours. They have the best attitudes. The government small business loans will help people survive.

This is a hard time. My children are five and two. My wife is a labor and delivery nurse and is in the hospital every day. She is also seven months pregnant. And we have a restaurant.
Fairhope is a wonderful community that is helping us get through this. We are going to be okay. Some people won’t make it and that hurts. People are smart and creative and we are going to figure this out. We will come back better, but it will be a crawl to get there.”

(I am now doing Soul-cial distancing interviews by phone. If know someone I should interview, send me an message or email. [email protected])