It all started with cornbread dressing.
Betty Baskin spent most of her life as a hairstylist, working at Warren’s Original Hair Styles salon on Thomas Street in North Memphis. The proprietors of the adjacent cafe knew how good her dressing was, and they started asking her to make a pan every day or so for them to sell in their tiny restaurant. Before long, Betty’s dressing was the most popular item on the menu.
Fast forward 17 years, and Betty’s cornbread dressing is still one of the most popular items on a restaurant menu. But this time it is her family’s restaurant: Southern Hands Home Style Cooking.
Southern Hands is the Memphis-based restaurant chain she founded with her five children. Today, there are four Southern Hands restaurants, with two more set to open in the near future.
The restaurant serves Southern soul food made from scratch using Betty’s tried-and-true recipes. Dishes like Smothered Pork Chops, Fried Chicken, Blackened Catfish and creamy Mac-n-Cheese have customers coming back on a regular basis. The food reminds you of Sunday supper at your grandmother’s house.
The story of how this family built their business is one of struggle, determination, faith and love.
Cassandra Pye, one of Betty’s daughters, loved to cook just like her mother. A hairstylist as well, she saw how much everyone who came into the salon loved her mother’s cooking.
When the cafe space in the hair salon where she and her mother worked became available, she knew this was a fortuitous opportunity for the family to get into the restaurant business.
“I basically talked my mother and my siblings into it,” Cassandra said.
At the time, Cassandra and her brother Earl Baskin were the only two siblings who had any real restaurant experience. Her brother Daryl Green and her sisters Rocki Adams and Nina Brown weren’t so sure about this new venture.
But the family rallied together and opened their first restaurant in September 2002.
The first day they had only three orders. “We made only $17,” Cassandra recalled.
“We were clueless,” she added. “We didn’t realize how much it took to start a business.”
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The family soon realized that they needed to spread the word about their tiny new restaurant tucked away in a hair salon. The brothers started handing out flyers offering free delivery. Soon the business began to grow.
“People were telling us that this was the best food they had eaten,” Cassandra said. “But soon we quickly reached a point where our kitchen was too small for us to continue to grow the business.”
At the time they were starting their new business, money was tight. All five siblings, plus their families, and their mother moved in together to make ends meet.
A friend of Betty’s offered the family a restaurant space he owned on Democrat Road. The family, eager to grow their business, jumped at the opportunity.
Then things quickly turned from bad to worse. The family was hit with an unexpected tax bill that left them unable to pay their rent.
“The day before we were set to open, we were evicted from our home,” Cassandra said. “Luckily, the new restaurant had a banquet space in the back. We all moved in there together and just made it work in order to get the restaurant open.”
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Despite the obstacles, the restaurant still opened as planned in April 2004.
As it turned out, the move was not good for the fledgling business.
In November 2005, Southern Hands closed its doors. For the next two years, it looked like the dream of a restaurant was history for this close-knit family.
Two years after closing, Betty approached her children about trying one more time.
“The Lord told me that we have to do this. I have faith and I believe it,” Cassandra remembered her mother saying.
Cassandra added, “She didn’t have a doubt in her mind this is what we were meant to do. She told us that, ‘You don’t have to have faith in the Lord. Have faith in me, and I will have enough faith in the Lord for all of us.’ ”
Her mother’s persuasion worked, and the family opened its third restaurant in Collierville in 2008.
The difference this time was that they chose a restaurant location that had visibility, a key component that the original two locations lacked.
“We knew we would be OK when the same people that came for lunch came back for dinner on the same day,” Cassandra said.
Over the next few years, the family opened and closed several locations, each time learning from past mistakes.
They now approach expansion with a “hard-earned” business savvy.
In 2015, they opened a smaller 1,500-square-foot location in Raleigh in a former soul food restaurant.
It was a success from the beginning. “When we opened, we sent my brother-in-law out to hand out flyers. We had to call him back to the restaurant we were so busy,” Cassandra said.
The family had found the model that worked for expansion.
In early 2017, they opened a similar-sized location in Olive Branch. In February 2019, a location in the University of Tennessee Health Science Center food court opened.
A fifth location is slated to open mid-October at 1811 Kirby Parkway; it, too, is about 1,500 square feet. A sixth location will open at the corner of Millbranch and Holmes Road in 2020.
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In May 2018, Betty died unexpectedly at the age of 70.
The siblings knew they had to continue the dream their mother had started. Their mother always said they were stronger when they were all together. Today, they may each be in separate restaurants, but they are still as close as ever.
“I think she would say that we are doing good, but to her we are moving too slow,” Rocki said about the company’s expansion.
“Our mother would say, ‘I want one in every city,’ ” Cassandra said.
Rocki jokingly added, “Well, at this point, Cassandra has us opening one on every block!”
“Well, you have to reach for the stars,” Cassandra said.
Jennifer Chandler is the Food & Dining reporter at The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached at [email protected], and you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @cookwjennifer.
Southern Hands Home Style Cooking
Where: 6025 Winchester; 3824 Austin Peay; 920 Madison Ave.; 7119 Hacks Cross Road, Olive Branch; 1811 Kirby Parkway (opening in October); a location at Millbranch and Holmes Road is expected to open in 2020