Creator Spotlight: Aliah Jefferson, Zaddy's

Hometown: Atlantic City, NJ. I originally moved here to Atlanta in 2000 for school and returned in 2009 to live with my dad who had moved here for the Olympics. My dad is also in the hospitality business, and he just celebrated 25 years of working at the Ritz Carlton in Buckhead. After I moved down here, I didn’t stay permanently the first time around. I moved back to NJ for a while and took care of my grandmother when she fell ill until she passed, and then I moved back to Atlanta in 2008 for good. I was so glad I was able to be with her during this time, because she was like my best friend.

What’s your origin story? I worked in retail for almost 20 years, and I always ended up on the management side, so you could say I had a leadership bug. I also cooked but it wasn’t professionally. I just realized that it was a gift I had. Even when I was a teenager, when I would be hanging out with my friends at their house and their parents weren’t home, I’d go into the fridge, see what they had, and make something for everyone. My friends were always amazed that I would just walk in their house and cook up some pancakes, baked apples, or fried potatoes. I was cooking like someone’s grandma because I was cooking for myself while my mom was at work in the casino. I just learned by watching food shows and travel shows, and I still do this to this day.

After my grandmother passed, I knew I was ready to move away from New Jersey again. I lived in Lancaster, PA and Philadelphia working retail but hadn’t found the right place yet. I was intrigued by either DC or Atlanta, so I chose Atlanta because I already knew it a bit and my dad was there.

When did you make the switch from retail to food? In 2018, I decided to do food full time. I started catering dinner parties and meal prep service. I was doing a couple of different things and knew this was the direction I wanted to go. I decided to just leave retail all together and focus on the clients I had with my catering business and my meal prep business. I wanted to build on that, so as a birthday present to myself, I left retail permanently on my birthday in 2018. From there I connected with a friend who works in Food TV with America’s Test Kitchen. I told her what I was doing, and she invited me to come stay with her in Boston watching her on the set taping for PBS. This experience led me to some other great opportunities that prepared me for what would become Zaddy’s. I helped a friend open his restaurant here in Atlanta, and I worked for some time as a line cook at Rock South where Virgil Harper was a part owner. I also worked the food truck on site at Tyler Perry’s studio. I kind of took in all these different food experiences, took a business class to gain that knowledge, and then started making, selling and delivering sandwiches during the pandemic. It was so busy, I had to limit my delivery days to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday so that the bakery I bought my bread from had enough time to fill my bread orders.

How did Zaddy’s come to be? The sandwich delivery service is what became Zaddy’s. In July of 2021, I was out with friends and we walked into Politan Row after attending an event at the museum. I happened to run into one of my regular sandwich customers who said, “You know, your sandwiches would do so well in here.” At first, I didn’t give it another thought because I was there as a customer, but then she offered to introduce me to the General Manager at the time, and this tall beautiful black woman comes up to me - I mention this specifically because we don’t always see ourselves in spaces like this - and I just thought this was so great. She talked to me about what concepts they were looking for to fill the space, specifically a deli concept. Then we talked about the process of onboarding with my concept and cost, etc. I knew I could swing it. I’d be pretty much tapped out, but I had wanted to do something, and here that something is, so I knew I was going to figure it out. That was July 2, 2021 and when my best friend and I were driving back to my house, I started bawling. I can barely see where I’m driving. She asked me why I was crying and I said, “Because I gotta do it, and it’s going to be a lot of work, but there’s no way I’m going to say no.”

How did you land on the name Zaddy’s? I only sold one size sandwich. Big. If you want something big, I’ve got something big. I was brainstorming and you know you have these places like Big Daddy’s and Sugar Daddy’s, and Papa John’s. I guess I’m a little bit of a tomboy. A girly girl but a tomboy sometimes because I’m big and bold and loud and all of those things too. I wanted my brand to kind of take on a persona a bit. I liked the sound of Zaddy, which was a current pop culture buzz word, so I looked to Urban Dictionary to find out what it meant. Urban Dictionary defines Zaddy as “looks good and is good to you” This perfectly describes what Zaddy’s is about. We’re serving up food that looks good and is good to you.