Dreams Come True: Redina Hembree of King’s Southern Delight

Some dreams sit with you a long time before you put them into action. For Redina Hembree and her mom Emma Jackson, it was a lifetime. Years ago, Jackson wanted to open a Southern restaurant, but it was a family friend who made the vision a reality (with Jackson’s blessing of course). In 2005, the friend was moving to Georgia and asked the mother-daughter duo to take over. When the team took the helm at King’s Southern Delight, they tweaked the menu and fixed the place up. “People started saying, ‘things are different around here’,” says Hembree. Three years on, Hembree wanted to take the business up a notch. She heard about WEDC and figured, “it couldn’t hurt to check it out.” She enrolled in the 15-Week Entrepreneurial Training Program and created a formal business plan. She worked one-on-one with WEDC counselors to identify growth opportunities. On a lark, Hembree decided to apply for the $5000 Women & Co. Microenterprise Boost Program® award in 2009. “I was just doing it for practice. I never thought we’d win,” she says. Win they did and Hembree put the money towards a new Garland G Series Restaurant Range to replace their old stove. The two have been cooking with gas ever since.