We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Aretha And Mozell Martin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Aretha and Mozell, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

My husband (Mo), myself (Aretha) lived in a small town called Whites Creek, Tn fairly close to Joelton which is also a small town. There were not a ton of food options in the area without going about 15-20 minutes. I have always dreamed of having a restaurant one day. We originally had the opportunity to start a food truck so in Jan of 2019 we did just that. put our names that we wanted the business to be in a hat, Mo myself and out kids each picked a name out of the hate and came up with Martin’s Chicken and Waffles. At that time Chicken and Waffles wasn’t really a thing here in TN. We put a unique spin on it for events, we did Chicken in a Waffle cone served with either our in house made cheese sauce or warm syrup, People ate it up at events simply because it was something they have never heard of. When we were not at an even we would be stationed at 31w liquors on Dickerson Road in Goodlettsville Mo would run the food truck full time, all while keeping up with his clients in graphic design and videography and I worked in healthcare full time, when I got off I would come work the food truck so Mo could meet with his clients..

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We feel we bring a something unique to home cooked meals. We are Martin’s Chicken and Waffles , so that is what we are known for, but we also bring some of our family recipes to the to table, such as my MIL’s banana pudding, my aunts baked beans recipe just to name a couple. One thing we bank on is our customer service, we know just from eating out ourselves, that it is not feasible to please every individual when it comes to food.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

In November of 2019 we decided to expand into Rivergate Mall, we both grew up going there as kids shopping with family and friends. Moving into the mall We saw it as an opportunity for our small business to tract more business within in the mall itself, we believe we did so , until March of 2020 and we had to close down for 2.5 half months during the pandemic. With closing and still have to be responsible for our personal bills as well has business bills put us in a bit of a hardship. With being in a hardship we decided felt we needed to leave the mall and get stand alone building so that we could have more say so on what we could could not do. With that in Jan 2021 we opened in Gallatin, Tn with the help with some of our customers basically protesting outside of our stand in the mall. March of 2021 we made the very hard decision to close the mall location simply due to staffing, we were not able to keep staff at both location which caused one of us to have to run back and forth to try to cover both locations. Closing the mall location left us with a lot of unexpected debt, remember we had already accumulated debt from being closed for 2.5 months due to the pandemic.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

We funded Martin’s Chicken and Waffles by using our 401k savings. That was all of the money we had at the time, But we took that opportunity believe in ourselves and our product.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://martinschickenandwaffles.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martins_chicken_and_waffles?igsh=eWZoM3h0OXN5b3k2&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/martinschickenandwaffles?mibextid=wwXIfr