Meet Shakelia Dixon | CEO/Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Shakelia Dixon and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Shakelia, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
Risk taking is very risky! If you never take a risk at anything then you will never know if you will successfully succeed or not! I see it like this, if you fail at taking a risk, get back up, dust yourself off and try again.! As far as I am concerned, I took a risk in investing in the start up of my food business during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. I knew that I was taking a risk when so many restaurants were going out of business and the food industry was scarce because there was less indoor dining for safety precautions. After seeing all of what was becoming a new norm, I felt it was my time to shine and to finally do something that I loved while I was furloughed from my full time job. I was scared but I prayed about it and asked God to guide me in taking this risk. So I took a leap of faith to do what I am very passionate about and that is cooking! If I never would have risked my time, finance, and effort for this career that I have long dreamed about during a catastrophic time, then I wouldn’t be at this point I am now.

What should our readers know about your business?

Kela’s Soulfood N’ Grill Kitchen is a mobile home-cook food trailer that serves a wide age group with Soulfood, BBQ, and grill items, catering also to vegans and vegetarians. It is a mixture of Louisiana cooking and Texas cooking being that I am from Louisiana and my husband is from Texas. Our slogans are: “A taste of Louisiana with a taste of Texas” and “Food for da Soul!” We are open to set up for concessions, events and for catering.

We have been asked what sets us apart from other bbq or Soul-food food trucks and the answer to that is that we offer a vast arrangement of dishes on our trailer that is solely home cooking and we switch up our menu daily. Many food trucks offer only a very minimum amount of food items on their menu, not offering a vast amount of food items or dishes. We know it may be overwhelming to some but we have many customers that enjoy being able to get dishes that they can order as if they were at a restaurant.

We got started back in the midst of the pandemic which was May 2020. Before we got our food trailer my husband purchased a big homemade smoker trailer which he stated that it was a part of Kela’s Kitchen that he was investing in. I first started planning how I could make this business succeed. I gave it a try by introducing a few of our food items that would stand out on our menu that we knew customers were looking for at the time. We started out with our brisket, ribs, pull pork, loaded potatoes, our queso loaded nachos, potato salad, BBQ baked beans, cilantro lime chicken, traditional and mushroom meatloaf, home cook Southern collard greens, hot water cornbread, Mac n cheese, homemade red velvet cake, homemade peach cobbler and pecan candy. It was selling well, but I knew with my name that this wasn’t all I had to offer. I ask myself  “what experience do I really want people to get from my kitchen?” That’s when I knew I didn’t want to limit what I had to offer because I want customers to get an experience of what Kela’s Kitchen was all about, as if they were in a restaurant, and that was authentic home cooked soul-food made with love. My future goal is to open a restaurant, so I expanded the menu. I expanded the menu to give customers more soul-food items and less BBQ items. We started offering plain and soul-food stuffed turkey legs, my signature smoked meatloaf, homemade banana or bananaless pudding n’ a jar, and my signature Louisiana bourbon custard bread pudding plus more that gives customers a reason to come back to check out other options.

This journey is not easy, there are some ups and downs! I have had some learning experiences during the course of growing this business and one thing in particular is that with the amount of food that we have to offer it can get overwhelming sometimes when it is really busy. When it comes to being asked to take on an event with there being more than 250 people and being asked to do catering at the same event from off the trailer being the only trailer it’s a chaos. A lesson learned on this journey is don’t take on more than you can handle no matter how good the deal may be if you do not have the sufficient amount of help. One thing that this lesson did not do is make me give up and say that I can’t do this, because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I am going to keep pushing doing the things I love, which is to cook and make my customers’ souls happy. So now when we do events we limit our menu to a few items only giving mainly our signature dishes and some concession food item choices.

This is a transition for me from being in the medical field as a certified surgical technologist to now a business owner of a food truck. I personally am so thankful that I can use this craft outside of the many other crafts that I have. This craft allows me to be overjoyed that I can touch people’s taste buds and their hearts with my cooking. I thank God for giving me guidance on this journey to feed many souls that want to be fed with some good ole soul-food.

I say this to my future customers “We have food for da soul, come get a taste!”

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I am a woman who likes to have a good time because life is too short.

If my best friend was to come into town I will have to surely show her a good time. Friday I would take her out to dinner at Fixture’s in Fort Worth which I have had a great dining experience with. After dinner we will go downtown Fort Worth so she can sightsee and then go to Hyena Comedy Club to catch some great comedy acts. The next day I will take her to Texas Live in Arlington so she can get a great view of the Cowboys Stadium and to also enjoy food, music, and a few drinks. On the last day, which will be Sunday, I will take her to church with me to worship and give God praise for all that He has done. Then after church we will go to brunch downtown Dallas at Saint Ann’s Restaurant and Bar before she leaves, giving her a little experience of DFW.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?

Hats off to my mother, Ruth DeBurr who is such an amazing cook, who kept me in the kitchen teaching me how to whip up some good ole country dishes when I was a young child. It did not only start there but also back to my maternal grandmother Arbetta Sims who was a great country cook, who I miss dearly. She is the woman who taught my mother and this is where she got all her skills from in the kitchen! My grandmother, who I called Big momma, would say “girl you better get in this kitchen and learn how to cook! No man wants to marry a woman who doesn’t know how to cook.”  To be honest that is really what inspired me more to get in the kitchen to learn. Truth be told it runs in our family! There are many great cooks to thank in my family from aunts, uncles, and cousins for sharing recipes and learning from them.

I have to give a big shout out also to my husband Lee Dixon of almost 15 years for motivating me to go after my dream and goal. He first got to see my skills in the kitchen when we were dating and I think that is why he wanted to hurry up and marry me… lol! He’s been a great support system in this business because anytime I would ask him where he wanted to go out to eat, he would say I want food from Kela Kitchen, “Kela” is my family nickname and this is part of how I came up with the name for my business. My husband is also the Co-owner in this business. He is the BBQ king and I’m the Soul-food queen. With that being said this is how the origination of the business name became Kela’s Soulfood N’ Grill Kitchen. He wanted the spotlight to be only on my name because it’s my passion and not his, he just wants to support all my endeavors. I want to take this time now to publicly thank him for believing in me and helping me through every step of making this business succeed this far. Everything that he has done and what he is doing now is never unnoticed.

The next shoutout I’m giving is to my 3 children. My kids have really encouraged me before the process, during the process and after the process of getting my business running. My oldest son Davin would tell me mom just do it, you got this, what is it to think about! My daughter Chyna would tell me mom you know you can cook and we love your food as well as everybody else that has had your cooking! She would say stop playing and go on, prepare to give others a taste! Last but not least, my youngest son Bridarrius (who goes by “Bee”), I call him my right hand man. Any business that I have tried to pursue and succeed in he has always been the child that steps in and does whatever it takes to help me out. In this business he works for me and he is my top chef. He knows all the ins and outs of the business and my dishes.

Each one of my kids hold a special place in my heart and the gratitude I leave each one is to thank them for believing in me, pushing me, and loving me as their mother. They are my why and this is why I am at this point of my life.

Shoutout to Aisha DeBurr for my logo! Producing my vision in the characteristic form of my childhood dream!

Instagram: Kelas_Soulfoodngrill

Twitter: Kelas_SnG_Kit

Facebook: Kelassoulfoodngrillkitchen

Youtube: KelaKitchen

Image Credits
People Pictures Sinsational Memories Designz Photography