For more than 25 years now, Shirley Coleman and her food truck – Ms. Shirley’s – have been a fixture at Gateway Shopping Center in East Columbus, serving up the kind of comfort food Coleman, 61, has been cooking since she was a little girl. The menu features a wide variety of tacos and hot dogs/polish sausages and rib tips and fixings (baked beans, potato salad).
What you won’t find on the menu, however, are candy bars, although they played an important role in the start of her business.
In 1994, Coleman was a single mom of two boys, ages 12 and 9. Although she had a job working at Red Kap, an apparel factory, she was getting by, but never getting ahead.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Coleman recalled. “Then, the Lord spoke to me. I had $10 and the Lord told me to invest that $10 in a business. All I could think of was selling candy bars.”
Coleman bought $10 worth of candy bars and got permission from her employer to sell them to co-workers.
“That’s really where it all started, selling those candy bars.”
For two years, Coleman scrimped and saved, re-investing her candy bar money into more candy bars, and more profits.
“It took probably about two years, but I was able to get the food truck,” she said. “I started out selling out of my food truck in the afternoons after work and on my days off. It wasn’t until the factory closed in 2003 that I started running the food truck full-time. I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Ms. Shirley’s is open from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. What was first something of a novelty – food trucks were uncommon in the late 1990s — has developed a large and loyal customer base.
“It hasn’t been easy, but the Lord was with me,” Coleman said.
Two years ago, Coleman, an ordained minister, said she heard another calling.
“The Lord put it on my heart to go out in the community and feed the poor,” she said. “At first, I did it on my own, driving around the neighborhoods and feeding children who would come by. I loved it. I thought, “This is one day that I know these children aren’t going to bed hungry.”
Every Monday, Coleman ventured out into the poor neighborhoods, feeding kids and elderly people wherever she encountered them out of her own pocket. To provide more meals for more people, she established Four Winds Outreach Ministry.
“People began hearing about what I was doing and started donating to the ministry,” Coleman said. “It’s really taken off this year. From Jan. 9 until Aug. 9, we’ve provided 4,000 meals. The Lord has really blessed this and people have really stepped up with donations.”
Each month, there are two sandwich days, a nachos day and a meal day.
“For the past two weeks, the Columbus Housing Authority has allowed us to set up in their parking lot, so people can walk to get food,” Coleman said. “For some of the elderly people who can’t get around, we’ll deliver to their door.”
Coleman said those Mondays are a highlight of her week.
“I love it so much,” she said. “I’m going to continue doing this as long as the Lord allows me to. It’s been a blessing.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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