In a world where change is the only constant, it feels as if time has stopped at Sally Bell’s Kitchen. Its pecan-topped cheese wafers, waxed-paper-wrapped deviled eggs and lovingly iced upside-down cupcakes taste the same as they did when the restaurant was founded in the 1920s. They are experts in simple joys — the proof is in the sweet-pickle-adorned potato salad that has been gracing holiday tables for generations.
The iconic Richmond restaurant celebrates its centennial in 2024, the spirit and Southern delicacies of founder and namesake Sarah “Sallie” Cabell Jones living on through time-honored recipes, safeguarded in a little green notebook that’s still referenced today.
Sally Bell’s is a part of Richmond history, a nostalgic tradition that has been embedded in the city’s culture for 100 years. Generations have grown up going to the standby, first taken there by their grandparents and now bringing their own children. Employees have been known to stick around for 50 or 60 years, and the James Beard Award-winning business has never left the family. Although there have been a few changes, including moving locations and discovering a speedier way to wrap deviled eggs, not much is new — and that’s part of its lasting charm.
(From left) Sally Bell’s team members Martha Jones, Sarah Byrne Jones, Scott Jones, Billy Thompson and Shannon Childers
A Family Story
“I’m kind of in my second calling,” says Scott Jones, 71, with an easy smile as he sits in a booth at the Broad Street eatery. Formerly in industrial sales, Jones and his wife, Martha, Sally Bell’s current matriarch, bought the business in 2015. But that’s not to say they’re new around there. Pointing to a framed picture on the wall of the restaurant, Scott says, “That’s my great-aunt on my father’s side, ‘Sallie’ Cabell Jones.”
While Scott has early memories of being summoned into the kitchen to peel potatoes around the holidays or living above the restaurant in college, Martha married into the business. She recently retired, but Scott says, “Martha was the one who ran this place for 35, 36 years.”
Before them, Scott’s parents, Hunter and Marcyne “Cene” Jones, owned Sally Bell’s for over 50 years. Many family members may not have aspired to make a life in the restaurant industry, but the decades they’ve dedicated to growing and preserving Sally Bell’s proves it’s more than chance.
The institution was originally started by Sarah “Sallie” Cabell Jones, whom the family called Cabell. One of seven siblings, she never married or had children. Instead, she had her family and her business. “I guess this was her life,” Scott says.
A Revolutionary Idea
An entrepreneur with a knack for numbers, Jones met her future business partner Elizabeth Lee Milton, a talented baker, at the Richmond Exchange for Woman’s Work. It was a private organization where women could sell homemade goods to earn money. The duo combined their names and debuted Sarah Lee’s Kitchen in 1924 in a brick building at 701 W. Grace St.
The original recipe book for Sally Bell’s
The duo’s goal was to make simple food from scratch — including mayonnaise and the signature salad dressing that spikes their deviled eggs and potato salad — and sell their goods wholesale to grocers and restaurants. Women had been granted the right to vote just four years prior, so the idea was revolutionary. “Here’s a lady in her late 20s, early 30s, you know, women’s suffrage was going on, and they started this business,” Scott says.
Five years later, Milton moved to New York, and Jones became the sole proprietor. She then switched to retail offerings and introduced a takeout counter, hung a sign in front of the shop with the logo of a woman holding a basket, and had the name copyrighted and patented.
She sold a range of baked goods: sweet potato and mincemeat pies, beaten biscuits, tarts, cookies, cakes and more. But Sarah Lee’s Kitchen quickly became known for its boxed lunches, the unofficial Richmond Happy Meal. Lined with checkerboard-patterned waxed paper, the bundle of comfort is packed with five items: a sandwich, such as the famed Smithfield ham, pimento cheese or chicken salad served on a roll; a cup of potato or macaroni salad (introduced in the 1960s); a pecan-topped cheese wafer; a deviled egg and an icing-spackled upside-down cupcake. “We still use the boxed lunch,” Scott says. “I enlarged it by a half an inch here, quarter-inch there, just to make things fit a little better, but a lot of what Cabell did, we still do today.”
Besides Sarah Lee’s moving across the street to 708 W. Grace St. in 1951, not much changed until 1959, when Jones was issued a cease-and-desist order by a national pie company hoping to advertise in the Virginia market. Its name was Sara Lee’s.
Scott remembers four New York attorneys pulling up to his Ashland home in a “fancy” black car to negotiate with his father. “My dad said, ‘I gave them an offer, and I wanted it to be enough to take care of Cabell the rest of her life,’ and he said, ‘I laid awake that night thinking I asked for too much, and they came back the next day and accepted it,’ then he said, ‘Maybe I didn’t ask enough.’”
The business was reintroduced as Sally Bell’s Kitchen with an advertisement that read, “Same products, same location, same personnel.”
Sally Bell’s signature upside-down cupcakes come in flavors such as chocolate devil’s-food cake, strawberry or lemon with yellow batter.
Sally’s Stalwarts
“Same personnel” would turn out to be a key to Sally Bell’s success. Many employees have stayed there for decades.
Most have also been women. Working there granted flexible schedules and, for some, the ability to balance a career with motherhood. Much like the Richmond Exchange for Woman’s Work that helped kick-start its founding, Sally Bell’s has been a place where women could embrace their independence, make money and have a sense of purpose.
A shadow box at Sally Bell’s showcases mementos.
Sarah Jones Byrne, Scott’s older sister, recalls working the register at Sally Bell’s as early as 13. She was named for her great-aunt, whom she describes as hardworking, humble and highly respected. After attending college in North Carolina and living there for eight years, she moved back to Richmond and returned to Sally Bell’s. Their other sister, Sandra, worked there, too.
“I would say we were very much like a big family,” she says. “We cared about each other, and you know, we were there for each other; we needed to be. If someone was supposed to come to work and didn’t call, we were looking for them. We had a lot of single ladies working here … and they enjoyed their jobs and felt good about what they were doing. That’s an important thing in life.”
Many employees spent their entire careers at Sally Bell’s. In a 1990s story from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, it was reported that 19 of 22 employees were over 50. Longtime Richmonders may remember Marie Morris, Anne Mulfinger, Mary Newcomb and Minnie Walker. Dorothy Daniels and Lucille Zimmerman, who each worked at Sally Bell’s into their 80s, and Scott says he still ices cupcakes the way Sarah Henderson did.
Estelle Curtis, who started at Sally Bell’s in 1926, is a legend, however — a booth, second back from the register, is dedicated to her. Curtis’ daughter, Dazarie Thompson, worked there as well, and her grandson, Billy Thompson, 55, has been clocking in for nearly 30 years.
“My grandma is right here,” Thompson says, pointing to an old newspaper clipping of Curtis on the wall. “I don’t have a picture of my mother up here, but my mother’s been here 40, and I’ve been here 29. Might be this year that I hit 30. My grandma started when she was a teenager. She did her 60 years. They’ve been real good to my family, they really have.”
Thompson took a step back during the COVID-19 pandemic, but he returned this March. “I missed the place. I said, ‘Yeah, I might as well go back to what I like doing,’” he says. “It’s been a long road, but I never had that feeling when you wake up in the morning like, ‘Oh, God, I got to go in that place.’ Never had that feeling.”
Sally Bell’s signature cheese wafers
A Bittersweet Move
After suffering a stroke that left her bedridden in the late 1960s, Jones sold the shop to her nephew, Hunter, and his wife, Cene. In 1983, Jones died at the age of 92.
Sarah says of her mother stepping in, “Since she was working there and Cabell was teaching her what to do, I felt like it was a natural transition.”
“If she was a penny off, she would find that penny,” Scott adds of Cene. “She’d be ashamed of me now. I’m like, five bucks, we’re good, that’s a rounding error,” he adds with a chuckle.
In the mid-1980s, Cene began to step back from Sally Bell’s while retaining ownership; her daughter-in-law Martha took over the day-to-day operations. In 2014, Cene sat the family down after church and told them she wanted to sell the business and the building. Scott knew what Sally Bell’s meant to his wife. “I said, ‘Well, what about Martha? She’s put 35 years in there. Do we really want to close it?’ I thought there was a lot of value to it, I thought it had a lot of potential.”
In 2014, the family sold the building to Virginia Commonwealth University, and Scott and Martha purchased Sally Bell’s from Cene. In 2016, they bid farewell to Sally Bell’s longtime space on Grace Street, closing for a week before reopening at 2337 W. Broad St.
A Living Legacy
Sally Bell’s may have a different address and a newer crew of workers, but the recipes, relics and checkered floor endure. The original Hobart mixer sits inside, the walls adorned with recipes, photos and a century’s worth of memories.
CD Day making Sally Bell’s famous potato salad
There is, however, a slight feeling of melancholy that comes with reaching such a milestone. Many of the team members who paved the way have died, and Scott now runs with a squad of seven — the majority much younger than their predecessors, a casualty of life and the pandemic. “I’ve got really good staff right now,” Scott says. “They kind of embrace the personality and history of the place.”
General Manager Shannon Childers started working at Sally Bell’s four years ago after seeing an ad on social media. Born and raised in Ashland, she previously worked in emergency medical services. On one of her first days, she realized the potato salad her grandparents served every year during the holidays was from her new job. “I didn’t really know it was Sally Bell’s until I got here and tasted it,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s like a childhood nostalgia.’ It was pretty special.”
Every morning, Childers arrives around 6:30 a.m. and preps the to-do lists for the crew. They average 50 to 150 preorders a day. Deviled eggs take two to three hours to make, and cheese wafers remain a lengthy, multistep process. When everybody else arrives, they know their duties and and get into a flow.
Childers says she’s happy at Sally Bell’s and respects the legacy. “It’s very special, especially with it being so many women that kind of paved the way here. I feel proud, but also, because we are such a tightknit family, it’s kind of cool to carry on the traditions and recipes — making recipes that are 100 years old,” she says.
In the past decade, Sally Bell’s has returned to its roots, selling wholesale to stores such as Tom Leonard’s, Libbie Market and Good Foods Grocery and expanding product sales into Charleston, South Carolina.
In 2015, the restaurant received The James Beard Foundation America’s Classic award, given “to restaurants with timeless appeal, each beloved in its region for quality food that reflects the character of its community.” It was the first restaurant in Virginia to receive the honor.
“It’s an incredible story and comforting to know that things can stay the same,” Scott says. “A lot of people have said that.”
“Every transition has been based on what Cabell started and wanting to continue what she started, and I think that’s been quite successful, and it’s because of her vision of having good food, tasty food,” Sarah says.
Both Scott and Sarah have granddaughters named for their great-aunt.
In the coming months, Sally Bell’s plans to reintroduce desserts and menu items that have faded with time, including cinnamon buns, cookies and muffins. Scott says the specials are an ode to their founder, a way to commemorate the centennial and a thank-you to loyal patrons.
“I’ve been lucky,” Scott says. “I think people were happy that we didn’t close. We’ve had so many people tell us, ‘We’re glad you’re here.’ You can’t pitch a perfect frame every time, but I think our quality and consistency speak for themselves.”
