Meet HER: Kim Best

Her meet Kim Best

COFFEE AND DESSERT ANYONE?

BY CHRISTINA RUOTOLO

Meet Kim Best, a country girl who from Sumter, South Carolina, simply decided to turn her dreams into reality! She made the decision and in 2019 began the journey toward entrepreneurship and living her best life, and it all started with coffee and dessert.

Kim lives in Wake Forest and is the owner of Crema and Mr. Sticky’s, two quick-service delivery restaurants in Greenville and Raleigh. Crema, an upscale coffee cafe (serving signature custom-blended coffees, specialty drinks, soups, sandwiches and salads) is considered one of the most popular destinations for business professionals working in downtown Raleigh and the surrounding community. Mr. Sticky’s, a new tenant in the Greenville Mall, continues to be well received by the community largely due to the mouthwatering, made-from-scratch, baked-daily original cinnamon buns, sticky buns, and walnut sticky buns.

Best plans to build upon her career as a restaurateur by opening a food court in Union Station, an inter-modal transit station, this coming spring or summer.

For more than 20 years, Best, a graduate of the University of South Carolina, also served as the former executive director of a Raleigh nonprofit organization that provided services to youth and families in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia. She was instrumental in organizing the largest fatherhood conference in the nation, held from 2012 to 2019. Best volunteers her time and talent with several organizations and is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. She is the mother of Chanel Best, a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

March 2022

Her - Magazine 11