Judy Adams: The Woman Who Says Yes

Judy Adams of Catering to You: The Woman Who Says Yes By JENNY BOULDEN // Photos By JAMIE LEE

Judy Adams does too much. It’s what everyone says. That she’s endlessly giving as a person, cook, business owner and volunteer. That she’s capable and driven to get the details just right. That she’s got a giant heart. That she just doesn’t stop or sometimes even slow down.

But aside from close friends, few really want her to change. She’s too good at it all, and makes it look easy.

The exceptions are Adams herself and husband, Don. After more than 40 years building Catering to You in Central Arkansas, Judy Adams the entrepreneur is nearing retirement with a hopeful eye.

“I sometimes feel like I’m running in 10 different directions,” she said. “Lately I have worked seven days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. … And I am ready to slow down. I run three different parts of the business. It’s a lot.”

Adams is referring to Catering to You’s gift shop, take-and-bake business (which saved the company during the pandemic) and the catering work that’s established the company as one of the most respected in Little Rock. It’s a legacy Adams hopes will outlast her, if she can find the perfect buyer.

GRANDMA’S GIRL

Little Rock is Adams’ community, through and through. She grew up as Judy Lee in a house on Beech Street (now renamed Beechwood Street) that her grandfather had once built. Her father owned Lee Grocery in Hillcrest, and her grandparents lived next door. Their proximity had a profound effect on her life.

That’s because her grandmother, Agnes Lee, loved to cook and entertain and delighted in throwing big parties, and Adams grew up right by Grandma Lee’s imaginative side. For instance, when she’d get a new doll for Christmas, her grandma got creative, Adams said. She would say, ‘I think that doll needs some clothes. We need to throw a baby shower for that baby doll!’

“We would send out invitations and cook the food. I would go downtown to the dime stores and register things that I wanted for my baby dolls just like people do for real babies. We’d eat lunch, then we’d go over where the baby clothes were, and they’d say, ‘Are you here to buy something for the doll shower?’ And I’d say, ‘No, the doll shower is for my baby!’ [Grandma Lee] loved any reason to throw a party.”

Her grandmother also taught Adams about appreciating each moment. One day, she accompanied her grandma to an eye appointment, where Agnes learned she had macular degeneration, then untreatable, and would go blind. That day, after their downtown lunch, they did something a little different.

“There was a peanut man on the east side of Main Street,” Adams said. “He was dressed

Exterior of Catering to You, located at 8121 Cantrell Road in Little Rock. Catering to You became a reality due to the hard work of Judy Adams and her husband, Don. like a peanut, and when you walked by, he’d put peanuts in your hand. I can remember that day we walked by him three times. Grandma said, ‘I just want to enjoy watching that man put peanuts in my hand.’ “I asked if she was upset about her eyes, and she said, ‘Well, sure. I don’t want to go blind. But I can see now, so I’m going to enjoy life.’” FOOD AND FAMILY Adams graduated from Hendrix College in Conway with a degree in elementary education. In her senior year there, she met Don Adams, who was working in Southwestern

There’s nothing that can make me feel better than doing for someone.

(From left) Judy, Christa and Abby pose together, hard at work.

Quiches cool at Catering to You. The full catering menu at the eatery offers several quiche options, including spinach, mushroom, ham or bacon.

Bell’s incubator program, which fast-tracked young executives to upper management. They married, and in time had three children, Brian, Blake and Ashley. Two now have careers in the food business: Brian owns Whole Hog restaurants in Bentonville and Fayetteville, and Blake is with Ben E. Keith Foods in Little Rock

“He’s actually my salesman!” Adams said, beaming.

Her daughter, Ashley Anderson, teaches pre-K at Episcopal Collegiate School in Little Rock. She’s the exception in terms of family food careers, but Anderson says she and her kids love to eat the food her mom often brings by. Her kids’ favorites are Adams’ chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cream pie, pumpkin bread and pork tenderloin with rosemary sauce.

“My mom has always cooked. She cooked for our family, and she has always, always loved entertaining,” Anderson said. “Some of my fondest memories are family Christmas

A hot meal catering order sits prepared for delivery. Several savory options are available to order with a 10-person minimum.

parties, where all of our friends and their parents and even their grandparents would come to our house for a party including a surprise visit by Santa. It was the highlight of every year. She threw superb birthday parties and dinner parties.”

Anderson said as kids, she and her brothers loved helping out with the cooking. These days, it’s the six grandkids who continue the tradition.

“My 12-year-old daughter and 16-yearold son love working for her on breaks from school.” Anderson said

Adams recalled the words of a friend who, after answering the business’ phone one day recently, said, “You know, your name is Catering to You, but you have got to stop catering to every person’s whim.”

“She told me I say yes to everybody. And I do! We want our customers’ experience to be effortless, so we put in the effort for them. That’s supposed to be our job, after all, Catering to You. And it’s hard for me to say no to requests. It truly is.”

SAYING YES TO NEW CHALLENGES

But saying yes has served her well.

Adams’ catering career started with an open house she and a friend threw for a friend’s new cardiology practice, as a favor. That party led to several other catering requests. The catalyst for her business evolution was friend and businessman Walter Smiley, founder of Systematics, a corporate predecessor of Alltel and Verizon. Smiley fully launched her catering career when he asked Adams if she’d fix lunch once a month for his board.

“I said, ‘Oh, yeah. Sure, Walter.’” Adams said. “He said, ‘No, really. We have an executive dining room, and this is just what I want them to eat.’ He told me I could charge him anything I wanted. Well, how can you turn something like that down?”

She said yes, and not long after that, Smiley came back, asking her if she’d also prepare meals for all the employees who came to Little

Rock to train. It was a lot more work, but she said yes, agreeing to the daily meals for dozens, prepared from her home kitchen. But that got old fast, and she told Smiley she needed a kitchen on-air. He built her one.

Then, Systematics decided they needed an employee cafeteria for their expanding campus. Adams prepared a simple proposal competing against a major corporation with a many times more sophisticated bid. She won, taking on the cafeteria.

Next, Smiley said they wanted a Systematics gift shop, would she run that, too? She said yes.

“Then they said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could handle employees’ dry cleaning?’” Adams said with a laugh. “I thought, ‘OK, I draw the line there! I know nothing about dry cleaning!”

However, when management explained they only wanted her to contract and manage a vendor, she said yes to that, too.

“Suddenly, I was in charge of dry cleaning, a cafeteria and a gift shop, none of which I had any experience in. But we did well,” Adams said. She took on a partner and together they managed the business, by then called Catering to You, for the next five years.

“Her business grew and grew, with weddings and parties even outside of Systematics. But her love for entertaining made the work fun for her,” Anderson said.

When Systematics sold to Alltel, the new company offered jobs to Adams’ staff but decided to use their existing food services. This led her to set up Catering to You’s tearoom on Cantrell Road near Stein Mart, while Adams cooked out of the kitchen at Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church.

Before long, she’d added her own gift shop and a take-out service as well as multiple side projects along the way, including the then-volunteer-run tearoom at the Arkansas Arts Center and servicing the Oasis Renewal Center. When the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences wanted to add an employee food service area, Adams took on that work, too.

A company milestone came when the building at 8121 Cantrell Road came up for sale. From the beginning, Adams knew she’d found Catering to You’s permanent home. Today, a number of her employees have been with her since the early 1990s, following her every step of the way. Others rotate in and out; she’s a big believer in giving people fresh chances.

Dr. Karen Kozlowski has known Adams for more than 25 years, first as her physician and then, in retirement, as an employee, pitching in when Catering to You needed some extra hands on deck. “Judy’s very much handson, all the time, from cooking in the kitchen to ordering the gifts for the storefront, to eyeballing things to make sure that tray that goes out looks beautiful,” Kozlowski said. “She’s worked her tail off. She’s too busy in many ways because she tries to do more than one person should be required to do.

“The dedication she has as a business owner is a dying art. I don’t think there are many people today who would work the hours and put in everything that she puts into it. It’s remarkable what Judy gets done.”

(From left) Taylor, Neil, Betty, Emanuel, Judy, Kevin, Rose, Karen and Gorge gather around menu items in the kitchen.

COMMUNITY PROJECTS

Still, Catering to You is far from the only major endeavor Adams has her hands in. She was on the board of Our House for seven years, serving as president the year they started the project to build a children’s building that recently broke ground. She’s active at Pulaski Heights UMC. And she gives much of herself to serving on three boards at UAMS: the Advisory Board, the College of Medicine’s Board of Visitors and the board of the Psychiatric Research Institute, where she was a founding member.

Leslie Taylor, vice chancellor for communications and marketing at UAMS, is deeply familiar with Judy’s contributions.

“When Judy ‘sits’ on a board, there is nothing stationary about her service,” Taylor said. “She’s enthusiastic, determined and gives generously of her time, her wisdom and her resources. When she recognizes a need, she goes to work.”

For example, Taylor said, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Adams showed up in front of the hospital with lunches prepared at Catering to You to feed nurses, doctors and other exhausted staff who couldn’t leave the hospital floor long enough to eat, just to make sure they knew they were appreciated.

“She also helped lead the creation of an endowed chair in maternal fetal medicine and was instrumental in the creation of the Psychiatric Research Institute,” Taylor said. “Judy’s passion is reducing stigma around mental illness and making it easier for those who suffer to have access to treatment. She never seeks the limelight, but instead leads quietly from behind the scenes, keeping her focus on the need and the mission.”

“She’s always taken care of others, family or not,” said Lillie Adams, Adams’ eldest granddaughter. “I remember once when I was 14 or 15, I came down to stay, and she had a couple staying with her. She didn’t know them three weeks before, but their babies were patients at UAMS, and they needed a place to stay. So, she opened up her doors to them for as long as they needed.”

Lillie, a senior at the University of Arkansas, said she loves traveling with her grandmother, something they do frequently, and she often turns to Adams for advice.

“For me, she’s always been my person,” she said. “She’s never going to know how much she means to me fully, but she’s one of the most important people in my life.”

Adams’ reputation for giving back at every opportunity to help someone out is accompanied by a penchant for deflecting credit and acknowledgement for her quiet kindnesses. However, Adams insists her motivations are entirely selfish.

“People will say, ‘Oh, you’re so generous!’ And I’ll say, ‘Nah. I do it for the feeling it gives me,’” she said. “I hope that it helps along the way, but I think giving helps me more than it helps anyone else. There’s nothing that can make me feel better than doing for someone. This business has been a very good outlet for me to be able to do that.”

One big motivation for finding the right buyer to carry on Catering to You’s reputation for excellence is freeing Adams to do even more volunteering.

“I’d also love to go out to lunch three or four times a week!” she said, laughing.

In the meantime, Catering to You carries on, filling orders for the ever-popular wild and cheesy chicken, sour cream chicken enchiladas, broccoli salad, spicy pimento cheese, beef tenderloin, coconut cream pies and hundreds more recipes customers love.

Asked to describe her cooking style, Adams gives a gentle smile.

“It’s simple,” she said. “It’s the kind of food we hope helps you remember your grandmother. Because that’s where mine came from.”