New restaurant opening in Byron has its roots in a popular gourmet food truck

Allegra Lowe is taking her popular gourmet food truck, ABC Catering LLC, to the next level.

She’s opening a restaurant by the same name in Byron.

ABC Catering LLC is known for its top-tier plates such as garlic lobster tails and Southern classics such as turkey wings over rice with macaroni and cheese, dressing, collard greens and sweet potato cornbread.

“It’s like a Southern gourmet fusion,” said Lowe, an Army veteran and former Bibb County school teacher. “We’ll have things like oxtails with rice gravy. We’ll have macaroni and cheese. We’ll have the garlic butter, steak bites with the peppers, onions, mushrooms and shrimp. You can even do the Parmesan cheese on top of it.

“We’ll also have shrimp and grits. We’ll have stuffed salmon with sauteed broccoli. We’ll have risotto rice. We’ll have stuffed chicken breasts — just a few different options of things that we have done on the food truck that have been fan favorites; just very popular items for us like we’ve added in some things like chicken alfredo that are good meals; something that people might cook for themselves at home, but they might not want to cook like that on these days. And that’s where we come in.”

Balancing the restaurant, food truck

The new restaurant at 315 Ga. 49 North, Suite B, is in the former Prominent Bar and Restaurant location.

The targeted opening date is June 21.

A self-taught chef who first started cooking in the kitchen with her grandmother and mother, Lowe plans to open the restaurant only a few days of the week to allow her to keep operating her food truck for large company events or special occasions such as weddings.

“I don’t want to just let Waggy go,” she said.

Waggy is the name Lowe gave her food truck.

“It was just so big — just wagging all over the road when I first started driving it,” she recalled.

The move to open a restaurant allows Lowe a way to provide a dine-in experience for her followers to “catch us on their time” instead of chasing where the food truck will set up.

Lowe also hopes to expand her customer base with a restaurant. Her ABC Catering LLC Facebook page has 12,000 followers.

“It’s good for our customers and clients and for us as well,” she said.

The restaurant will offer the dishes cafeteria style.

The food will still be hot and fresh, but it won’t be cooked to order for each individual customer, which eliminates the long lines and wait at the food truck, Lowe noted.

The menu will vary. Lowe also plans to incorporate a Friday fish fry. She’ll post a daily menu on the ABC Catering LLC Facebook page and outside of the restaurant.

Hours will be 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. every third and fourth Sunday of the month. Takeout also will be available.

The limited hours also are designed for Lowe to keep her vision of not only being a successful businesswoman but also a successful wife and mother.

From teacher to entrepreneur

A Fort Valley native who graduated from Wilkinson County High School after her family moved to Irwinton when she was 9, Lowe followed her brother into the U.S. Army. She served from 2008 to 2012 as a signal support systems specialist helping to maintain and secure communication systems.

While working on her undergraduate degree at Fort Valley State University, Lowe was a substitute teacher from 2013 to 2016.

Graduating with honors with a bachelor’s degree in education in 2017, she started teaching in Bibb County Schools. She taught sixth grade science her first year. She then moved over to Central High School, teaching health and physical education for two years while also serving as the head boys and girls varsity cross country coach.

During the weekends, Lowe was busy catering weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and other events.

When it was time to renew her teaching contract in April of 2020, her husband, Darius, encouraged her not to sign it but instead pursue her passion for cooking.

Lowe also had been taking food plates to employees at Blue Bird Corp. in Fort Valley, where her husband had worked for 10 years before pursuing other endeavors.

“I was actually just selling plates and delivering them,” Lowe said. “I was meeting people at the mall in Warner Robins. People were coming to my house to pick up plates.”

Her brother Luther Grimes encouraged her to check out a food truck that Two Guys and a Pie off Ga. 247 had for sale, which she ended up buying six months later and debuting in October 2021.

With the success of the food truck and the restaurant space becoming available, Lowe’s husband encouraged her to take the next step and open a restaurant. After much prayer and checking out the space, she stepped out in faith.

“I was like, Lord, this man is saying, Hey, look at this building, so I can start a restaurant,” Lowe said. “Lord, tell me that. Don’t give it to him. Give it to me.”

When she first saw the sign ABC Catering go up on the restaurant, Lowe said it took her back to when she first saw her name outside of her first classroom.

“It was like, goodness, I’ve put in a lot of work. God has blessed me with just the dedication to be able to get to this point on the hard days, the rough days, the long days,” Lowe said. “It just feels so worth it.”