Poppa’s Cookbook and ABLE Allies come full circle

Husband-and-wife duo Eric and Wendi King have a passion for feeding the community and providing opportunities for adults with disabilities.

It started with a grandchild’s nicknames for them: Wendi is “Lolli,” and Eric is “Pop.”

“Pop” became “Poppa,” and from there, Poppa’s Cookbook was born from the stack of recipes Eric would make for his family. 

“I never once saw a restaurant,” he said. “I didn’t see any of it because it was just us.”

Poppa’s Cookbook started as a small soul-food catering business — one of Wendi’s friends was the first customer. 

The catering business grew, and Poppa’s eventually earned a spot in the Allen Neighborhood Center’s Rathbun Accelerator Kitchen. 

Around the same time, Wendi co-founded Achieving Beyond Life’s Expectations Allies with her daughter. The program supports adults with disabilities as they move on from the typical classroom.

Wendi spent over 30 years as a special needs educator and saw a need to establish a program for adults after they graduate from school. 

“End of school means end of social time, end of opportunity,” she said. “Some can work, some are not quite as able.”

She said she had a vision of everything coming together. A place where ABLE Allies could meet to build skills and friendships and where Poppa’s could serve people who needed a helping hand. 

Moving to the accelerator kitchen opened the door to opportunities for both Poppa’s and ABLE Allies. Participants of ABLE Allies trained in the kitchen and staffed the restaurant as servers and greeters. The restaurant also functioned as a meeting place for the group. 

When Poppa’s has a large-scale catering event, the staff includes the Kings and their Allies. 

“If you need a full-service staff, this is our staff,” Wendi said. “That’s non-negotiable.”

For a while, Eric operated the restaurant side of Poppa’s Cookbook and the catering business out of ANC’s incubator kitchen. He said he fell in love with the ANC community and set up a “pay it forward” program for customers to donate meals.

“For me, there’s nothing better than that feeling of knowing not only that your stomach was filled, but you enjoyed it enough to tell everybody else that this is the dude you want some mac and cheese from,” he said.

As Wendi recalls, that time period was when managing everything became overwhelming. The couple, who met later in life, decided to scale back the operation.

“We didn’t close the restaurant because we were going out of business,” Wendi said. “We closed the restaurant because we couldn’t stop the business, and we wanted to spend time together.”

A new opportunity presented itself. Eric became the kitchen manager at Union Missionary Baptist Church off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Then everything clicked. 

“That vision came back,” Wendi said. 

Union Missionary Baptist Church operates as a warming center for the unhoused in the winter. The church also has classrooms for ABLE Allies to meet. Wendi believes this is where they’re supposed to be. 

“I didn’t know what I was seeing until we planted ourselves here,” she said, “and now it just makes sense.”

Poppa’s is waiting for its license from the county to get up and running again. This time, the business will operate out of the church as part of the Union Kitchen Collective. 

Waiting is the hard part, according to Eric. 

“I just love to feed people,” he said. “I just want people to know there’s a place in Lansing where you can get food that’s going to bless your soul.”

The couple also hopes to serve families that stay in the warming center during the winter. Everything has come full circle, Wendi said.

“They won’t be getting granola bars and juice,” she said. “We’ll have full-fledged meals that families can enjoy.” 

ABLE Allies is hosting its first fundraising dinner, along with a silent auction, Oct. 24 at the ANC. Tickets are $40.

In terms of next steps for both ABLE Allies and Poppa’s, the Kings want to keep the mission of growing community through food and fellowship going. 

“I love to cook,” Eric said. “She loves to educate.”

“Everybody deserves to eat, and everybody deserves a place to belong,” Wendi added.