Amanda M. Usher | The Valdosta Daily TimesSue Cox is co-owner of Covington's Dining and Catering, which serves fine dining meals.

VALDOSTA – If asking Sue Cox how long she’s been cooking, she’ll say she’s been cooking since hippies were around. She’s been cooking since the 1960s.

Cox is the co-owner of Covington’s Dining and Catering and 306 North in Downtown Valdosta.

She is more than a chef. She’s a caterer who got her start catering a wedding 10 years into her chef’s journey. That opened the door to even more catering jobs here and there, she said.

“By the time I was 41 or 42, it was a full-time job,” she said, “and that’s been 30 years. I love what I do. I love pleasing people.”

For her, it’s all about giving her clients the “full” service – food, decor, ambience. Starting out, Cox said she simply decorated her venue with china glasses, silverware and napkins. Now, she caters using those items, as well as table cloths, tables and chairs.

She couldn’t do that when she started. There were no rental companies in those days, at least that were open on the weekends. If businesses didn’t operate on a Monday to Friday schedule, they were out of luck.

When Cox was working a weekend wedding in the early days of her catering service, she remembers the bride ordering 100 chairs. As Cox and her husband, Stanley lugged the chairs to prepare for the wedding, they found they only had 98.

“What are we going to do about the other two?” Cox remembers thinking.

“It didn’t even take me a year before I told my husband we have to get into the rental business,” she said. “Because it always falls back on the caterer when something is missing.”

As part of crafting the wedding experience, she interviews her clients, creating a folder filled with a list of likes, dislikes and “quirks.”

“It could be something simple like some wedding planners dislike seeing ice chests stuck behind the bar,” Cox said. “So, I make my people put it under the table cloth. A lot of brides have (similar notions) and I call that a quirk.”

Quirks could also be a special need/special preparation method or an ingredient to not add – for example, no lemon in iced tea or mint in iced tea.

Cox said she emphasizes catering and keeping things fresh. In keeping up the latter, she prepares the wedding’s food two hours prior at the latest.

“So that my food’s not sitting there for two hours not being served, it goes later,” she said. “I do that because if you’re there at 3 p.m. and the wedding starts at 5 p.m. then they’re going to get nervous.”

For Cox, it’s her job to make sure they don’t worry as there’s already worry enough.

Her philosophy on customer service: know the customer and accommodate. If they’re comfortable with all else, they can enjoy their food even more.

She doesn’t prepare the wedding cake and the floral arrangement. Cox said she likes to simply focus on the food and beverage aspect on any event she caters. It’s what she loves.

She remembers back in 1971, planting and using fresh vegetables at her family’s first restaurant. Fresh was the most important thing to their clientele at the time.

“The hippies (their customers) would only use fresh, and so, they just loved going into those restaurants where they had these big baskets full of tomatoes or fruit or whatever it was,” Cox said.

If she needed something fresh in the kitchen, she would go into the garden out back, grab it and bring it back. She liked that concept and wanted to continue it.

She remembers wanting to bring something new back to Valdosta and regaled the tale of her falling in love with the kiwi fruit. There had never been a kiwi in Valdosta until she brought it back, Cox said.

“I was in Florida when the astronauts splashed down in New Zealand and New Zealand grows kiwis,” Cox said. “We were at Mar-a-Lago and (Marjorie) Merriweather Post, who owned Post Cereal, had it then. She provided the same meal that the astronauts had. It had kiwi and I fell in love with it.”

She went to a local market, Joseph’s Produce, to look for it.

“I said ‘Mr. Joseph, I’ve got to have this kiwi,’ and he called me back to say ‘There are only 28 in a box and they’re $28,’” Cox said while laughing. “I said ‘I’ve still got to have them.’”

And so she started serving salads or a special luncheon with a slice of kiwi. Since a kiwi cost a dollar and plates only cost $3, a slice was all she could afford to do then.

It was a love affair with food, serving her customers a little rather than the whole. But fresh fruits and vegetables aren’t the only things she likes to serve. Her love affair with food extends especially to chicken, lobster and shrimp.

The only meat she doesn’t lean toward cooking is lamb.

“It’s only because in my head (I sing) ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’ That was a nursery rhyme I grew up with and it’s that ingrained,” Cox said. “It’s not like I didn’t know Elsie the Borden Cow or whatever; it’s just the little baby lamb, I have a hard time with that.”

She used to say she didn’t like rutabagas, but when they were served fried at her second restaurant 306 North, she changed her mind. She’s certainly not picky, though.

“I’ll always say, You don’t have to worry about me. I love hot dogs,” she said, referencing times people would talk about having her as a guest for dinner.

Whereas she doesn’t worry about herself, she puts that extra effort into pleasing her customers. Take for instance Covington’s and 306 North. The former consistently carries its staple menu items with specials while the latter is a revolving door of platters.

“At Covington’s, we have items on our menu that we’ve been serving for 40-something years,” Cox said. “My specials, everyday, change often, but my broccoli salad, my chicken salad, the pasta salad, our she-crab soup – you can’t take them off. People won’t let you.”

Cox said she’d like to change more but that’s not what the customers want.

She took a look around her restaurant to see who’s sitting and enjoying their meals. Sure, Covington’s has college students come to enjoy the food, but for the most part, she saw an older crowd.

That’s why 306 North entered the picture. It’s a place where she can embrace change. Some things, the restaurant still serves from when it opened 16 years ago, but for the most part, there’s something new with each customer visit.

“Some people don’t like change, my husband being one of them,” she said, laughing. “But I’m more adept at it. I like to see new things. I like to try new restaurants even if it’s competition.”

She’s an explorer and she wouldn’t be any other way. Cox said most people her age are retired, living it up on a beach somewhere. But she can’t see any other life for herself other than that of a chef.

“All I’ve ever done is work – I mean I went to work at 11 years old,” she said. “If I were 10 years younger, I’d open up a restaurant on the north side of town. Now, I just want to continue to do a good job with what I’m doing. I think my husband feels the same way.”

Contact Info

Covington’s Dining and Catering

covingtonscatering.com

(229) 242-2261

306 North 

306north.com

(229) 249-5333