Justin Jones: The Taste of Sweet Potato Pies Along With Sweet Success

By Keisa Sharpe-Jefferson | For The Birmingham Times He started off as a kitchen helper for his mother and grandmother while they baked sweet potato pies in Birmingham’s Central Park community. Justin Jones, co-owner of Sweet Daddy’s Sweet Potato Pies in Birmingham, would taste the desserts and would ask his mother, Rena Jones, and grandmother, Johnnie Mae Lewis, to tweak them based on his palate. “If I felt like it needed a little bit more of something …  more sugar …  more vanilla …  they would make their pies according to my taste,” said Jones. And when his mother became tapped out making sweet potato pies (she’d made so many and was tired of making them for the holidays), her son stepped up. “Somewhere around 2020 … I would make them for her. Then my wife’s family got a taste of the pies too, and so many people wanted me to make sweet potato pies in the family, so I just said, “You know, I’m going to start charging people for these,” said Jones. And Sweet Daddy’s Sweet Potato Pies were born. Justin started making pies in his own kitchen in Center Point for the holidays and delivering them to...