For years, Mindy Benton joked about busting a hole in the wall.
Next door to Mindy B’s Deli, businesses came and went in a steady rotation. Two florists, a nutrition shop and, most recently, a dress boutique. The space turned over so often that Benton half-seriously told anyone who’d listen, “Just let me bust a hole in the wall.”
She’d been in her downtown Chattanooga location since 2011, sandwiched between that revolving door of neighbors and the entrance to the 12 floors of offices in the Volunteer Building. Fourteen years into the run, she’d grown used to watching other ventures try and fail.
Then her landlord approached her.
“They said, ‘We want to offer it to you before we put it on the market or offer it to anyone else – if you’re serious.’”
Benton was serious – she just didn’t know what being serious required. So they sat down, talked through what the expansion would look like, and she took what she calls a leap of faith.
“I said, ‘Let’s do it.’”
Today, Benton sits in that once inaccessible space at the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Patten Parkway, orange and green walls wrapping into the new dining area. Her hair, bright magenta – or whatever shade her stylist last applied – matches the inescapable cheer of the room.
What was once a joke is now an entrance.
Busting through the wall
The expansion more than doubled the deli’s footprint. A portion became additional dining space, but the real prize lies behind the walls, where Benton now has a six-foot prep table. After running a kitchen with no counter space and barely enough elbow room to turn around, it feels like the meadows in “The Sound of Music.”
“My kitchen is teeny,” she says. “Now I have room to prep. It’s exciting.”
The added prep space opens the door to something Benton has long wanted to pursue more aggressively: catering. She’s always done it, she says, but never pushed it because the logistics were exhausting.
“The hope is that as we figure things out, we can ramp that up and let it become a bigger revenue stream. We’ll still have the deli going as normal, and on the side, we’ll have catering at a steadier pace.”
The expansion marks a shift from survival to growth. In 14 years downtown, Benton has watched countless restaurants open and close. When she first unlocked the doors, she wasn’t sure she’d last a year.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she says. “I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing, but I must be doing something right.”
Maybe it’s because she serves “delish” sandwiches, someone sitting nearby suggests. But the sandwiches tell only part of the story.
Sandwiches and snark
The deli’s tagline is “Sandwiches with a side of snark.” The dining area reflects it.
“Most of these people work in stuffy, boring offices,” she says. “That’s one reason this place is colorful and bright.”
Benton gets tourists, but not in the steady waves that restaurants closer to the river enjoy. Her clientele is largely local – office workers and other regulars within walking distance. Some come almost every day.
Over time, something else has happened. The place has become less of a lunch stop and more of a routine.
“I feel like we know our customers,” Benton says. “We might not know your name, but we know what you eat and what’s going on in your life.”
Benton recalls preparing food for customers who’d just lost family members. She didn’t know the deceased, she says, but she knew her customer.
“I think that has a lot to do with why we’re still here, too,” she muses. “We care about our customers.”
Handmade on purpose
That care shows up in small but stubborn decisions. It would be easier, she admits, to order “cookie pucks from the back of a truck” that she could toss in the oven and bake. But no. Her crew literally hand-makes the dough and bakes the cookies on the spot.
“That’s why they’re so good,” she smiles. “There’s real butter, flour, sugar and eggs in them.”
The same philosophy shapes the rest of the menu. For starters, Benton roasts her own turkey and beef. The deli offers standards like egg salad, turkey sandwiches and grilled cheese, but it also leans into creativity, fueled by a culinary degree that gave her the tools to experiment.
“If you just want turkey, cheese and bread, I have it. But if you want something more exciting, let’s do that.”
Specials serve as Benton’s laboratory, giving her room to test new ideas without overhauling the entire menu. Sometimes those experiments stick. The Caesar Wrap started that way. So did several customer-created contest winners that still hold a place on the board, including the Hooligan, the Munster Deluxe and the Buddy.
The Munster Deluxe is the bestselling sandwich on the menu: turkey, Munster cheese, bacon and chipotle ranch grilled on sourdough. It’s bold but not intimidating, Benton says, unlike the Buddy, which “has a lot going on.”
Some customers never deviate. One man walks in and simply says, “Turkey,” or “Ham.” The staff knows exactly what to do.
The crew behind the counter has been as central to the deli’s identity as the menu. The first year was unstable, with staff turnover and uncertainty. Then three people formed the foundation for years: Benton and two employees who became family.
Lester Jones, one of those foundational employees, died about two years ago.
“He’d probably still be here working,” she says. “He was a hoot.”
His death hit her harder than she expected.
“You don’t realize how much time you spend with your co-workers. Because we were close; we were like family. We went through a lot together – ups and downs. That was hard.”
From kitchen kid to owner
Family runs through Mindy B’s in a literal way. Benton grew up around kitchens. Her mother worked in catering and, at 12 years old, Benton was tagging along on weekends, earning $20 under the table and feeling like a big shot.
At Chattanooga School for the Arts & Sciences, the push was toward college and traditional majors. Benton did not see herself in those paths.
“I grew up with my mom working in kitchens,” she says. “I loved the rush of kitchen work and I loved cooking.”
A visit from the Art Institute of Atlanta introduced her to culinary school. She earned a full-tuition scholarship, completed the program and eventually returned to Chattanooga. She studied hospitality management at Chattanooga State and interned at local hotels, thinking she’d become an executive chef.
Instead, she reached sous chef and found the role thankless, stuck in the corporate hierarchy of hotels where multiple bosses pulled in different directions.
“The corporate aspect of working in hotels was not appealing to me,” she says. “There are three or four levels of bosses, and they’re all telling you to do something different.”
Since Benton didn’t come from money, she didn’t have the capital that fine dining would require. So she chose something more doable. Her first venture was a personal chef business called Meals by Mindy.
The Small Business Development Center helped her write a business plan and launch. She ran it for about three years, but it coincided with the economic crash in 2008.
“I’d build up clientele, then business would drop when people lost jobs,” she recalls. “It was stressful. I wasn’t making a living.”
Determined to try again, Benton went back to the Small Business Development Center and told them she wanted to open a deli.
She’d managed a student-run deli in culinary school and loved it. Opening one of her own required far less equipment and fewer upfront expenses than fine dining. Plus, it felt approachable.
When Benton began searching for a location, she looked everywhere from Soddy-Daisy to Ooltewah. Chamber connections led her to a Realtor who helped her hunt. She landed downtown in a former deli space, where the infrastructure was already in place. Her budget was so low she planned to slap paint on the walls, mop the floors and open the doors.
Then the landlord surprised her with a full design plan.
“I said, ‘I can’t afford that,’ so he did it for me.”
Benton has had what she calls “amazing support” from her landlords ever since. It’s part of why the recent expansion made sense for both sides – stability benefits everyone.
Construction and the brink
Still, stability has never meant ease.
Before COVID, construction around Miller Park disrupted foot traffic. Many of her customers worked at EPB and TVA, creatures of habit who rely on easy access. Closed roadways and sidewalks discouraged them. Then Patten Parkway construction shut down the block in front of her building for four months. In total, she endured two and a-half years of major construction.
To survive, Benton went two years without paying herself.
At the beginning of 2020, she and her husband sat down for a difficult conversation.
“He said, ‘We can’t keep doing this.’ He was right.”
They set December 2020 as “decision day.” She’d either pull the business out of the hole or close.
The pivot that saved the deli
When COVID hit, the deli’s future seemed bleak. It was Benton and two employees – Ginger and Lester.
“We were scared,” she says. “I said, ‘What do you want to do? If you want to go home, that’s OK. We might not reopen, but I’m at peace with that.’”
They looked at her like she was crazy and said, “What are we going to do at home?”
So Benton pivoted, offering take-home dinners of meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green beans. This sustained the business until the office buildings emptied and downtown hollowed out. In the quiet that followed, she cried, prayed and tried to imagine what might come next.
The solution rested in a new effort called Frontline Meals. Customers could buy a boxed lunch and water for $10, and the deli would deliver to hospitals, fire departments, police stations and EMS.
When she came in the Monday morning after placing Frontline Meals on the deli’s online ordering system, 23 orders were waiting for her.
“I sat down and cried,” she recalls.
This time, the tears flowed not from fear or frustration but gratitude. Over the next few months, Mindy B’s delivered thousands of meals as money poured in. Friends from other states sent checks, and a local doctor came in every week and handed her $100.
The day after the Easter tornadoes, Benton loaded 200 frontline meals and cases of water into an SUV and drove into damaged neighborhoods, guided by the National Guard. Later, she delivered to hotels where displaced families were staying.
“In a weird way, COVID saved my business,” Benton says. “It reinvigorated me to fight.”
She says Mindy B’s has been running on that momentum ever since. Now the expansion feels like an investment in what she believes comes next.
“I’ve declared this my year for growth and great things.”
When Benton opened, she set a goal: she wanted Mindy B’s to become a Chattanooga institution. Then they hid in plain sight, tucked between two spaces, for years.
But her increased visibility and added space signal something different: A business that once doubted it would survive a year is planning for decades.
And after 14 years of ups and downs, Benton still loves it.
“When I go on vacation, I miss my food,” she says.
Institution status might still be on the horizon, but for the customers who know exactly what to order, for the co-workers who became family, and for a downtown that watched countless others come and go, Mindy B’s already feels like it belongs.