Debbie Smith answers to a name most people would blush to use: Marvelous. It is on her business cards, her catering brand, and the way half of Foley greets her at the grocery store. And after the past year she has had, the nickname is starting to look less like a boast and more like a job description.
Smith runs Sequins & Seasonings, a small catering operation based in Foley whose name splits neatly in two: the sequins for the eye-catching fashion sense she brings to every event, the seasonings for the soulful, Louisiana-rooted cooking that has clients booking her for Christmas dinners, weddings and baby showers in succession.
Life’s Too Short for Dull Food
Her culinary philosophy fits in a sentence or two, and she delivers it without apology. “Food should be satisfying,” she says. “Calories have got to matter, and they shouldn’t come from mediocre food.”
She is a sensible cook, too — mindful of dietary restrictions, careful with the details — but the overall idea is that meals should never be dull and lifeless. It is a philosophy she absorbed growing up in St. Mary Parish in southeast Louisiana, where putting flavorful home-cooked food on the table was simply how things were done.
Catering is not her only job. Smith is a mother of three, a pharmacy technician at a Publix in Fairhope, a longtime tax preparer, and a volunteer heavily involved with a charity organization serving homeless women and children. Cooking is the piece that keeps demanding more of her time — and she considers that a blessing.
A Random Tuesday in December
The business almost didn’t happen. Over the years plenty of people told her she should open a restaurant, and she always resisted, worried that doing it for a living might take the joy out of it. Then came a small farewell gathering for a church leader — “nothing out of the ordinary, just typical stuff like shrimp and grits, eggs and hash browns” — that caught the attention of a youth pastor, who told her: “You’re praying about what direction your life should take, and here it is. People should be paying for this.”
The door opened wider during her weeknight shift at Downtown Cigars on Main Street in Daphne. “I was working there on a random Tuesday in December, and a gentleman walked in, and I asked, ‘Can I help you,'” she recalls. “The guy with him said, ‘I don’t know, can you cater for me next week?'” The man was a Mobile flight instructor who had waited too long to book his usual caterer for a Christmas party. He didn’t care what the menu was or the budget. A day later it was set.
Smith cooked brisket, garlic mashed potatoes and fresh green beans with potatoes and sausage for 25 or 30 guests, photographed the spread, and posted the pictures on social media. “It took off,” she says.
The Comedian and the Bobby Pins
The breakout moment came through an act of pure generosity. Smith saw that one of her favorite comedians, Mississippi’s Mary Ryan Brown, would appear at the OWA Theater in Foley, just a few miles from her house. She messaged via Facebook offering to cater the performer’s green room, free of charge, as a love offering.
“I wanted to make sure that she had some good Southern cuisine, that it would be magical and tasty,” Smith says. “I wanted her to be so full that she would wonder if she could make it from the green room to the stage.”
Brown accepted, then told her 73,000 followers what happened next: a perfect menu with gorgeous presentation, mints and Emergen-C for a touring performer — and, when Brown couldn’t find her own, the bobby pins out of Smith’s hair. “Marvelous is, as her name suggests, a marvel in hospitality and encouragement,” Brown wrote. “She prayed over me before my show and hugged me after!”
The fallout was immediate. Sequins & Seasonings’ following doubled overnight, and the OWA Theater manager hired Smith on the spot to cater other events there. Her food has been a fixture of visiting performers’ downtime ever since.
Where ‘Marvelous’ Comes From
Smith knows the nickname can sound boastful, but she says it comes from scripture and works as a daily reminder to be grateful and mindful of the beauty within herself and the world around her. “At first, I used it as a pseudonym for my poetry writing,” she says. “You might meet me as Debbie Smith, but by the end I’m gonna be Marvelous — your girlfriend, your friend-girl, your catering hookup. It begins with Debbie and ends with Marvelous.”
Her client list tells its own story of loyalty: one family has booked her for the third Christmas in a row, and another has moved from an engagement party to the wedding to a baby shower without changing caterers.
Foster Mother, and a Full Plate
The circle of compassion keeps widening. Smith was recently approved by the State of Alabama to become a foster mother — a calling with deep roots, since her biological mother was a foster child and Smith spent part of her own childhood in foster care.
She sleeps five or six hours a night and spends the rest on the move, but she is deliberate about it. “There are 24 hours in a day, and I sleep for about five or six of them,” she says, “but for the rest of them, I’m on the move. I am intentional about rest when my body needs it, though, so that my go time is productive and the busyness of the business doesn’t detract from the blessing of it all.”
For Foley — and for a growing list of clients across south Alabama — that blessing arrives on a platter, with sequins.