![\"Spouses](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_0901_t850.JPG\" "\\"Spouses")
<\/p>\nRuth Daniels located her latest Annie Ru\u2019s Carryout and Catering restaurant where she said it was needed most.<\/p>\n
After a March 10 ribbon-cutting, Annie Ru\u2019s started serving customers March 11 at 5045 Soutel Drive, Suite 18, in the Sherwood Town Center in Northwest Jacksonville.<\/p>\n
The center has a large and well-worn parking lot with heavily faded striping. The only major chain store is Domino\u2019s. Other spaces are occupied by an industrial training facility, the Al Amir Islamic Center, a nursing academy and a few other locally-owned small businesses.<\/p>\n
The new restaurant is Daniels\u2019 way of giving back to her community, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to bring something with a nice atmosphere to the Northside of Jacksonville. That\u2019s my goal. We love people and we want to show that we don\u2019t have to go to the (St. Johns) Town Center. You can come right here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Daniels and her husband, Clifford, will be at the restaurant in the beginning while the neighborhood learns of the new location. These days, both restaurants are run by the couple\u2019s four grown sons.<\/p>\n
The restaurant is a combination of booths, tables and banquette seating. There is room for extra dining space or private events. Daniels estimated the restaurant is about 5,000 square feet. She expects to hire 15 to handle breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as catering.<\/p>\n
Annie Ru\u2019s serves traditional homemade Southern soul food. The menu includes homestyle chicken, pork chops and meatloaf as well items like neck bone and potatoes. Sides include collard greens, butter beans and field peas.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Spouses Clifford and Ruth Daniels opened a new Annie Ru\u2019s location in the Sherwood Town Center.<\/p>\n
Photo by Dan Macdonald<\/p>\n
Ruth Daniels started a catering company in 2008 at 3909 Hendricks Ave. in Miramar until she turned that space into Annie Ru\u2019s Carryout and Catering in 2011. She combined her mother\u2019s name, Annie Lee Hayward, and her own, to form Annie Ru\u2019s. She later closed at Hendricks Avenue to move to a larger space at 2851 Edgewood Ave. N. in West Jacksonville. That restaurant is still in operation.<\/p>\n
Daniels said customers are fond of her mother\u2019s version of a menu mainstay.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe specialty of the house will probably be my mommy\u2019s mac and cheese,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the first recipe she gave me while I was in her kitchen, sitting on a stool.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new restaurant serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hours are 6 a.m.-7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Edgewood Avenue location used to serve breakfast until the COVID-19 pandemic struck.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter COVID, we were feeding families who had lost family members. So we had to put the breakfast on hold because we were catering funerals every day,\u201d Daniels said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat to me, was just so important. We ministered to those families through food.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the mornings, the new restaurant will serve items including made-in-house salmon croquettes, stewed potatoes and liver and onions.<\/p>\n
Daniels is not ruling out reinstating breakfast at the Edgewood location in the coming months.<\/p>\n
The build-out was handled by several subcontractors. Daniels declined to disclose the cost of opening.<\/p>\n
The ribbon-cutting included a letter from Mayor Donna Deegan, words from Jacksonville City Council member Ju\u2019Coby Pittman and a former employee, Andrew Hart, who now has his own business. Hart spoke of his time working for Daniels.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was really a young boy when he worked for me. He now owns his own Chick-fil-A in Ocala,\u201d Daniels said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came and spoke and inspired everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
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