Meet Trina Cheeks of YoFavBigGirlKitchen in Missouri City

Trina, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
When I was a little girl I use to always watch my mom cook. I would pay attention to every detail sometimes I would even help her cook family meals. My mom was the cook of our family and family events everybody loved her food. Ever since then cooking has always been a passion of mine. I would find recipes and try my best to mimic the recipe or I would scroll social media see a picture and I would try to recreate the meal. In March of 2017, I decided I was going to go to culinary school. I visited a few schools and decided to go with Houston Community College. I told my mom that I was going to go to culinary school and she told me to go for it. May 1, 2017 my mom passed away and her passing motivated me even more to pursue my passion. I was depressed at the time and food was the ONLY thing that made me happy. At that point I was more determined to make my mom proud of me. I started culinary school in August of 2017 and I was so excited about cooking that I started my business YoFavBigGirlKitchen. I started off selling plates I didn’t have much clientele at the time but once my high school classmates tasted my food I had the support of so many people. I sold plates for a while because at the time I was out of a job and I was going to school full time. I started getting a little popular more and more people wanted to try my food.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has not been a smooth losing my mother made me depressed and I lost focus of my life and my business.My mother was my whole heart she was the person who motivated me and kept me going when I wanted to give up. Some days I was so overwhelmed because I didn’t know how to run a business and to try and run a business with no experience or gudiance was super hard. I have struggled with time management, juggling a full-time job and trying to cater events while working and trying to run my business on my off days.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about YoFavBigGirlKitchen – what should we know?
My business YoFavBigGirlKitchen I specialize in cajun/southern food and catering large events but I am able to be versatile with lots of different foods. YoFavBigGirlKitchen is known for pasta and one of a kind of meals. What sets YoFavbigGirlKitchen apart from others is I take time with my food I make sure I cater to my customer’s needs and food desires. If a customer is not satisfied, I make sure to make to fix the issue with the customer.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
My main supporters are my siblings Shuntella, Nicole, Kim and Reuben. They take pride in making sure that I am going full force with my business and I’m pushing myself to be the best out there. I have so much support from family, friends, classmates (shoutout to the whole Mo City) and people who have been cheering from the sidelines. My siblings have played a big role with my business because when I have nobody to help me cater and set things up for events I know that I can count on them. I even had a classmate that turned into a very good friend Antwenet that is in the same business as myself who given me plenty of advice guided me and gave me many pep talks when I needed them.