Mother-daughter duo restore historic Stockbridge cafe

An area cafe in the Heritage District of Stockbridge will reopen its doors with hopes that it brings life back into a downtown neighborhood.

A soft opening for the Green Front Cafe, which is considered a jewel to residents of the Stockbridge Heritage District, is underway to open the cafe for the first time in four years.

It is currently open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Wednesday to Sunday, but a grand opening scheduled for May 1 will include extended hours.

The cafe had been a staple in Stockbridge since the 1940s. The longtime gathering spot is a throwback to a simpler time when neighbors took care of each other and food was made with hands of love, Diane Miller said.

FILE: Green Front Cafe is shown in Stockbridge, Ga., on Tuesday, June 4, 2019. The small building is a well-loved community fixture that thrived under the ownership of Carrie Mae Hambrick and served as a town watering hole from its opening in 1947 through the early 2000s. The cafe is now in the process of being revived under the ownership of Diane Miller. (Casey Sykes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Miller and her daughter, Malana, became the new proprietors of the Green Front Cafe following the death of Carrie Mae Hambrick, who owned and operated the area cafe for 50 years. It sat vacant since Hambrick’s passing in January 2010.

“It was in a pretty bad place of disrepair, and we had to bring everything back up to code,” Miller said regarding the restorative process. “It was like the building was frozen in time from when it was last operated.”

The efforts of the mother-daughter duo continue the legacy and the many memories that Hambrick, who once resided in the little green building with her family, left behind.

“Customers who remember Carrie Mae and the cafe would have a flood of all the lovely memories when they see the building,” Miller said. “And once they’re inside, they would see how it has progressed to what it has been now.”

The menu includes the traditional hot dogs and hamburgers that Hambrick once sold with newly added Jamaican oxtails — but the food is not what makes the Green Front Cafe special, Miller said.

The true specialty is felt through the sentiments of each customer as they enter the doors. The May reopening, a play on words to the former owner’s name, will hark back to her legacy of giving and community connections.

“Everybody says ‘I come in and I feel at home,’” Miller said. “And this was the building that was once the Hambricks’ home, so we are extending that feeling.