He spent 10 years in prison. Now, he wants to give back and build a Columbus food empire
When it’s over, Jerome Lawson hopes you’ve had a few laughs and the food filling the foam container he’s handed you is good enough to bring you back.
The cheerful 39-year-old entrepreneur sees quite a few repeat customers. He knows a lot of the folks who approach the counter at Twist Skillit, his food truck that’s parked beside Mr. B’s Liquor Beer & Wine on 13th Street just down the road from the Piggly Wiggly.
Running a business is hard work, he said, but it’s rewarding. And he’ll be the first to tell you how far he’s come in the last nearly decade and a half.
Lawson grew up on the city’s south side and was quickly thrust into a world of drugs and crime. At 16, he was convicted of armed robbery for holding up a convenience store. The 10 years he spent in prison as a young man changed his life.
Now, Lawson wants to build a food empire in his hometown and help those who might find themselves in the same situation he did all those years ago.
“I think the biggest tragedy is (when) you leave this Earth without sharing,” he said. “I see my future without limits. ...I hate for somebody to try to make you feel like you can’t. I see limitless boundaries where I can not only just teach but teach them to teach.”
‘Broken people breed broken people’
Lawson was born in a Baker Village apartment in 1982, and his family soon moved to Elizabeth Canty Homes. Winston Road, Brennan Road, Calvin Avenue and Fort Benning Road were his childhood stomping grounds.
He was one of seven children, and Lawson’s childhood was a rough one. But the family, he said, did the best they could. His stepfather, who raised Lawson and who Lawson calls his “dad,” was shaped by events early in his life. The man was raised by extended family after his parents were killed.
Lawson’s dad was a mechanic with a “million-dollar talent” for fixing cars, but he made his name selling drugs. His father wasn’t the communicating type, but Lawson said he was a momma’s boy. It hurt him to see her struggle with an addiction to crack.
“Broken people breed broken people,” Lawson said.
Watching his father work in the drug trade gave Lawson the desire to do the same, and he got his first opportunities early. When he was 9 years old, Lawson said he held his father’s drugs when the police came to search because the cops wouldn’t frisk a child.
When he was 13, Lawson started stealing and breaking into cars. He’d be taken into custody, but he was often released to his parents. It wouldn’t take long for his criminal plans to become more daring.
Stealing cars wasn’t making money. So, he and a friend started making and selling fake crack. The scheme continued until area drug dealers asked the boys to stop because it was interfering with their business.
“(The buyers) would catch on to it,” Lawson said. “But what we would do is we would sell it, and by the time we got a couple of feet away from them, we would take off running. (We) started making money like that.”
When that stopped, he started selling the real thing.
But things quickly soured. A big deal ended poorly for Lawson when he bought fake drugs. Lawson eventually decided to go to the man’s home and try to get even.
“I was on the verge of shooting him and his mom, but he wasn’t there at the time,” Lawson said. “ I’m not ruthless like that. I didn’t want to shoot a man’s mom.”
As Lawson waited for the man, he and a partner changed their minds. They decided to rob a convenience store on Lumpkin Road instead. The two men made off with the cash, cutting through a field behind a school. Cops set up a two-mile radius around the store.
Lawson and his partner ditched their guns and hopped in a cab. On their way back to a trailer park on Cusseta Road, police officers pulled the taxi over. The store didn’t have the men on video, but cops were able to trace the money in the men’s possession back to the store. Lawson alleges the case wasn’t handled properly.
“I didn’t get a fair trial,” he said. “I was just an ignorant child.”
‘It’s just like a light came on’
Lawson served 10 years for the robbery at several different prisons in Georgia.
At first, he was separated from the general population because he was under the age of 17. The young men were rowdy and prone to fighting. Lawson did his best to stay out of it. But once he ended up in general population, he did what was necessary to survive.
Lawson was luckier than some of his peers, but he got into a few fights. The worst ended with Lawson receiving nine stab wounds to his side from a pen after arguing with another man over $25 of commissary spending cash.
While he was incarcerated, Lawson found a new path: cooking. North Georgia Technical College offered a culinary program to the men in the prison. It was typically reserved for those who were about to leave, but Lawson earned his way in. He eventually served in the prison kitchen as a chef.
Lawson came by the skill naturally. His uncle was a chef and many of the women in his family loved to cook.
“It’s just like a light came on,” he said
When he got out of prison at age 26, Lawson had a job lined up at Logan’s Roadhouse. He got his driver’s license, and his dad gave him a small car. He lived with his sister to save money, and Lawson worked as a bouncer downtown to make a little extra cash too.
He eventually left the restaurant in search of a livable wage but found it difficult because of his past conviction. He bounced around for the next several years. He briefly worked at two iron foundries, a call center, the Columbus Civic Center and attended college classes at Troy University’s Phenix City campus.
It was during this time that Lawson used settlement money from an on-the-job injury to purchase his first food truck in 2013. But it only lasted six months as the weight of juggling a new venture, caring for his nephew and going through a divorce became too much.
“I didn’t know the processes,” Lawson said. “Nobody really showed me. ...I thought it would just be like smooth sailing.”
A settlement payment from another job site injury gave Lawson another shot at the food truck in 2017. This time, he was able to make it work.
“It’s something that I love to do,” he said. “I love to put together dishes. ...I’ve got people who still call me from when we were locked up together saying ‘I’m proud of you. You did what you said you were going to do.’”
‘But now this monster is a man...’
Lawson has found stability over the past few years.
He’s become a family man. He has a wife and two daughters. Mr. B’s has allowed him to park the truck on their lot for a few years now, and business is booming. From noon to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday, lines gather for a Twist Skillit container.
His favorite dish to cook is salmon and shrimp with rice. Lawson serves the meal with a complex, drizzled sauce that is sweet when it hits your taste buds but morphs into something slightly spicy as you process the flavors. Other workers on the truck have tried to replicate the dish exactly as Lawson serves it, but none have succeeded.
“What I do different, I can’t teach you,” he said. “I want when they bite the food to say — ‘First of all, he made me laugh. Secondly, he satisfied my hunger and the taste was phenomenal.’”
The entrepreneur hopes to pass along something more than just tasty food to Columbus. He wants to keep young men and women off the streets by boosting their self worth and providing them with advice and opportunities.
Nearly 60 homicides have occurred in Muscogee County as of mid-October, the highest single-year tally in recent memory. The uptick in violence concerns Lawson, who said things weren’t always like this when neighborhood recreation centers and basketball courts gave people something to do as a community.
“When you take away resources and other things, you kind of keep people trapped in. And then you harass them instead of showing them a desire to help them... they’re not going to interpret that as you trying to do right by them,” he said.
When children approach Lawson at the food truck and ask him for money, Lawson pays them to complete small tasks and offers them words of guidance on how to deal with peer pressure or anger issues. Lawson will stop and talk with drug dealers he sees while riding around town. He encourages them to create an account with the Department of Labor and take the first steps to get a job.
Lawson has shared his story and spoken with students at several Muscogee County schools, including Carver High School.
The end goal for Lawson is to have as many food trucks as he can. He’d like to hire people who were previously incarcerated and local folks who grew up in a world similar to his own. Eventually, Lawson wants to open a brick-and-mortar soul food restaurant. It’s all just the tip of the iceberg, he said.
“Sometimes, I look at myself in the mirror. I look at my wife. I look at my daughters, and to know there were statistics and people behind the statistics that would say ‘He’s not gonna make it.’ That alone is encouraging and empowering to me,” he said. “You’ve got a system that calls people like me, at one point in time, monsters. But now this ‘monster’ is a man and a father and a business owner and a visionary.”
This story was originally published October 19, 2021 at 5:00 AM.