Ashley Mac’s Kitchen

In the heart of Cahaba Heights, near Vestavia Hills City Hall and the public library, Ashley Mac’s Kitchen serves the neighborhood as a fast-casual cafe built on fresh Southern lunches, prepared take-home meals, and a bakery case that has developed a loyal following across the Birmingham area.

The business began small, when founder Ashley McMakin started preparing meals from her home kitchen in Bluff Park as a newlywed, drawing on a family of skilled Southern cooks for her recipes and cooking style. Poppyseed chicken, yeast rolls, and a strawberry cake were among the earliest dishes she made for friends and neighbors, and those same recipes became fixtures at family gatherings and community meal trains before the business ever had a storefront. What started as home-based catering eventually outgrew that small kitchen and grew into the business now known as Ashley Mac’s. McMakin, who holds a marketing and advertising degree from the University of Alabama, runs the company today alongside her husband, Andy McMakin, and the pair have expanded to five locations across the Birmingham metro, including Cahaba Heights, downtown Birmingham, Inverness, Riverchase, and Homewood, all under the same family ownership rather than a franchised model.

The Cahaba Heights location sits inside Vestavia Hills, close enough to city hall and the library that it functions as something of a community hub for residents running errands or stopping in after a visit to the library. The menu leans on fresh, prepared Southern food: sandwiches, salads, and soups make up the core lunch offering, with a chicken salad sandwich, a baby bleu salad, and a mandarin orange salad all popular standing orders among regulars. A broccoli slaw, a Greek pasta salad, and sour cream biscuits round out the side dish options that regulars build a full plate around.

What sets Ashley Mac’s apart from a typical lunch cafe is its take-and-bake frozen meal program, a direct extension of McMakin’s original catering business. Poppyseed chicken, chicken pot pie, and beef stroganoff are all available prepared and frozen for families to finish at home, a service that has proven especially useful on busy weeknights or for anyone hosting a gathering without wanting to cook a full meal from scratch. The restaurant’s Famous Strawberry Cake has become something close to a signature item across all five locations, mentioned by name in nearly every profile written about the business over the years, and it is joined on the dessert case by individual cake slices sold alongside the whole cakes.

Weekends bring a specific treat unique to the schedule: the Andy Mac Burger, named for McMakin’s husband, appears only as a weekend special rather than a standing menu item, giving regulars a reason to plan a Saturday visit around it. The dessert case covers mini cupcakes, brownies, and the cafe’s signature MAC cookies, all sized for a quick grab-and-go purchase alongside a lunch order.

The business’s growth has not gone unnoticed locally. Ashley Mac’s received the Small Business and Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2012 and was named Alabama Retail Association’s Gold Retailer of the Year in 2022, recognition that reflects both the growth from one home kitchen to five storefronts and the consistency the McMakins have maintained across that expansion. In March 2023, McMakin also published a debut cookbook of more than one hundred recipes, organized around meaningful moments with loved ones, from tailgating to holiday gatherings, extending the brand’s reach well beyond the Birmingham metro.

The Cahaba Heights location keeps a straightforward weekday and Saturday schedule, ten-thirty to six-thirty on weekdays and ten-thirty to three on Saturdays, closed Sundays. For anyone in Vestavia Hills who wants a Southern lunch made fresh, or a frozen family dinner ready to bake without much effort, Ashley Mac’s remains one of the more established locally owned names in the neighborhood.