There is nothing like a mother’s love, and for Ralph Rolle, his mother’s love was pervasive.
The entrepreneur is on a mission to share his mother’s love and legacy with the world in the form of food–Soul Food. He is the owner of Soul Snacks Cafe and Cookie Company in the Bronx, NY.
Ralph Rolle has spent more than 30 years as a musician and is a highly sought-after drummer. He’s worked with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Notorious B.I.G., and Queen Latifa, among others. Despite working with such legends, he always tries to remain humble and stick to the music itself. “The music is a lot more important than you are. So you have to play it from a place of humility.” It’s a philosophy and mantra that Rolle carries into his baking with Soul Snacks. Rolle started the business in 2019.
He grew up in the projects, came from a baking family, and took up the art around eight. His mother and grandmother’s footsteps inspired him. He grew up as a shy kid and used baking to meet people and get them to like him in school. “Ghetto life is tough, but ghetto life gives you a view of life and living in a very special way,” he says.
Rolle credits many people and experiences for his success, but his mother and grandmother are the people he credits the most, both of whom taught him many life lessons. “My grandmother was not a woman of a lot of words. She was very wise, she said her piece and kept going,” he recalls. “Our grandmother would give us the mixing bowl after she was done baking something, and it was our job to clean that bowl,” he says. However, his mother was his role model.
“She was very concerned about the four kids she had to raise on her own, but she was concerned about the other kids in the neighborhood,” he said. Additionally, his mother was a community activist of sorts. “When things would go wrong {in the building} or with certain people in the projects, {people} wouldn’t go to the management office; they would go to my mother,” he says. His mother passed away at 55 from cancer when he was 23.
However, Rolle makes sure that he continues the family legacy with Soul Snacks. The delicacies are available at some area Walmart stores or via the Soul Snacks website at
https://www.facebook.com/SoulSnacks/