A new soul food dining option will pop up in Wichita starting this weekend

For a while now, she has had a full-time job as a sous chef at a hospital. She runs her own catering business. She’s a single mother to an 8-year-old son, and she also is her father’s caretaker.

But Tayneka Diggs loves to cook — especially soul food— and people who try her food always want more, she said.

So this weekend, Diggs, who is the owner of MJ’s Catering and More, will add another job to her already packed schedule. Starting on Sunday, she’ll begin offering weekly popups called Soul Food Sundays, where she’ll sell plated meals of soul food favorites from the new commercial kitchens at 103 E. 21st St. that are owned by Empower, a nonprofit focused on helping small businesses.

From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays, customers will be able to stop into the kitchens and get one of Diggs’ meals. They can choose from main courses such as Jamaican oxtails over white rice, chicken and dressing, fried or smothered pork chops and fried chicken, and she’ll also have sides like mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, greens with smoked turkey meat, cabbage and candied yams.

Each meal will come with a main course, two side dishes and a choice of bread: Diggs will offer both sweet potato and regular cornbread. She also has homemade desserts for sale, including sweet potato pie, peach cobbler, butter pecan cake and pistachio cake.

People can order the food ahead and get it at a pickup window, and Empower’s kitchens also have space for dine-in customers.

“I eat and breathe cooking,” said Diggs, who has owned her catering business for about seven years. “I didn’t really see myself doing much different.”

A caterer first

Diggs works full time as the sous chef at Wesley Woodlawn Hospital & ER, 2610 N. Woodlawn, but she’s been cooking for 20 years, she said. She grew up watching her grandmother cook and was obsessed with cooking shows as a kid. Diggs also was one of the early students in Butler Community College’s culinary arts program.

When she became pregnant nine years ago, she said, she started thinking about a way to make some extra money.

“Everybody always says they like my food,” she said. “So I basically just started cooking for my friends and family.”

She would make plates from her home every Sunday, and every Sunday, they’d sell out. But like many entrepreneurial cooks, Diggs soon learned that the state health department requires that food for sale be prepared in a commercial kitchen, so she set out to find one.

Diggs said that a customer recommended Empower and that the operations manage Sally Aguilar made setting up her small business incredibly easy. Within two weeks, Diggs said, she had an LLC and the proper license and was making plans to start her Soul Food Sunday popups.

“It is just so beautiful in there,” Diggs said of the Empower kitchens. “They’ve done a really, really good job.”

Diggs said her passion is her catering business, and she’s had lots of jobs — both big and small — over the years. She’s done large jobs for Cessna and the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office and has also catered weddings, birthday parties and “anything that anybody needs.”

Soul food is her specialty, Diggs said, but she’s also known for Italian and Mexican fare and loves setting up nacho or pasta bars.

Diggs, who named MJ’s Catering for her son, Malachi Jay, has been working in kitchens since she was 15, and her resume includes stints at The Kitchen and at Riverside Hospital. She’s been with Wesley for four years, she said, and her supervisors let her serve her specialties in the cafe, which is open to the public.

Diggs said that she’s been able to pursue her culinary passions despite the fact that she is partially blind. She lost sight in her left eye when she was 25 years old — she’s now 39 — and has one prosthetic eye. But she didn’t let her vision impairment stop her from going to culinary school and starting her career, she said.

“People always ask me, ‘How do you do all this cooking?’” she said. “But I feel like when something’s your passion, you just do it. You just go.”

This story was originally published August 20, 2025 at 5:46 AM with the headline "A new soul food dining option will pop up in Wichita starting this weekend."

Denise Neil

The Wichita Eagle

316-268-6327

Denise Neil has covered restaurants and entertainment since 1997. Her Dining with Denise Facebook page is the go-to place for diners to get information about local restaurants. She’s a regular judge at local food competitions and speaks to groups all over Wichita about dining.