‘We had this connection’: Restaurant owner and customer come closer together through tragedies

By Quanecia Fraser

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    OMAHA, Nebraska (KETV) — Two separate tragedies tie a restaurant owner with one of her customers. Both women have now had to deal with the sudden loss of their children.

Running a restaurant is anything but easy, especially with a labor shortage and supply chain issues.

“It might be two or three months before you get stuff in,” Rib Shack owner Jackie Robbins said. “It might be simple as baked beans or it might be wings.”

On Jan. 15, Jackie was hit with another setback that would not only impact her restaurant but her entire family.

“I got a phone call in the morning about 6:00 in the morning that my son had a car wreck,” Jackie’s husband, Malcolm, said.

Jackie and Malcolm’s son, Malcolm Jr., died at 31 years old in their hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.

“We keep finding out things but we don’t know the actual true story of what happened… and it’s 30 days later right now. We still don’t know,” Malcolm said.

While they wait for answers, Jackie is struggling to keep the Rib Shack afloat, after her son’s passing pushed her to close the restaurant for nearly a month.

“Once we got the news, we got on the highway right away,” Jackie said.

When they returned to Omaha and reopened over the weekend, Jackie noticed a familiar face: Kathy Anderson.

“She always comes and is a blessing just to see her. She’s always been supportive of us,” Jackie said.

“My heart went out to them, I was just like ‘oh my gosh, I know exactly what you’re going through,'” Anderson said.

And that’s no exaggeration. Anderson lost her son Chris in a crash near 264th and West Q in September 2020.

“I miss him. A part of me went with him,” Anderson said.

“I never even knew about her son until she came Saturday,” Jackie said. “It’s one thing when someone is like, ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ but they don’t really know how you feel. But (Anderson) can relate to how we feel because she lost her son,” Jackie said.

Through unimaginable pain, the friendship of the two women is only growing stronger.

“It was just like, a connection. It was just like, we had this connection the two of us,” Anderson said.

While Jackie continues to grieve, she knows Anderson is always a call or an order away.

The Rib Shack has a GoFundMe to help the restaurant financially recover from closing for weeks.

You can find the Rib Shack at 10841 Q St., Suite 105.

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