Rib Shack Smokehouse, located at 10841 Q St., is more than a family business for foodies Malcolm and Jackie Robbins.
It is the culmination of a bittersweet journey the faith-filled couple’s been on for a decade. That journey began in St. Louis, where they owned and operated restaurants. Jackie did the books and marketing. Malcolm handled the kitchen. They ensured their front of house was on point. She won entrepreneurship awards and mentored other restauranters.
The couple drew on generations of family recipes and techniques. Their original Rib Shacks became must-stops for devotees of St. Louis style barbecue and down-home Southern soul cooking. Things went sour when congestive heart failure put Malcolm on the transplant list. A series of setbacks, including strokes, open heart surgeries and a brain bleed that landed him in a coma made him a poor candidate. Physicians held out little hope. Rather than resign himself to a fate others determined for him, he opted to fight.
“I’m not the type of person that’s going to just lay here and die,” Malcolm said. “I just can’t do that. That’s not me. I’m at least going to try and do something for myself. But I didn’t know where to go, what to do.”
Running out of time, he researched where he stood the best chance of getting a new heart without a long wait. That’s what led him to Nebraska Medicine’s heart transplant program in Omaha, where he had family roots. It was the start of another odyssey.
Meanwhile, the crises took the couple away from running their “stores,” whose management they put in the hands of others only to find they were in free fall. Though Jackie said their restaurants out-performed many franchises, the couple went broke paying for his medical expenses.
“We weren’t prepared for hardship,” she added.
Part of the struggle was Malcolm not doing what doctors prescribed. Jackie was so upset that he stopped doing what he was supposed to that the couple separated.
The Robbins closed their restaurants and while Jackie worked consulting jobs down South he came to Omaha in 2018, where he couch surfed before renting an RV to live in that he got permission to park on the Nebraska Medicine campus.
“I was getting adjusted to leaving my family and living in people’s houses and then living alone in the trailer,” he said.
His sense of isolation increased between the pandemic protocols of COVID-19 and the police barricades that went up around Black Lives Matter protests. “It was a crazy time. A lot of people were dying from COVID and he was considered high risk,” she said.
He spent two years in Omaha waiting for a new heart. Finding a match was difficult, given his large size and rare blood type. Getting one his system wouldn’t reject would be hard given the high anti-body counts he inherited from multiple blood transfusions.
“I really felt like giving up,” Malcolm said. “I was thinking it’s all over – that I did everything I could do and that God’s got other plans for me.”
Under close medical supervision, he exercised to ensure he would be in good enough shape to survive a transplant and maintain a new heart.
At his lowest point, a desperate Malcolm called Jackie late one night in the summer of 2020.
“He was talking about leaving and giving up,” she said, “and I told him, ‘You waited this long, you need to stay and see what God is going to do.’ In the middle of that conversation he said, ‘Hold on, I’ve got a phone call coming in.’ I wondered who’s calling this late at night. He came back on to say, ‘They called me for my heart.’ We were FaceTiming family (the news) on one phone and messaging on another.”
He let her know he wanted her there. She hesitated but agreed, figuring if God could give him a second chance then she could, too. He was admitted to the hospital that night and she hit the road the next day to join him. En route to Omaha, his physician reminded her that even though a match had been found he was at high risk for rejection, given his compromised profile. She was alarmed when told there had been a scare during the procedure.
“He had a lot of odds against him,” Jackie said. “But God was in control. I started praying, ‘Lord, please don’t let this be a false hope. We can’t afford this for him.’”
To her relief, he came out of the procedure alright. She considered it nothing less than “a blessing and miracle.” They resumed their committed life together.
Relief turned to shock when his medical team insisted he remain in Omaha permanently so they could best supervise his recovery, including a regimen of meds, checkups, exercise and diet he needs to follow the rest of his life.
“I didn’t know that his doctors were going to want him to live here to be under their care. But then I figured that if we’ve got to stay here to get him care so he can live, well, that’s what we’ve gotta do,” she said.
With no income, she had to move fast.
“As the new head of the household, I had to figure out how to pay the bills. I’m a businessperson, I know how to make things happen,” Jackie said.
A campaign raised much needed capital.
“Family, friends kicked in. Got us a place to stay,” she said. “United Way 211 was a big help in finding other resources. St. Vincent DePaul (Pantry) helped. The Furniture Project helped. I had a drop off day in front of the trailer where people dropped off stuff to help us prepare for him to come home.”
With Jackie’s experience in the food business it was only natural she looked at launching a new restaurant in Omaha while Malcolm recovered. A friend gave her a lead on a site.
“The landlord met with me and I told him our story,” Jackie said. “He agreed to help us and made a handshake deal to give us this place rent free for a year. And that was the start. Our kids brought down from St. Louis our recipes and the one smoker we had left.”
Perhaps it was providence that put the devout Christians’ new Rib Shack in a strip mall plaza next to Holiness Apostolic Temple. Getting the bay ready for its new incarnation meant cleaning out a few years worth of grime from the space that had been empty and unmaintained since an Indian eatery moved out.
“It took a lot of hard work before the business opened and even after,” Jackie said. “I was in here day and night. When we started, we didn’t have any money. Family helped us with stock. Everything was sweat and tears, grassroots, boots on the ground, nonstop.
“I’ve always been a get up and do whatever needs doing type person but my husband and sons pampered and spoiled me by always doing the hard grind grit work. If we’d had money it probably would have taken 90 days but it stretched out from September to March (2020).”
All the while, Malcolm followed progress from afar.
“What made me feel bad about it was that I couldn’t help,” he said.
But Jackie wasn’t entirely on her own.
“I was blessed with some angels that came around and helped,” including family.
“When I did come and see it completed I was very happy,” Malcolm recalled.
Their Omaha Rib Shack proved an instant hit – with lines waiting to get in for their 2021 hard opening.
“We didn’t expect that,” said Jackie, who anticipated a slow build up.
But it turned out she did enough promotion via social media, including posts on food lover group pages, that when opening day arrived hordes of followers showed out.
No sooner did they get off to a great start than more hardship struck.
“We had a great weekend and the following Monday the bathroom flooded,” she said. “We had to get ready to reopen before our stock went bad. I got the landlord to agree to replace the floor but who ended up tearing it up? Me. I didn’t have time to wait.”
A new floor was installed and fans once again lined up for her mouthwatering meals. Malcolm’s proud that she became Nebraska’s first woman pit master.
“She could always cook,” he said. “Her Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were always beautiful.”
Cooking for the new restaurant raised her game to a new level, especially reproducing a quality product time and again.
“I transformed into that,” she said of her pit mastery. “I transformed into having to do what I had to do because I couldn’t afford to hire a pit master. That is an art I had to master myself.
“It’s traditional St. Louis style. We cook our ribs dry with my special seasonings. We sauce them before serving. And we like the potato salad and the bread. You can’t have one without the other.”
Rib Shack became a reality in 2021 only for tragedy to strike in 2022 when the couple lost their son, Malcolm Jr., whose death was initially reported as an accident after the truck he was driving lost control on black ice. He was celebrating his birthday in East St. Louis.
“We come to find out he was murdered,” she said. “It’s still unclear how that happened.”
With their son’s cold case weighing on them, they persevere, something they’re long practiced at by now.
“I think we are together – conquerors. If we ever separate it won’t be the same,” Malcolm said.
Jackie’s found a fellow traveler in customer turned friend Kathy Anderson, who lost a son of her own. The pair formed a bond.
“She checks on me, I check on her,” Jackie said.
After Malcolm Jr. died, the Robbins closed Rib Shack for a few months. They held a ribbon cutting reopening in his memory.
“People came and prayed,” said Jackie. “A pastor from St. Louis came. It was a big deal.”
It was a chance to reconnect and for followers of Malcolm’s heart odyssey to celebrate. She deemed it “a double whammy blessing.”
Three of her children work in the business today. A son is being groomed to be able to take it over one day.
“That’ s what we pray – that’s how we’re trying to set it up,” Jackie said.
Business has remained brisk between in-store dining, take-out and catering orders. Malcolm said they’ve built a base of loyal customers and attract new ones “on her cooking alone,” good enough to earn a 4.9 Google rating and invitations to judge BBQ competitions. They gained fans at the annual 4 the Love of BBQ in Miller Park.
The Robbins don’t have as much space as they did in St Louis, where they also had drive-thru service, and they offer a scaled down menu in Omaha.
“The food is the same. We have all the essentials,” Jackie said.
Those essentials include ribs, brisket, pulled pork, chicken, turkey legs, turkey wings, catfish, collards, green beans, yams, potato salad, slaw, mac and cheese, spaghetti, cornbread.
Another thing that hasn’t changed is their warm customer service and community engagement. She lets customers know they’re appreciated.
“I start knowing them by their names,” Jackie said. “I love to give hugs and greet people. We build relationships. They become like family.”
By popular demand, she’s working on a cookbook she hopes to have out by year’s end.
Keeping a tradition they began in St. Louis, where their community service was recognized, the family feeds and sometimes employs the homeless. They’ve provided meals to families staying at the Ronald McDonald House. Last fall they hosted a fundraiser for a family that moved from St. Louis to Nebraska after suffering trauma.
“We’ve always given back,” Jackie said. “We both grew up poor. We know how it is to have and not to have. Giving back is in our blood lines. It’s just who we are. God put us together having that same mindset to give back. Even if we wanted to get away from it I don’t think we could.”
An appreciative Malcolm and his family participate in charitable causes around heart health issues and awareness and even have a foundation, Heart4Malcolm. He often shares his inspirational story with media outlets and has been a featured transplant recipient for Nebraska Medicine, Live On Nebraska and Heart Heroes.
Jackie never intended on making Omaha her and Malcolm’s forever home but that’s what it’s become. ”I love Omaha. It reminds me of home, of how we used to be in St Louis, like family before we became the Wild Wild West.”
The couple is planning to expand the venue’s physical footprint and add more locations “if that’s where God wants to take us,” Jackie said. They look to mentor aspiring and emerging hospitality entrepreneurs.
“We want to help others who have the dream we had to build a family legacy,” Jackie said. “We want to pass that down to other families.”
She and Malcolm take satisfaction in having pulled through and made a fresh start with the support of a community that’s responded to their food and their struggles.
“We just try to do our best and to make sure we’re good stewards of our business and show God we appreciate what he’s blessed us with. We try to do right by family, staff, customers. That’s how we live our life.”
10841 Q St Suite 105
402-502-6695
Open: Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 8 p.m.
Closed Mondays.
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