Estella and Knoxie Hall

Business Owners | Class of 2016

Operated by the Hall Family, K. Hall and Sons is a longstanding black-owned business on Wright Avenue in Little Rock, Arkansas. Originally founded as a produce store, it now also encompasses a restaurant and a wholesale food distribution business.

K. Hall and Sons was founded by Knoxie Hall, Sr., and Estella Marie Crenshaw Hall. Knoxie Hall was born on September 13, 1924. Estella Hall was born on November 24, 1927. They married on December 16, 1944, and had seven children. Knoxie Hall owned and operated several different businesses, including a carwash and detail business and a farm. His experience operating the carwash convinced him of the need to be independent, for at the peak of his operation’s success, his white land lord canceled their rental agreement, only to open a carwash at the same site himself soon thereafter.

In 1973, Knoxie Hall purchased a former gas station to use as a storefront for selling produce from his Wrightsville farm. He remodeled the building and named it Hall’s Produce. Estella Hall managed the store while Knoxie oversaw his other business enterprises. In 1984, their children entered the family business and expanded it to include wholesale food supply; the name was changed to K. Hall and Sons Produce. Ten years later, the family shareholders established a holding company, K. Hall and Sons Enterprises, Inc. Knoxie Hall died on August 21, 2009; Estella Hall died on November 27, 2013.

In addition to wholesale produce supply and direct sales, K. Hall and Sons also includes a restaurant. As David Hall noted in an interview with the Rock City Eats website, the restaurant came about by accident: “Most of the food that we cook now, we actually started out cooking for ourselves. And people would come in and say, ‘Hey, is that for sale?’” K. Hall and Sons is well known for its hamburgers, as well as for the weekly seafood boils that attract customers in droves.