a person · TNAndré Prince Jeffries

Took over her great-uncle Thornton Prince's café in 1980, dropped the BBQ out of its name, and has run Prince's Hot Chicken Shack since. Her account of the dish is the account most writers work from, and she gives it without claiming to have settled it.

Maude Prince, widow of Thornton's brother Will, decided in 1980 that the business should go to Thornton's great-niece. André renamed it by subtraction, taking the BBQ out of Prince's BBQ Chicken Shack.

Joe York recorded her for the Southern Foodways Alliance on 7 July 2006. "It's a 24-hour chicken," she told him, and the chicken is not dropped into the skillet until it is ordered. On who orders it hottest: "More women eat it hot than men, and I don't know why that is but they do." On not advertising, in 2006, she counted eighteen years of not doing it.

She declines to close the origin question herself. Speaking to The Bitter Southerner she said: "Of course, a few folks say that before there was Prince's BBQ Chicken Shack, there was a place called Bo's." She quotes her mother twice in that piece — "if you know people are gonna talk, give them something to talk about" and "if you have what people want, they will make their way to your door" — which is closer to a business philosophy than a founding myth.

Under her the café moved to Ewing Drive in East Nashville. In December 2018 a Ford Explorer crashed into the strip mall housing it and set the building alight. The restaurant itself was undamaged and she expected two weeks; damage to the building and the landlord's delays over repairs ran to seven months, and she announced the closure permanent. That location had been open since 1989.

The James Beard Foundation named Prince's an America's Classic in 2013. Bill Purcell, mayor of Nashville, called his table there his second office.

Mild, medium and hot on the board, with hotter grades past that; cayenne paste goes on the chicken after the fry, spooned and pressed in by hand in a glove. Served on white bread with pickle chips.

Prince's operates out of Assembly Food Hall in Nashville, with further locations the company lists including South Nashville, the airport and Tanger Outlets. Sources read on 16 September 2026 record her as the owner; nothing later was checked.