Tiffany Jones, owner of Ninety and Nine Cafe in Scottsville, sits in her business Monday morning. (Photo by JUSTIN STORY)

SCOTTSVILLE — Tiffany Jones lives to serve.

In recent years, Jones has helmed a number of ventures intended to foster connections and help people in need, efforts that have included a clothing boutique and a cafe.

Jones’ latest business, Ninety and Nine Cafe, received special recognition this month from the Kentucky Heritage Council, receiving a 2025 Spirit of Main Street Award from the council’s Kentucky Main Street Program.

Main Street Awards are intended to recognize local leaders, entrepreneurs and volunteers for their community development and preservation efforts, with Jones cited in particular for using Ninety and Nine Cafe to uplift and serve the community.

Each month, the cafe on East Main Street hosts Care Village, a community event that offers free hot meals, along with clothing and other supplies, to people in need.

“That’s my goal here, is to help people know that they are loved and they have a place to come to if they want to talk to people,” Jones said. “On a daily basis, not just once a month, they can come here and tell us how they feel and what they need help with.”

Ninety and Nine opened last year — the name is a reference to the biblical parable of the lost sheep in which Jesus spoke of a shepherd leaving his flock of 99 sheep to find one that wandered away.

That story of having compassion for others regardless of their circumstances motivates Jones.

“Jesus left the 99 to find the one and that’s our goal here — you look and see if everybody’s okay and then you go get the one that’s not okay,” Jones said. “It’s about finding the one — I was the one at one point … it’s not just about food and feeding, it’s about what food and feeding opens up.”

A former certified nurse’s assistant and stay-at-home mother, Jones co-founded Beautiful You Boutique with friends, working out of her home at first before moving in 2018 into the building downtown that now houses Ninety and Nine.

When it was a home business, Jones encouraged customers to sign her dining room wall and talk about “whatever the Lord had done in their lives.”

At the storefront, patrons could hang prayer requests on the wall.

Jones was involved in Beautiful You for about five years before selling the business to a friend and taking a sabbatical, reemerging in October with Ninety and Nine.

After some remodeling, the cafe reopened in March, and Jones gets help in the kitchen from two of her friends, along with her mother and two daughters.

Ninety and Nine is becoming known among locals for its fettucine alfredo, which brings in a rush of customers on Fridays, and Jones said she has sentimental attachments to her mother’s meatloaf and late grandmother’s peach cobbler recipes.

Jones was presented with the award at a ceremony in Frankfort earlier this month, meeting with other community leaders from across the state who were similarly honored.

“You feel like sometimes you’re not doing enough, but then somebody spotlights you like that – you don’t need it, but the affirmation is good,” Jones said. “An award is great, but meeting people like that who are really making a change, doing so much for their towns and making them beautiful, that makes it worth the while.”

Her long-term ambitions involve expanding her community outreach, speaking of one day having a traveling version of the cafe.

Jones’ compassion-driven work keeps her grounded, a way to pay forward the help she and her husband received when they were on more financially unsteady footing.

“We were never out on the streets, but we know what it was like to be striving and trying to make it and not have anything,” Jones said. “I know my purpose is here to do what the Lord wants me to do, whether it’s serve food or go out and talk to people.”