Heather Crowe has a lot more elbow room. She also has more cooking room, more seating room and a larger menu.

For the past few months Crowe has been busy building her new restaurant, Soda Pops, from the floor up in the new strip mall across from the Natchez Mall. And while the location and the name may be new, Natchezians are very familiar with the food Crowe will offer.

She is simply moving her operation across the highway from Edna’s Cake Creations to her own space.

“What I was doing at Edna’s Cakes was just two businesses in one place,” Crowe said. “It was too much for that one building to hold, and I thought this was a prime location.”

The new locations offers Crowe more space to move around so she thought it was a perfect time to expand the menu offerings. But don’t worry, she said all the favorites from Edna’s will remain on the menu.

“It’s going to be the same, but a lot more,” she said. “All of the old sandwiches will be back and the recipes for the chicken salad and tuna salad are the exact same.”

The extra space the new building offers is one reason Crowe is expanding the menu. But she said other factors influenced the decision.

“Now we are not having to stop and do cakes in the middle,” she said.

Crowe said she is still finalizing the menu for the restaurant’s mid-May opening, but said several more sandwiches have been added as well as a made-to-order baked potatoes and soup in bread bowls.

And just because she is leaving the bakery setting, Crowe didn’t forget to add a little something sweet to her menu.

“We’re gong to have marble slab ice cream like they have a Coldstone Creamery,” she said. “And we will be doing homemade ice cream.”

The food part isn’t new to Crowe, but planning and constructing is completely new.

But, she said, the road to opening has been fairly smooth.

“It has been good because I’m getting everything the way I want it,” she said. “Parts of the process have been kind of stressful, but overall it has been good.

“I don’t know anything about construction, but now to see everything coming together, it is very exciting.”

Crowe said the restaurant is on track to open in a couple of weeks, but she will be the second Natchez Mall strip mall tenant to open its doors.

Marie Lofton, Natchez Mall manager, said Sally’s beauty supply store opened a few weeks back, and has settled in nicely to its new location.

“They are just loving it over here,” Lofton said.

The beauty supply store moved relocated to the strip mall from its Trace Town Shopping Center location. Lofton said the reports from the store indicate that the move was a good decision.

“Everyone says it is great,” she said. “They are doing good.”

Other stores slated to open in the shopping center are Game Stop, a video game store, the Armed Forces Career Center, which will feature recruiting offices for the Army, Navy and Marines and King of Hearts, a formal wear rental business will relocate from the mall to the strip mall.

Lofton said Game Stop is planning a June 1 opening and the Armed Forces Career Center should follow soon after.

Along the way, construction was slowed by wet weather, but once things dried up, Lofton said work progressed quickly and smoothly.

“The big problem was getting the parking lot poured,” Lofton said. “They couldn’t do much else until they got that done, but once it dried up, work went well.”

Lofton said the additions to the mall’s offerings are exciting and she hopes the new occupants are just the beginning.

Currently the strip mall has two available spaces and the mall also has two spots open.

“The mall management company is looking hard and I’m looking hard,” she said.

Lofton said she thinks one success, could breed many other opportunities.

“All these businesses are looking for is that the people can support their business,” she said. “Once we show that, I think they will come.”