Helping black women-owned businesses succeed in difficult times

“Noticing that there were very few places for the community to meet in my own neighborhood in Brooklyn, despite the image of an entrepreneur who looked nothing like us, my husband and I decided to start our own business.”

I am a fourth generation Bushwick kid. I follow a line of powerful women who were all born there, from my great grandmother to my grandmother and mother. So, when I noticed very few places in my own neighborhood in Brooklyn where the community came together to meet, even though it looked nothing like the image of an entrepreneur, my husband and I decided to start our own business. We named our business Bushwick Grind to my family to create a space focused on diversity and equality.

Black entrepreneurs are starting businesses at a faster rate than other groups. Against the odds, we’ve built businesses from the ground up, transformed our communities and made meaningful contributions to the economy. In the words of physician Sidney Labatt, “We are truly the wildest dreams of our ancestors.

There are countless stories of black businesses that have found ways to thrive in the most dire of circumstances – and it looks like we have a lot of hills to climb. Headlines are full of the economic problems facing small businesses: inflation, labor shortages, and disrupted supply chains.

A new survey of 10,000 recent graduates of the Goldman Sachs Business Education Program found that 78 percent of small business owners say the economy has gotten worse in the past three months. In addition, 93 percent are concerned that the US economy will slow down in the next 12 months. But there is some good news: 65 percent say they are optimistic about the financial direction of their business this year.

Although the economic forecast may not be bright, I know that black-owned small businesses are a sign of hope for the economy.

Entrepreneurs are the forerunners who face economic headwinds and spark innovation around them, showing the rest of the country what’s to come. Black businesses are often disproportionately affected, and sometimes we have to think on our feet and adapt faster than our peers.

I am living proof of what it means to be battle tested. After closing for nine months during the pandemic, we used our facility as a pop-up for other local businesses to create a community fridge that is still serving the community today. My persistence has paid off, and I’ve seen my influence grow in Brooklyn and beyond. In fact, I became a certified minority business and secured a government contract to provide 400 meals a day to vaccination centers in New York City.