Black History
Black-Owned Businesses to Support—Now & Always
A list of restaurants, businesses, and larger initiatives to back.
Black Lives Matter. We at Food52 are devastated by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Dreasjon Reed, and so many others. We stand in solidarity with the Black community, and hope that this coverage will serve as a helpful and important resource to further antiracism work in our community.
As we commit to finding more and better ways to combat systemic racism, we also pledge to devote more of our time, platform, and resources to uplifting the Black community.
We believe that a healthy, equitable economic ecosystem is one that is without barriers based on race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Every voice and experience is worth celebrating—not just now, but all the time.
So, in addition to donating to organizations most immediately combating racial injustice, we also urge you to consider patronizing more Black-owned businesses, and more frequently. We hope you'll support these chefs, makers, retailers, and activists—many of whom have also suffered significant losses due to the pandemic.
Here is a list of individual businesses and larger initiatives you can back, with your money or time. This is designed to be a starting point, and is by no means complete. If there are resources you'd like us to include, please add them to the comments below, and our editors will update it accordingly.
As for us: We are dedicating this week to spotlighting resources, communities, and people working towards eradicating racism—through food, media, education, and literature. This is one small step on our journey to becoming better listeners and allies.
Support Black Owned. A blog and directory of Black-owned businesses across the world.
Food Education Fund. A job training and entrepreneurship program to empower and prepare Black high-school school students for careers in the food industry.
Black Girl Ventures. An organization that creates access to much-needed capital for Black and Brown female business owners.
Code Fever Miami is shifting the way Black communities engage with and create value within the innovation and tech sectors. Another organization working towards inclusion in the coding community is Black Girls Code.
Black and Brown Founders provides community, education, and access to Black and Latinx entrepreneurs with otherwise modest resources. Black Female Founders is another that provides critical resources and information to help Black female founders grow.
Okra Academy via The Okra Project trains Black Trans people kitchen basics and recipes to enrich their own culinary lives, as well as prepare them to work as chefs themselves. The Okra Project also provides home-cooked meals for the vulnerable Black Trans community.
Uniquely You is an annual summit geared towards the empowerment of young Black teens.
Accion. A nationwide nonprofit lending network that bolsters and supports small businesses.
If you’d like to educate yourself on other Black entrepreneurship programs and initiatives, you can find a list here.
If your city is not listed here, try scrolling through the comprehensive directory on Black Owned, where you can search by city and industry to connect with businesses in your neighborhood and leave reviews to boost their visibility.
The team at Cherry Bombe also put out this extensive list spotlighting Black women and their businesses and projects.
Atlanta
A list of over 100 Black-owned businesses in Atlanta, via Atlanta Beltline Hates You.
Here are some of the best Black-owned restaurants from Atlanta Eats.
Austin
- All of the shops and restaurants to support in Austin's communities, via Austin Monthly.
The Bay Area
- Here is a list of over 200 restaurants in the Bay Area, from the San Francisco Chronicle's restaurant critic, Soleil Ho.
Chicago
Black People Eats. A comprehensive directory of Black-owned Chicago restaurants that also includes this take-out and delivery guide.
A guide to 24 restaurants on Chicago's North Side can be found here.
Black Owned Chicago. A directory to discover and connect with great businesses in local neighborhoods.
DC
A list of black-owned restaurants still open in the DMV, via Black food writer and advocate Anela Malik's insightful blog.
Busboys and Poets is a multi-location "community gathering place for artists, activists, writers, thinkers and dreamers." You can support them at this time by ordering from the full lunch and dinner menu available online.
Denver
- A list via 303 Magazine that hopes to include every single Black-owned business in the city limits of Denver, including, but not limited to, food, retail, and wellness.
Los Angeles
Kat Hong, an editorial assistant at The Infatuation, has compiled an extensive Google Sheet that's very helpfully sorted alphabetically by neighborhood, which means you should be able to find at least one option near you.
Here is another list of 85 Black-owned food businesses from the L.A. Times.
Louisville
- Here are some incredible black-owned restaurants and food businesses in Louisville that come recommended by Yelp's Louisville member squad.
Minnesota
- Here is mspmag.com's directory of businesses you can support in the Twin Cities, at the epicenter of the protests. This list from citypages.com is focused on restaurants and bars.
New Jersey
- Community member Danielle Davis came through with this list of Black-owned eateries compiled by Justin Oh.
NYC
A comprehensive, and growing, list of nearly 200 restaurants in the city assembled by Bon Appetit's associate social media director Rachel Karten and research director Joseph Hernandez, and The New Yorker's food critic Hannah Goldfield—all organized by neighborhood.
Black Owned Brooklyn. A resource aimed at making it easier for you to discover local Black-owned businesses as well documenting Black life in the borough.
Portland
- A crowd-sourced directory of Black-owned businesses, and a second one that's focused on just restaurants.
Seattle
- Here's a great map of restaurants in Seattle shared by community member Urban Homemade.
We'd like to give a special shout-out to restaurants, already hit hard by COVID-19, that are choosing to stay open and nourish protestors with food, supplies, and kind words:
- Pimento Kitchen in Minnesota.
- Black Earth Farms in Oakland.
Minnie Bell's Soul Movement in Oakland. Owner and chef Fernay McPherson shares her experiences as a Black business owner amid nationwide protests here.
Sol Sips and Tamra Teahouse in Brooklyn.
Also, check in with your local mutual aid chapter (like this one in Crown Heights, Brooklyn), which is likely feeding protestors and could use your support.
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33 Comments
A review of the links identifying the Black owned restaurants in Manhattan shows a complete absence of businesses in Washington Heights, a heavily Dominican neighborhood. Really?
While I appreciate the staff Food 52 saying they will try to do their best to diversify, please remember that genocide, termination, and the vicious systematic exclusion from basic human rights are being visited upon multiple groups in this country. Racism has a BIG footprint and affects decision making in many levels of society. It is has been reflected even in a "nice" site like Food52. Food52 has been called out for lack of diversity before and has apologized before. Nice people thought they had more time to address the lack of diversity. No. Wake up time is now.
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