As the COVID-19 pandemic puts small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) to the test, many economic disparities have been exacerbated. According to Black Restaurant Week LLC, an organization dedicated to promoting Black-owned restaurants and traditionally Black cuisines, the past year has seen the permanent closure of a shocking 41 percent of Black-owned businesses, compared to 17 percent of their white-owned counterparts. Among other initiatives to boost restaurants that specialize in African American, African and Caribbean cuisine, Black Restaurant Week recently announced the No Crumb Left Behind campaign, which provides free marketing support to these restaurants.
“Most restaurants in our community don’t really have the budget or the skill sets to create their own marketing campaigns,” Black Restaurant Week Co-founder and Managing Partner Falayn Ferrell told PYMNTS in a recent interview. “So it’s really like a cooperative economics business model. We’re pulling together resources, community partnerships and corporate partnerships to help showcase the businesses so that the participants don’t have to worry about funding it themselves.”
Included in the campaign is entry into the company’s national directory of restaurants and free participation in industry events. Per the campaign news release, the organization’s partnerships with 670 Black-owned culinary businesses in 2020 provided those businesses with an average sales boost of 34 percent. This lift was especially necessary in a year that had many restaurants operating month to month and facing an uncertain future. As Ferrell pointed out, “if you think about the Northeast, how some of the businesses had to do patio seating and buy all the heaters … if your business is already [operating] with this small window of capital to work with, that could be a lot for them to take on … we’ve always had to learn how to be very innovative and how to pivot.”
Of course, these pivots look very different for small, independent restaurants than they do for larger chains and for restaurants with institutional advantages. While, say, a McDonald’s can turn toward digital, delivery and drive-thru to keep sales up during the pandemic, and restaurant chains that cater to the wealthy can count on their customers to carry them through a difficult year, these strategies don’t work for everyone. Many of Black Restaurant Week’s partners have pivoted to selling culinary products such as sauces and spice mixes, and have retooled their menus to be more takeout- and delivery-friendly. Still, Ferrell explains, “when you have a business, such as a restaurant, that has a very slim profit margin, there’s very little room for error … so that’s why the challenges are compounded for our community, because, there’s only so much they could do to expand their business and their model to operate in a COVID space.”
In pre-COVID times, Black Restaurant Week followed a food festival model, showcasing not just restaurants but also caterers, food trucks, bartenders and other culinary business owners. “When we looked at a lot of the formal restaurant weeks … we noticed a lot of businesses within our community really didn’t have involvement,” Ferrell reflected, “So we wanted to create a platform to showcase who they were … as well as to create some economic stability in our communities.”
As the company looks forward to staging more live events when the pandemic subsides, the digital channel has become a key part of the business. Ferrell noted that the digital offerings allowed the company to expand its reach to work with more restaurants. In the coming years, she expects that digital events will continue alongside in-person offerings.
In addition to the No Crumb Left Behind campaign, the company has also established a nonprofit foundation in collaboration with Maker’s Mark. Called the Feed the Soul Foundation, its recent initiatives include a relief fund for Black- and Latin-owned restaurants as well as a Restaurant Business Development Grant Program to help ensure the future of these small, independent restaurants.
“It’s all about sustainability,” Ferrell explained. “…All this is great, but if a business closes after we leave, clearly there’s still some more work we have to do. And so that’s really the goal … creating that sustainability within communities.”
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