How Entrepreneurs of Color Are Turning Crisis Into Opportunity

The backstory of Kann, a wood-fired Haitian restaurant, will not be your typical rise-from-the-ashes story. Gregory Gourdet, a chef whose dad and mom immigrated from Haiti to Queens, New York, within the Nineteen Sixties, began out with a two-day pop-up in the summertime of 2020, when Portland was locked down from COVID and embroiled in Black Lives Matter protests.

His Caribbean-meets-Pacific Northwest delicacies instantly discovered a following. Four months later, Kann traded its digs at a grilled-chicken restaurant for the Redd, a “food campus” in Portland’s Central Eastside, the place patrons dined on dishes like butterfish crudo with watermelon shaved ice. Soon after, Gourdet landed a chic everlasting residence on Southeast Ash Street. A stream of accolades have since rolled in, together with greatest new restaurant awards from each the James Beard Foundation and Esquire.

Kann’s ascent stands out as a brilliant spot in a metropolis that has not too long ago gone by some darkish patches. Four years in the past, this quirky and progressive city, famously satirized by the TV present Portlandia, was designated an “anarchist jurisdiction” by the Trump Administration after three months of protests. When the mud settled, the town discovered itself mired in one other disaster: a fentanyl epidemic that led Oregon leaders to declare a state of emergency. Retailers like REI shuttered shops, camps for the unhoused sprung up, and actual property values sank.

But an sudden silver lining has emerged. Restaurants, bookshops, and different shops owned by folks of coloration have begun thriving, helped by public assist, extra inexpensive rents, and patronage from metropolis and nonprofit businesses. It is a outstanding shift for a metropolis with a fancy racial historical past. As not too long ago as 2016, Portland was dubbed the “whitest city in America” by the Atlantic. Now that picture is lastly altering, as entrepreneurs like Gourdet assist lead Portland’s revitalization. 

“There was definitely a boom in the support of Black businesses after the BLM protests,” Gourdet stated throughout a dinner service final summer time, as he dashed backwards and forwards within the open kitchen, throwing chunks of marinated meat, fish, and greens onto orange flames. “BLM brought attention to the injustices Black folks face in this country, the inequities that have plagued us for centuries, and still plague us today.” 

This break within the clouds will be seen throughout Portland. “There has been a lot of support for BIPOC entrepreneurs throughout the city since BLM,” stated Shawn Uhlman, a spokesman for Prosper Portland, a metropolis company that promotes small companies. He added that, primarily based on anecdotes, there seemed to be an enormous enhance in Black-, Latino- and Asian-owned ventures.

Portland’s restoration remains to be a piece in progress, as I found on my morning stroll from Hotel Grand Stark, an artily refurbished 1908 property within the Central Eastside district, a previously industrial space throughout the Willamette River from downtown. The light-filled foyer has a charming retro high quality, with wood flooring, arches, and works by native artists. Stepping out onto busy Southeast Grand Avenue, I noticed previous factories and a automobile wash, alongside stylish bars and eating places, a classic furnishings retailer, Victorian homes, and a microbrewery.

I rode a Biketown, the town’s bike-share franchise, throughout the river to downtown, the place many of the 2020 protests passed off. The space nonetheless had a barely forlorn air, with shops boarded up and some tent villages. But there have been success tales, too. At the peak of the protests, Abbey Creek Vineyard, Oregon’s first Black-owned vineyard, opened a hip-hop-themed tasting room on Southwest Morrison Street referred to as Crick PDX that sought to make wine extra accessible. 

“For six months, we were the only tenant,” stated founder Bertony Faustin, the son of Haitian immigrants, as he poured me a glass of Shining, a glowing Pinot Gris. “Everything else around us was boarded up.” As hip-hop classics performed, I labored my manner by a “five-track playlist” of wines and nibbled on Caribbean-inspired snacks like fried plantains.

That tasting room has since closed, however its pioneering spirit continues on the OG Crick, Abbey Creek’s headquarters in North Plains, a small metropolis simply to the northwest. “Operating downtown was an opportunity I never thought I’d have,” Faustin stated. “It gave me inspiration to think bigger.” He is now trying to open a everlasting tasting room close to the gleaming Ritz-Carlton, Portland, which opened final yr. 

“A lot of positive things have happened in Portland to weigh against the gloom and doom,” Faustin stated. “The past few years have actually been the best time ever to be an entrepreneur here.”

Portland, a literature-loving metropolis, has about 30 bookstores, together with Powell’s City of Books, billed because the world’s largest unbiased bookstore. But till 5 years in the past, not one of the metropolis’s bookstores was Black-owned. That modified in 2019 when Charles Hannah and his spouse, Michelle Lewis, opened Third Eye Books, Accessories & Gifts within the again room of their home in Southeast Portland. They specialised in Black authors. 

A number of months later, they started promoting books in a freshly painted room at a group middle, however foot visitors vanished through the pandemic. They created a web based retailer, however had “zero sales,” Hannah stated. Everything modified when the protests started. “People wanted to be knowledgeable about what was going on in their communities,” he stated. “Overnight we went from selling two copies of How to Be an Antiracist to sixty a month.” 

A $25,000 Kickstarter marketing campaign in 2021 allowed Third Eye to open a retailer within the energetic neighborhood of Richmond, which attracted some 20,000 guests in its first few months. “The community embraced us,” Hannah stated. Oprah featured the shop in her journal, and big-name writers like Jacqueline Woodson held readings. “Now we have 15,000 followers on Instagram, and people come here from all over the world.”

The bookstore’s reputation has allowed Lewis, who’s a longtime practitioner within the subject of Afrocentric psychological well being, to meet a dream. A yr in the past, she opened Third Eye Wholistic Wellness in a modest home adjoining to the bookstore, with an entryway lined with candles, incense, and tarot playing cards depicting folks of coloration. She presents sound baths, sleep remedy, and Reiki. 

“Third Eye Books offers nourishment for the mind,” Lewis stated. “This offers nourishment for the body and soul.”

The metropolis’s financial downturn has additionally allowed underrepresented entrepreneurs to experiment with much less standard outlets. Amir Morgan, a Black designer who beforehand labored at Nike, had lengthy wished to begin his personal label and boutique. “The 2020 crisis opened me up to possibilities,” he stated. Members of the group, he stated, helped him discover a house with good hire.

In 2023, he unveiled Barnes & Morgan, a loftlike house with exposed-brick partitions in Old Town, which emptied out in 2020. The retailer, which additionally goes by “Tea and Threads,” sells vests, smocks, hats, and luggage designed by Morgan, in addition to a branded assortment of unfastened teas. For Morgan, who grew up Muslim in North Carolina, a teahouse is a spot of connection. “So Tea and Threads is really a community center, a gathering point for fashion, art, music, and education,” he stated. 

The retailer could also be novel, however Morgan likes to level out that his will not be the primary in Old Town began by a Black Portlander. “When Oregon became a state in 1859, the first Black-owned business was a men’s furnishings and mercantile shop owned by Abner Hunt Francis, his wife, and his brother,” he stated. And when a railway station opened close by in 1896, it introduced Black individuals who labored on the trains. “Old Town became a thriving African-American community. It was also inclusive, with Japanese, Chinese, and Jewish communities.”

Morgan wished to re-create that social combine. Last yr he partnered with Kann to provide reservations to the primary 300 consumers on a summer time Saturday. “More than a thousand people came out,” Morgan stated. “The line went for blocks. Visitors saw firsthand that Old Town was not terrible. The community realized that we’re stronger together.” 

A model of this story first appeared within the October 2024 concern of Travel + Leisure below the headline “Silver Linings.”