Tag

bay area

Browsing

In light of this year’s Black History Month theme: The Black Family: Representation, Identity, and Diversity, throughout February we are featuring Bay Area Black owned businesses that are family operated or family focused. In our second of a three part series, we are featuring three Bay Area businesses that are family focused:

Asé Arts – Visual arts provider

Ka Woods, LMFT – Marriage and Family Therapist

WISE Health – Community Health Services

Asé Arts – Oakland

www.asearts.org

Asé Arts is a visual arts provider in service to Black and brown communities that specializes in building connections through the process of art making. They provide programming through classes, workshops and events for early childhood education, youth, and adults. In addition, they offer consulting services, curriculum development, and professional development. Through a social justice lens, Asé Arts utilizes the arts as a catalyst to provoke thought, conversation and change.

Kalé Woods, LMFT – Oakland

www.kwoodsmft.com

Kalé Woods is a licensed psychotherapist who specializes in helping clients work through past trauma, understanding family history, and finding solution-oriented ways to break barriers to progress. She helps guide clients through their journey while they do the work necessary to make long term change. Through a team oriented relationship using integrative therapy she tailors solutions based on the needs for her clients to create successful outcomes.

WISE Health – San Francisco

www.wisehealthsf.com

Wise Health’s community engagement model is designed to reduce social isolation and increase healthy behaviors among hard to reach populations. Their services are low cost, easy to adapt, integrates a collective community approach and is sustainable. By effectively applying tailored community engagement strategies they can provide sustainable services that can increase access to health services, health technology, health education and social activities.

Bay Area Family Owned Black Businesses (Part One)

Black History Month 2021 – The Black Family: Representation, Identity, and Diversity

Each February in Black History Month we celebrate Black Americans’ contributions to society and raise awareness of Black American history. When Carter G. Woodson established Negro History week in 1926, he realized the importance of providing a theme to focus the attention of the public. 2021’s Black History Month theme is The Black Family: Representation, Identity, and Diversity.

Throughout February we are going to feature Bay Area Black owned businesses that are family operated or family focused. When Black families can sustain a business over generations, despite the operating challenges, especially in the Bay Area, it’s a win for the entire community. The successful businesses featured defy the age old myth that family and business don’t mix.  

In our first of this three part series, we’ll start with a mix of three East Bay Area Black family businesses:

Autotrends Body Shop – Vehicle body repair 

Big Printing T-Shirt Company – Apparel screen printing, embroidery & decoration

Carmen & Family BBQ – Restaurant with two East Bay locations

Autotrends Body Shop, Oakland

www.autotrendsbodyshop.com 

Autotrends Body Shop is a well established family owned business that has been providing stellar auto repair services in a prominent Oakland location on Broadway since 1987. Doug Marshal and family are well known for their superior customer service and their AutoWatch system. While their knowledgeable staff repairs your vehicle, you can view the repair progress on your vehicle online, share the experience and receive automated email notifications.

Carmen & Family BBQ – Hayward & Fremont

www.carmenandfamilybbq.com  

Carmen & Family BBQ has been serving the Bay Area since 1979. With two locations in Hayward and Fremont, you can meet Carmen, her kids, and her grandkids. They make their BBQ sauces in-house and smoke all of their meats with almond wood.

Big Printing T-Shirt Company, San Leandro

www.bigprintingonline.com  

Big Printing T-Shirt Company is a family-run business that is self described as a Mom’s and Pops of Streetwear. Dawaud Muhammad and wife Kensey have an amazing group of graphic designers available to create your vision with their free design studio. They have many packages specializing in screen printing, garment decoration, embroidery to choose from or you can request a quote to fit your needs.

2020 is a year that we will all remember for great changes.  For Black Friday, the old days of early morning crowded stores and long lines for super sales might be memories of the past. Now is the perfect time to redefine the concept of Black Friday in general.  As Black Friday deals are moving online and extending through the whole month of November, the trend of spending more meaningfully should be our highest priority.  At SF Bay Black Biz, we are urging people to redefine Black Friday by focusing on shopping at Black-owned businesses.  This redefinition does not have to be confined only to 2020.

According to a 2020 study done in August by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the outlook for Black-owned businesses is grim.  Black business owners are twice as likely to succumb to financial burdens that lead to closure during the coronavirus pandemic than other small businesses.  The recent highlights of racial injustices within our social systems have prompted many to take action and open their wallets to Black-owned businesses.  Larger corporations are creating programs, guides and business resources for Black-owned businesses to increase access to partnerships and capital.  These efforts are fantastic, but much more is needed on a long term basis to overcome barriers of economic distress. 

A 2016 study by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research explained how even before the pandemic, Black owned businesses were at a much higher level of financial distress than their white counterparts. Barriers like having a 65% lower amount of start up cash, being disproportionately located in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, being intentionally excluded from financial institutions and a lack of access to mentorship opportunities make it difficult to scale the business and earn revenue.

Redefining Black Friday as a day where we intentionally spend our dollars at a Black-owned businesses is a good shift in our collective efforts to create community centered, long term supportive systems for the Black community. This year on November 27th, choose to shop in at least one Black-owned business. Encourage your friends and family to do the same.  Since many retailers have gone online, we can all shop from the comforts of home and order items to arrive in time for the holidays.  If you live in Northern California, our directory website at www.SFBlackBiz.com has over 1,000 businesses you can patronize on Black Friday. 

Together we can break down the structural barriers with coordinated actions like consciously shopping Black. Every intentional dollar that is spent in the Black community is helping to alleviate disparities and help the community prosper. This Black Friday and every year after, commit with us to shop more and more Black.

Sources – 

https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/smallbusiness/DoubleJeopardy_COVID19andBlackOwnedBusinesses
https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/17-003.pdf