By Leoneda Inge
April 8, 2022
The kitchen at Boricua Soul restaurant in Durham, North Carolina, was preparing for its lunch crowd. A gigantic pot of yellow rice and pigeon peas was on the stove. Collard greens warmed nearby. The spot is known for its blend of Puerto Rican and Southern soul food.
Owner Toriano Fredericks said heâs proud of the way this establishment was able to survive the pandemic and remain open. It didnât look good in the beginning, since Boricua Soul had opened only a few months before everything shut down.
âWhen we first came back, it was just me myself here doing curbside until I couldnât do that anymore,â he said.
Then his wife, Serena, and son, Devin, came in to help.
Fredericks said he got a Paycheck Protection Program loan of $19,000. Plus, with community donations and a landlord who didnât charge rent for a while, the restaurant is still here. But Fredericks said he needs more solid funding to grow and prosper.
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Itâs the kind of money that can make a big difference for Black entrepreneurs.
âIt is transformative in the sense of the fact that these institutions, these minority-serving institutions, have not seen this kind of capital, ever,â said Henry McKoy, who leads the entrepreneurship program at North Carolina Central Universityâs School of Business.
This big pot of funding looks good on paper, he said, but are the banks ready to take risks on their communities?
âBanks, for the most part, are not set up to take risks. So there are a whole lot of intricacies that make this a challenge to deploy that money in the Black community,â he said.
A lot can be done with a transformative grant like this one, McKoy said. Banks can help create affordable housing or business development ventures. But with the long history of the economic system being stacked against communities of color, he said, this money can only go so far.
