Taste & Unity

_{Story by Nathan Pettengill | Photography by Bill Stephens and Nick Krug}

The Black-Owned Restaurants and Food Trucks Celebration Highlights a New Wave of Community Entrepreneurs

At Lace’s parking lot on 29th Street, a line has formed outside of JLG Mexi-Q’s food truck as people get off work on and stop by for the fajita bowls and other specials. Sylvia Guerrero preps the meals and takes orders at the window, while Jeremy Guerrero cooks on the back porch of their rig. Another truck pulls up, and the line is now doubled up.

Across town, the door has been swinging and customers have been gathering at the HotDog & Smoothie Shack in west Topeka.

“Everybody that has come in here today, except maybe two people, has come in because of the event,” says owner Haley Lovelace after she has caught up with her customers and takes a break to tidy the store and drink one of her mango smoothies.

By “the event,” she means the annual Black Restaurant and Food Truck Week—a celebration that entrepreneur and promoter Chris Ware founded in 2021. It survived the pandemic and continued strong into its third year with 10 Black-owned businesses taking part. Featuring barbecue, soul food, African cuisine and more, the venues offered special deals throughout the last full week in February to close out Black History Month.

Ware says the increased visibility and business buoy the owners and the families they support, but he believes the coordination, mutual promotion, and unity at the heart of this event can inspire more achievements.

“We, the Black community, need to do this for us … for the next generation. They have to see Black faces as Black owners—Black real estate and Black ownership is huge for us as a people—period,” Ware says. “I want to highlight Black restaurants and food trucks and show the young generation that we can do it. To show I can have ownership, I can have my own business … and I’m Black.”

At the Shack

Some of the young generation is already inspiring others.

In October 2022, at only 23 years of age, Lovelace opened her HotDog & Smoothie Shack next to the county motor vehicle annex near the northeast corner of Wanamaker and SW 17th Street. She says it took a $15,000 investment, confidence, and a steep learning curve.

This isn’t Lovelace’s first business. Prior to opening the café, she had owned and operated a courier business in Topeka. But a restaurant, particularly a brick-and-mortar restaurant, is a different challenge.

“It’s definitely been a journey. I had worked in the restaurant industry but never owned a place where I had to handle the delivery and work with the distributors and more,” Lovelace says. “The biggest challenge was getting people’s orders to them fast and making sure I kept supplies in stock. Now, I’m constantly doing inventory and ordering way more than I think I will need.”

Six months into her business, Lovelace says things have changed drastically for the better. She’s learned about the quirks of her niche in the restaurant industry, and she’s been able to apply lessons she had learned for her previous company.

Thinking of summer, she’s considering launching a mobile unit—a food truck that can bring tunes and hot dogs across the city. She has also expanded into catering after doing an event for Faith Temple Church on SW Lincoln Street. But whatever steps Lovelace takes next with her business, they will likely involve participating in events like this promotional week and networking with Black owners and other small-business entrepreneurs.

“I think Black ownership is extremely important,” Lovelace says. “Chris had a great idea. There are not a lot of people like him trying to figure out how these businesses can come together and help each other grow. He did a good thing to help all these businesses.”

A Life of Promotion

Ware says promoting Black businesses, and promoting events in general, has been a natural growth of his work and life experience, going back to his childhood.

He grew up with parents who were both church pastors, so planning tent revivals and other events, handing out fliers, coordinating dates and times, setting up venues and then taking them down just came naturally.

“The things that I do now are just the same things I have been doing my whole life,” Ware explains.

Moving between Texas and Kansas, Ware’s parents settled in Topeka when he was 11, and he has remained here ever since, with his wife, Natalia, raising two children, now adults, and starting up a small farm outside of Topeka with some animals and eight horses.

“Being from Texas, all my uncles and aunts—we cowboys,” he smiles, pointing to his signature Western hat.

Those horses figure in many charitable events that Ware and his wife organize, as well as in local parades. But since opening Warehouzz Management in 2020, the bulk of Ware’s entrepreneurial work has been promoting a range of activities, starting with children’s birthday parties, weddings and working up to large-scale music events.

Ware’s focus isn’t by any means exclusively on the city’s Black community, but it is an important element of his work, and he sees strengthening the success of Black business owners as a way to strengthen the Black community and Topeka as a whole.

“Everybody shouts about ‘diversity and inclusion,’ but we have to be owners in order for everybody from different races to collaborate,” Ware says. “There has to be some Black ownership or it just can’t happen.”

Smokin’

For Harrison B. Mitchell Jr, becoming a business owner was a transformative and fulfilling experience.

Born in Brooklyn, he came to Topeka in 1976, graduated from Highland Park and then worked for 25 years in restaurants in Kansas City, Lawrence, and Topeka, ending up as an assistant manager in Wendy’s. Burnt out by that business, he began selling natural oils for skin care and for home fragrance before taking the leap in June 2019 to cater a Juneteenth event and open his own catering business, Smokin’ H’s Meats.

Mitchell says one of the keys to a successful business is knowing how to scale up. He started with one meat smoker that he took to events and to the farmers market. From there he added more outings, a standing engagement every Friday at Manhattan Brewing Company, and all the work on his own shoulders. He prepares and cooks all of his dishes and sells a lot of brisket and baby-back ribs, but he also cooks up hot dogs, hamburgers, rib-eye roast and even smokes shrimp, developing new recipes over time, such as pulled-pork nachos with chicken-apple sausage that he prepared when he catered a Super Bowl watch party in Manhattan this year.

Mitchell also developed his rubs and two signature items: smoked deviled eggs and a honey-mango barbecue sauce.

“You make something that people can’t get at home … and customers keep coming back,” he explains.

There are challenges—Mitchell says he has to watch the fluctuations of meat prices carefully and plan how much meat he needs to order for each event so that he doesn’t run out too quickly but also doesn’t have a lot of unsold, cooked meals.

And then there are the hours.

“You have to have a certain drive to keep doing this. You’re selling barbecue and constantly paying attention to it,” he says. “I gave up my weekends—I gave up all my times. If it’s Christmas, I gotta go smoke some turkeys. Thanksgiving, I gotta go smoke some turkeys for someone.”

Mitchell says his next step is to buy a second smoker, expand on some help he has begun hiring, and stay focused on growing his business without getting too far in debt. He credits an organization he is a part of—Black Entrepreneurs of the Flint Hills—as providing crucial advice and support, as well as Lazone Grays in Topeka. Mitchell says events such as Black Restaurant and Food Truck week are “important for the whole community.”

His advice to other entrepreneurs is to think strategically and not be afraid to charge what they are worth.

“I had never imagined that I was going to be a business owner, but this is something that I needed to be doing a long time ago in my life. Being able to be my own business and show my own personality is a big accomplishment,” Mitchell says.

“Smokin’ H is my brand—it’s the biggest deal I’ve done other than have kids and be a part of that, and it could be something that they could continue if that is what they want to do.”

‘For Everybody’

Ware says mobile caterers like Mitchell’s Smokin’ H’s Meats are the first ones to benefit from exposure to new customers, particularly ones from outside of Topeka.

“This week I have already gotten calls from KC, from Manhattan, from Junction City—people are already coming in from out of town to visit these places and bring them out of town for events—the food trucks and the caterers are really getting hit up,” Ware says. “We’ve always got someone from KC coming into Topeka with a food truck, so why can’t we go out and get some of that money as well?”

Ware hopes this initial three-year success of the Black Restaurant and Food Truck week has shown the community that it might be time to look at creating other events, such as ones focusing on Black health or Black beauty supplies such as hair and nails.

“Let’s be honest, we are the number one consumers of that, so let’s focus on that—Black vendors talking to Black consumers, why not?” Ware says. “I hear about how back in the day it was this, in the ’60s and the ’70s Topeka had a lot of Black unity. I want to get that back as far as Black and African American people, but also for everybody. It’s Topeka pride. I’m all about that because Topeka is such a great city to live in and to raise kids.”