Black Food Matters: Race and Equity in the Good Food Movement | Devita Davison | Change Food Fest

Summary

Devita Davison argues that the food movement must recognize both the origins of culturally significant foods and the unequal business conditions that determine who can scale, gain recognition, and profit from them.

Business Strategy and Barriers to Growth

• Davison traces Nashville hot chicken to the Prince family’s business, saying it was created and popularized by Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack in the 1930s. The business passed through several family members before Andre Prince Jeffries took over in the 1980s and renamed it Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack.
• She describes hot chicken as more than a product: for Nashville’s African-American community, visiting Prince’s was a cultural tradition and a point of pride. She objects to media coverage that centers newer, white-owned businesses while overlooking the dish’s Black origins.
• Davison says the prominence of newer businesses such as Hattie B’s is not simply about the food. She points to differences in access to:
  • Bank loans and capital to secure desirable, high-traffic locations.
  • Industry networks, mentors, and expertise to build a scalable business model.
  • Culinary training and professional recognition.
  • PR and marketing resources to establish a brand and support expansion.
  • Family business knowledge and resources. She notes that Hattie B’s founder could draw on his father’s restaurant-industry experience.
• Davison cites a Food Republic article titled “Meet the Man Who Launched the Nashville Hot Chicken Craze” as an example of coverage she felt did not adequately recognize Prince’s role or explain the structural advantages behind newer competitors’ growth.
• She also mentions Neiman Marcus offering collard greens for $66 per bowl plus $15 shipping, raising concerns about who benefits financially when culturally rooted foods are commercialized.

Frameworks, Models, and Recommendations

• Inclusive entrepreneurship: Davison’s nonprofit, FoodLab Detroit, uses this term for supporting entrepreneurs of color and helping bring them into the food economy.
• Change the narrative: She calls for a good-food movement that does not reproduce white privilege, but instead recognizes cultural history, tradition, and the contributions of the communities that created particular foods.
• Build an enabling business ecosystem: Investors, funders, and industry experts should actively find entrepreneurs with promising ideas and provide the capital, mentorship, expertise, and networks needed to grow.
• Put entrepreneurs of color in leadership and ownership roles: Davison highlights partnerships and business models that give underrepresented entrepreneurs meaningful authority, equity, and access—not just visibility.
• Support culturally grounded, community-based businesses: Her examples show ways to lower barriers to launching a retail or food business and to connect businesses with broader markets.

Examples and Case Studies

• Swan Market, Old Oakland: A gourmet food market run by a Community Development Corporation. It gives small businesses—many operating for the first time—a place to trade and intentionally brings in Oakland residents who might otherwise lack the support to open a storefront.
• Red Bay Coffee partnership: Davison describes a partnership involving Red Bay Coffee roaster Kaanṭe and David and Raquel Robinson. The model connects coffee roasting with beans sourced from a cooperative of Tanzanian farmers, presenting it as an example of more equitable collaboration.
• The Grey, Savannah: Chef Mashama Bailey partnered with Jonno, a white business partner, to open a restaurant in a former Greyhound station where Black and white travelers had once been segregated. Davison emphasizes Bailey’s move from sous chef and line cook to restaurant partner, saying the opportunity expanded her ownership and leadership.
• Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack: The family business illustrates the long history and cultural significance of a food tradition, as well as the challenge of maintaining recognition amid a wave of newer hot-chicken businesses.

Metrics and Timelines

• Prince’s origin story dates to the 1930s; Davison describes the newer wave of hot-chicken restaurants as emerging roughly 80 years later.
• Andre Prince Jeffries took over the family business in the 1980s.
• Davison says FoodLab Detroit works with more than 225 local entrepreneurs in Detroit.
• The talk provides no revenue, margin, customer-acquisition, or growth-rate figures.

Presenter and Sources

• Presenter: Devita Davison, associated with FoodLab Detroit.
• Sources and businesses discussed: Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, Food Republic, Hattie B’s, Forbes Food & Wine, Swan Market, Red Bay Coffee, and The Grey.