6 Apps To Help You Shop Black in Brooklyn
Money only recirculates about six hours within the Black community. Let’s change that.
Brooklyn, New York is often considered a hub of Black culture, but with gentrification, the influx of chain businesses, and the effect coronavirus has had on small businesses — buying Black has become a difficult task.
And as scholars over the years have noted, money does not circulate in the Black community as long as it does in other communities.
Brooke Stephens wrote “Talking Dollars and Making Sense: A Wealth Building Guide for African-Americans” in 1996 and said that money only recirculates 6 hours in the Black community, 17 days in the white community, 20 days in the Jewish community, and 30 days in the Asian community.
The Black Star Project also notes that only 2 percent of the gross national income of Black Americans is recirculated within the Black community.
Here’s a Girl Around The Globe guide to help you shop Black in Brooklyn whether you’re a local or a visitor.
1. Black-Owned Brooklyn
Husband and wife Tayo Giwa and Cynthia Gordy Giwa created Black-Owned Brooklyn in 2018 to spotlight both Black-owned businesses and the owners behind them. Their website and social media accounts share entrepreneurs in food and drink, history and culture, home and design, style and beauty, and health and wellness.
To make things easier, their website also has a map for you to find Black businesses nearby. And don’t forget to check out their gift guide!
2. Use Hashtags On Social Media
Social media has done wonders for Black businesses and promotion. You can easily find companies using #blackowned and see thousands of search results on Instagram and Twitter. To make your search more specific when it comes to Brooklyn, check out #blackownedbrooklyn on Instagram or search Black-owned Brooklyn on Twitter.
And if you want to find something more specific, Twitter is your best bet. On that app, you can search something like “Black-owned candles Brooklyn” or “Black-owned candles (insert Brooklyn neighborhood)” and yield results. You can also tweet what you’re looking for and someone might reach out to you whether it’s a business or a random Twitter user. For instance, one user asked if anyone knew any Black-owned laundromats in Brooklyn and someone replied within a day.
3. Cafe Con Libros
Cafe Con Libros is “a feminist bookstore and coffee shop” located in Crown Heights. Here, you won’t have to go to the “ethnic” section of the store to find diverse writers, nor will you have to navigate finding books outside of the male perspective. Although this isn’t a traditional resource, like the others on the list, it’s important in its own right for the community aspect, such as their Women of Color book club.
Additionally, they’ve partnered with Bookshop to sell their books online rather than on Amazon because it helps financially support local, independent bookstores.
4. Shoppe Black
Shoppe Black has so many resources to find Black-owned businesses such as credit unions, insurance companies, vintage shops, wedding venues and services, tea, medical care, tech-companies, and more. While the website has international goods and services, you can search for Brooklyn to find things local to the area.
You can also check out their article Black-Owned Businesses in Brooklyn You Should Know. Sadly, not all of the businesses have survived, but it’s a good starting point.
5. Eat Okra
Buying from Black-owned restaurants is my personal favorite experience! You can have your pick from soul food to Caribbean food to African food, and increasingly more vegan/vegetarian options.
Eat Okra is an app that helps users find Black-owned restaurants in cities such as New York. You can also narrow your search down to Brooklyn.
It’s a convenient guide and once you find a restaurant you would like to order from you can choose from various delivery services to complete the order.
6. Seamless delivery services
Many delivery apps included Black-owned as a category or a cuisine type this year as part of a pact to assist Black-owned restaurants that were hit hard during the coronavirus pandemic. If you’re unable to find the category -because I’ll admit it’s not always easy -then you can type “Black-owned” in the search bar to yield results.
One caution I would add is that many of these delivery apps such as Uber Eats and DoorDash allow restaurants to self-identify as a Black-owned restaurant through an application. Unfortunately, as reported by Vice, some people have taken advantage of that and identified as Black-owned despite not being Black-owned so that they were eligible for the $0 delivery fees through 2020 that these companies offered.
It’s worth doing a quick Google search of the restaurant to make sure you’re shopping Black-owned if that was ultimately your goal.
Have you used any of these resources? Let us know.
