Did You Eat Yet? A Love Letter to Immigrant Women Entrepreneurs
The alluring scents of vibrant spices and home-cooked foods hit me way before I step into the terracotta-colored building. Inside, I’m met with a smorgasbord of sensory delights: families enjoying multicultural meals, women business owners preparing raw ingredients expertly in the kitchen, upbeat cultural music playing in the background, and a variety of art pieces and poems written by local children dotting the walls.
It’s truly one of a kind: in no other place in the world would you be able to get a meal of mouthwatering Afghan mantu dumplings, Filipino lumpia spring rolls, and Senegalese jollof rice all in one sitting.
I’ve driven 30 minutes to Tukwila — a multicultural suburb of Seattle near the airport with nearly 40% of the residents being immigrants. Nestled in the downtown area is Spice Bridge, a food hall and kitchen incubator that helps immigrant and refugee women start businesses. As part of the program, the women entrepreneurs open up food stalls at Spice Bridge on a rotating weekly schedule, often accompanied by their families. It’s a common sight to see their kids parked out front by the point of sale, finishing their homework in between helping customers order, while their moms bustle around the kitchen finishing the plates.
I’m here to paint a permanent mural in the food hall to celebrate the contributions of immigrant and refugee women to the community. It’s my second art collaboration with Spice Bridge and the City of Tukwila, and I’m especially excited to have the opportunity to be immersed in the community of women at Spice Bridge for a full week.
For this project with Spice Bridge, I spent time getting to know the 14 food businesses at Spice Bridge and their women owners on a personal level. They hail from multiple continents, representing food cultures from Gambia-Senegal, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Mexico, Kenya, Somalia-Tanzania, Nigeria, Argentina, Iraq, Congo, Cambodia, and Ethiopia.
Many of the women grew up harnessing their passion for cooking from their mothers, sisters, or aunties. Some were professional chefs in their home countries; others made their names cooking for family and community gatherings. What they all share are the experiences of creating a new life in a new country, and the passion for celebrating their food cultures.
And they’re all here at Spice Bridge with big dreams for their businesses. For many immigrants and refugees, starting a business in the US is extra challenging. Besides acclimating to a new way of life personally, they also have to quickly adapt to the norms and systems of small business entrepreneurship in the US: navigating business permitting and licensing, building market connections, learning marketing skills, setting up websites and point-of-sale systems, reaching customer bases outside of their ethnic communities, finding an accountant and bookkeeper, access to capital — just to name a few.
All of these historical and systemic challenges on the journey to small business ownership make Spice Bridge a staple in the community. As I listened to the stories of the women at Spice Bridge, I was struck by not only the diversity of cultures they represented, but also the universality and commonality in the power of sharing food.
When I chatted with Theary Ngeth, owner of Theary’s Cambodian Foods, she told me that sharing her cooking was her way of paying homage to her familial and cultural roots. “Here in the US, Cambodian food is starting to lose its roots. The new generation isn’t learning, and everything else has been fusion concepts. I cook it like how my mom cooks it, like how her mom cooks it. It’s an opportunity to share my culture, have my ancestors be known, and have the world appreciate it.”
Adama Jammeh of Afella Jollof Catering moved to Baltimore from Gambia in 2003 before moving to Seattle in 2017. “Food has always been my passion, but I thought that opening a restaurant wasn’t possible because I didn’t have the resources or capital,” she explained. “I love seeing people taste something for the first time and the joy of doing that. I want to show that there’s a lot more food out there. In Gambian culture, it’s all about eating big feasts together, eating with hands, and feeling close to your food, it brings people together.”
Krizia Cherece of Wengay’s Kitchen shared during our conversation that her passion for food also began with learning from her mom in the kitchen. However, she faced challenges in her early days as a business owner, saying, “For me, the hardest part was the initial stage of starting a business. I really didn’t know where to begin. After forming my business idea and doing lots of research, everything became so overwhelming that it discouraged me from pushing forward. With the guidance and encouragement from all the admirable women I have been blessed to work with, I am so glad I don’t have to go through this all alone.”
As I painted the mural through the week, I was struck by the magic of Spice Bridge. There’s something so universal and empowering about sharing love and care through a home-cooked meal. In conversations about women’s labor, cooking is often highlighted as one of the main ingredients of unpaid work in the home. Yet at women-owned businesses, the act of cooking is transformed into a powerful, feminist gesture — it’s invisible labor made visible. It’s the passing down of cultural traditions from women to women. It’s survivalism meets courageous celebration in a new country. As the women pour their hearts into their craft, they’re also building new spaces for community gathering, bringing new flavors to local palates, and creating new jobs along the way.
At women-owned businesses, the act of cooking is transformed into a powerful, feminist gesture — it’s invisible labor made visible. It’s the passing down of cultural traditions from women to women. It’s survivalism meets courageous celebration in a new country.
The magic created at Spice Bridge, however, somewhat contrasts from my impression of the general reception of small businesses in the GSB community.
Flash forward a few months to my first fall quarter at the GSB, I’m attending an event with a very well-known VC investor. The classroom is teeming with Stanford students, who have traveled from all across campus to attend. Packed together like sardines, my fellow students and I squeeze against each other to catch a glimpse of the front of the classroom and wait in anticipation for the ensuing nuggets of wisdom.
As the speaker launches into their presentation, they proudly proclaim, “I’m not here to teach you how to build a little bakery or something. I’m here to talk about building a startup that’s truly great.”
My spirits plummet upon hearing that statement. This hasn’t been the only moment that I’ve experienced at the GSB where small businesses have been dismissed as the less illustrious counterpart to startups: off-hand comments in the classroom clarifying, “This is about startups, not mom-and-pops”; confusion from peers around basic small business fundamentals, such as “Why do small businesses need to do accounting if they don’t have a lucrative exit strategy?”; and more. When we talk about our plans after the GSB, it’s all about startups, VCs, PE — name your acronym. It’s rarely about small businesses.
What does it mean to build something truly great? If greatness is measured by monthly average users (MAU), annual recurring revenue (ARR), and valuation, then a few special startups have it in the bag. But if we measure greatness in the number of lives touched, memories created, and contributions to the cultural fabric of society, then I’d highlight small businesses as main contenders.
What does it mean to build something truly great? If greatness is measured by monthly average users (MAU), annual recurring revenue (ARR), and valuation, then a few special startups have it in the bag.
But if we measure greatness in the number of lives touched, memories created, and contributions to the cultural fabric of society, then I’d highlight small businesses as main contenders.
Small businesses are models of resilience, survivalism, and celebration. With 30 million small businesses in the US and only 73,000 startups, the probability that each of us at the GSB interacts with small businesses in our daily lives is exponentially higher. Think of every time you’re in downtown Palo Alto or any other city out there — chances are, you’re passing by and frequenting dozens of small businesses in a single excursion.
I hope to see more small business stories joining the hallowed annals of GSB case studies, and business owners being welcomed into our classrooms to share how they’re constantly making creative pivots while wearing multiple hats. I want to see startups and small businesses equally celebrated as means of changing and impact the world.
Back at Spice Bridge, I’m paint-splattered and exhausted after a long working session. The last glimmers of late afternoon sunlight are fading away, and my stomach growls from missing lunch. Groaning at my sore limbs, I climb down from my ladder for a quick stretch.
One of the women owners walks from the kitchen. In her hands is a plate stacked full with tender roasted chicken, sticky rice, and fresh salad.
“Thank you for your hard work! I fixed you a plate of food,” she says.
As I enjoy the delicious plate, I discover what it means to cook with love.
Editor: Claire Yun
