A List of Black Owned Restaurants in the Bay Area

Anthony Lucas, owner of Anthony’s Cookies in the Mission (photo from Mission Map Project)

By now you probably know why it’s important to support local businesses: they provide jobs and keep money in the community instead of it circulating out to support corporate profits and share holders. Plus, they act a genuine expression of local pride and passion while often providing a hub for community.

With this in mind, it’s even more important to support Black and other POC owned businesses. While Black owned local businesses provide all the things mentioned above, they often face even tougher hardships to stay open. Because of the deeply entrenched racism that is part of the DNA of our country, Black people have less access to capital and have a harder time getting loans from banks. Plus, as Black neighborhoods gentrify, many of the folks who have been customers for years get pushed out, making it even harder for the businesses to survive.

If we want to live in a diverse and equitable society, we need to make efforts make it happen, and supporting Black owned businesses is an incredibly easy and effective way to do so. That’s why I was excited to come across this tweet the other day by Soleil Ho, the restaurant critic for the SF Chronicle:

apropos of, well, everything, here’s a directory of Black-owned restaurants and pop-ups in the Bay Area. let me know if anyone’s missing. ✌?https://t.co/Tkl79e1FsS

— Soleil Ho (@hooleil) May 31, 2020

The combination of gentrification and the housing crisis has made things very difficult for the Bay Area’s Black community over the past decade, so it’s important, now more than ever, that we support them with our dollars. Plus, who doesn’t like to eat delicious food?

You can find the list right here.

At the moment Soleil is looking for people to help her edit the doc and keep it up to date. She’s also hoping people will reach out with any additions to the list. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram.