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A spirit of curiosity has led Chef Andrew Black to become a James Beard Award-winning chef. Black’s journey traces back to his roots in Jamaica. As a child , he assisted his grandmother by creating outdoor clay ovens to bake roti, a staple flatbread in the country, his website mentions. Pursuing a career as a chef, he later worked in various resort kitchens and eventually left Jamaica to work in restaurants across Europe. He would then receive a nudge to make his way to the United States, notes CBS Mornings. “I wanted to try to find myself where would I fit in, and so I got a call to come to Oklahoma City and I said where the heck is that,” he recalled to the outlet. After initially rejecting the idea of moving to Oklahoma City, he eventually had a change of heart. “When someone see you an Oklahoman shake your hand and say, ‘They’re going to be there,’ they mean it. A word is our bond here. It’s absolutely one of the best state and the best place to live in,” Black told CBS...
Luol Deng investment in men’s sports has led to a first in the Olympics. Deng was a former NBA player for the Chicago Bulls and committed 15 seasons, per Sports Illustrated, to the league before officially retiring in October 2019. Following his exit, Deng turned his attention towards his home country — the youngest country in the world — South Sudan, and became president of the South Sudanese Basketball Federation (SSBF), ESPN reports. “I retired and I always did my basketball camps. I know a lot of players from South Sudan and I knew that we could make it something special,” he told ESPN. “I want to help the growth of the game, but I want to use basketball to change the narrative and the stories of South Sudan, but also find a way to bring communities along and for everyone to get something inspirational behind it.” Fast forward to 2024, and South Sudan has made it to the Olympics, becoming victorious in their match against Puerto Rico on July 28, 2024. This marked the team’s...
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has a new business venture to add to his ever-growing portfolio. According to Boardroom, the three-time Super Bowl champion is taking his love for coffee to higher heights as a lead investor for Throne Sport Coffee, a ready-to-drink coffee beverage company that was launched Thursday (May 16). Putting his money where his mouth is, not only did Mahomes attend a nice chunk of developmental and departmental meetings for the company, but he also had samples of the coffee sent to his home every two to four weeks in 2023 to ensure that he was able to help the Throne Sport family create a “tasty, healthy beverage with mass appeal to compete in a crowded market.” “There were a lot of samples sent and the season worked out well,” Mahomes said. “We won the Super Bowl, so it must have worked. We’ve come up with a great product, and I think people will really enjoy them throughout the entire day, not be jittery, and not be sluggish after the coffee...
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University graduate Marcia Cox is paying it forward to another college campus. Cox, 23, is the co-founder of Kaldi’s Coffee House and Roastery, a Charlotte, NC, business that opened in January 2024, as reported by WTVD-11. Before going out on her own, Cox had worked as a Starbucks barista while in high school and college and excelled at her job duties while fostering customer relationships, an Instagram post mentions. She runs Kaldi’s with her father, Marcus, who has an extensive background spanning over 25 years in sectors such as banking, pet retail, and coffee. He has also served as a Starbucks regional operations coach for the Midwest region, based on the Instagram post. Kaldi’s Coffee House and Roastery sells apparel, tea, baked goods such as cookies, and specialty-roasted coffee with Cox sourcing the coffee beans from Ethiopia and handling the roasting process herself, per WTVD-11. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kaldi’s...
Andre Swanston is one of the few Black men to sell a tech company for nine figures. Swanston founded Tru Optik in 2013. He was driven to have a solid work ethic by his father, who ventured from the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis to the United States and worked several jobs to support his family, according to Forbes. The younger Swanston obtained a finance degree from La Salle University and a business degree from the University of Connecticut between 1999 and 2004. He would then secure a job as a financial advisor at Ameriprise Financial and later take on a post at JPMorgan Chase & Co. as vice president of investments between 2010 and 2012, per his LinkedIn. During the early 2000s, he owned nightclubs and restaurants, he shared in a Q&A with TransUnion. He also invested in local advertising to bring more exposure to his businesses. It was then that Swanston made a discovery that would prompt his pivot to the tech industry full time as the founder of Tru Optik. The system is “an...
The majority of high schoolers are securing jobs close to home, but Erin Polk is distinguishing herself by managing her own business. WLS-TV 7 reports Erin is the proud owner of Erin’s Cup, a coffee shop located in the Morgan Park neighborhood of Chicago, IL. The 17-year-old spoke the feat into existence when she was just 2 years old, and to her family, her business comes as no surprise. “‘We’ll get Erin a cup, We’ll get Erin a cup,'” her mother, Heidi Polk, remembers saying when her daughter was a toddler, according to the outlet. “And there’s how Erin’s Cup [came about]. She wanted a cup of coffee at a coffee house.” Erin’s Cup has been open for business for a couple months but already has loyal customers such as Ronnie Mosley, who has a liking for several menu items. “Macchiato, lemonade refresher is great, the chai tea is great,” Mosley said, according to WLS-TV 7. “If you come here, we’ll know you by name. Everybody is very close knit, it’s like family right here,” Erin...
For as long as the average American can remember, the words “coffee grower” immediately conjured up images of Juan Valdez and other South and Central American farmers. But, thanks to the pandemic, Black coffee growers are reclaiming their place in the global market. As with everything else in the world, the origins of actual coffee-growing trace back to Africa. According to the History of Coffee, the Moroccan mystic Ghothul Akbar Nooruddin Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili first reported the growth and use of coffee while traveling in the Sheba Empire, which existed in 850 CE in what is now Ethiopia and Yemen. (Kaffa, a town in modern-day Ethiopia, literally means “coffee.”) But thanks to Dutch colonialism in Africa, coffee seeds were stolen and brought to the West Indies in the 1600s — and with the seeds came the slaves, who went from Black coffee growers to plantation workers. Today, the international coffee industry is a $225 billion operation, yet “less than 10% of that aggregate wealth...