TAMPA, Fla. — This week is national Black Restaurants Week. The 7th annual event is more than a celebration of Black owned restaurants, it also raises awareness of the challenges Black culinary businesses face.
What You Need To Know
- The 7th annual ‘Black Restaurants Week’ is being celebrated this week nationwide
- It raises awareness to the challenges Black culinary businesses face
- Local Black-owned restaurant, Rose Bar Tampa, is one of 2,000 restaurants being recognized
Rose Bar Tampa opened two years ago in Hyde Park. Owners Johnny Smallwood and Sean Wood had a vision for a place that offered a fusion of cultural cuisines wrapped in the Black Experience.
“We tell all our staff, we don’t sell food,” Donny said. “We don’t sell liquor. We’re only here to sell the experience.” That experience is seeped in Black culture with an international flare. Everything here is unexpected, from the alcohol at the bar.
“We are one of the few if not the only restaurants in Florida that features over 24 and counting Black owned spirits and wines,” Sean said.
“We make a salmon egg roll. Traditionally egg rolls use cabbage,” Sean said. “So we’ve combined collard greens and salmon. It’s a formula that’s kept this business in the black since 2020. What’s not on the menu is how they serve the community.
“Once a month we do our Mentor Mondays where we take youth from the ages of 12 to 18,” Donny said. “and we sit them down with some of our celebrity friends, our people in radio, our business partners. They can sit down with some of their mentors and ask direct questions.”
Black owned restaurants are few and far between in Tampa Bay. Many struggle with marketing because advertising takes money.
Events like the Saturday Morning Shoppe help cultivate Black entrepreneurs. Donnie and Sean want their customers to come back again and again for the experience, and they say that experience feels like home.
“Whatever we serve to the people who walk through those doors are same things that I feel confident serving my grandmother, my mother, my aunt or anyone in my family,” Donny said. “When we put that intent behind it, it’s a different feeling with the food is made with love.”