Chicago chefs who received the Black Kitchen Initiative grants are turning up the heat on their business ventures

Dozzy Ibekwe, pictured on Jan. 4, 2024, owns Dozzy’s Grill inside Crocket Cookies Food Venue at the Hyatt Hotel in the UIC Medical District. in the middle of the city’s West Side Medical District helped create a platform to address the lack of access and awareness around the Nigerian cuisine he grew up with., relied on faith to step away from a sports journalism career into one surrounded by food after some friends challenged her to start a food company.

“The goal is to continue doing well with what we’re doing, which is to connect the dots for people who seek West African cuisine and to demystify what is West African cuisine,” Ibekwe said. “We do that by being more visible. Having people come experience what we do on site.” He also wants young men to see women in positions of leadership. Strugglebeard’s leadership is mostly Black women.

“I had already been financing a lot of this out of my retirement and disability check. Before we were generating income, I had to pay all these people and we hadn’t sold a cookie yet. I was in the negative … borrowing money from people to pay payroll. That grant allowed me to operate back into the positive, to get some much-needed supplies, to be able to pay my rent and my people without me having to eat ramen for the rest of my life.

Ofcacek hopes to offer grants again this year. She said Heinz had the financial resources to aid the initiative and also help promote Black restaurateurs’ stories on social media channels. McNair and Ofcacek said being a grant winner also comes with resources like webinars on how to build a TikTok account and on the best human resource practices.

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