2020 will be ingrained in our memories as the year our lives changed forever. For Tambo Barrow, owner of Bred Gourmet, a perfectly small yet lively burger joint on Dorchester Avenue in Mattapan, the feeling of change is familiar. Of course, most restaurant owners must be ready for just about anything, but few could have prepared for a global pandemic at the same time as a social and political uprising.
But Barrow and Bred were fortunate. "We didn't really take much of a hit because people still needed to eat," he explains. "That's when we started to realize our community was really supporting us." Walking down Dorchester Avenue the sense of community pride fills the air. With restaurants lining the block, all unique in their own way -- from a family-owned pizzeria to a dive-bar filled with locals -- the neighborhood has its sense of belonging, a feeling of both grit and togetherness.
"Everybody [on the street] started doing business at the back door, business out the window, doing business online," says Barrow while sitting at a high-top table that once used to be for customer seating before Bred became takeout only. "All these things started to pick up but it was really the community that was the reason that we were able to survive; because there was a big emphasis on saving local businesses."
As a Black-owned business in the heart of the biggest and most diverse neighborhood in Boston, Bred experienced a sudden influx of support during a time when most businesses were struggling to make ends meet. Barrow sees this as no coincidence. "Once George Floyd happened, and people started to actually see what was going on and how Black people have been treated, and it was publicized in the media" Bred began to see numbers they'd never experienced before.
Like many restaurants, Barrow explains that "Bred's main objective was to keep the staff safe and follow whatever guidelines that the CDC and the city came out with for us to remain open. But once we started to see other restaurants shutting down it put fear in some employees and put fear in me, as well as our customers." Similar to other less-affluent communities, residents of Dorchester had a high rate of COVID-19 cases and less access to affordable health care. According to a 2019 article from the Dorchester Reporter, 20.7% of Dorchester households make $14,999 and under, a year; meaning 20.7% of the community lives on or below the poverty line. With a community such as Dorchester largely living paycheck to paycheck, the luxury of remaining idle until it was safe to do otherwise, was not an option. Barrow had employees that needed jobs, and customers that needed food.
"In general, the community of Massachusetts, you know, we're held together by traditions and customs and I think that it's important that we try to keep all people in mind for these traditions, especially around food."
Eager and first-time customer of Bred, Luc Pakey explains to me the importance of supporting people of color (POC) businesses, especially in Boston. After growing up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and moving to Boston in his adult life, Pakey recognizes the disparities that exist between the communities that make up the Greater Boston Area. "I think that people who live in communities that Black people have largely contributed so much to have a responsibility to give back and support Black-owned businesses. They [Black-owned businesses] provide a vital service to the community and help to create more significant cultural impacts in Boston than a non-POC or Black-business would," Pakey explains. After all, Boston is built on a sense of pride and resilience that Bostonians can come together in times of hardship to support one another. Chiming in before grabbing his takeout order, Pakey adds "In general, the community of Massachusetts, you know, we're held together by traditions and customs and I think that it's important that we try to keep all people in mind for these traditions, especially around food."
"[During the pandemic,] All there was for people to do was to watch the news, there was nothing else really going on. It was coverage of COVID on television and now you have a cop kneeling on a Black man's neck for nine minutes," Barrow explains the ugly truth: Bred experienced support at the expense of a Black man's life. The wicked truth of the racial injustice that was being documented nationwide acted as a frightening reminder for Black and brown communities to support their own communities. Seeing businesses shut down at a rapid rate began encouraging local neighborhoods to remain loyal to their roots. After all, supporting their communities was all that most people had control of during a time of such uncertainty.
Working as both a cook and a manager, Eudine Mahon has witnessed firsthand the ebbs and flows while at Bred; but nothing like the summer of 2020. Mahon, who returned back to Bred at the start of the pandemic, explains the unique times of what it was like to be an essential worker in such a tight-knit community then, and now. "The community support is still there because we still have our regulars, we still have true patrons that come every week," Mahon says. She adds that not only are locals coming out to support Bred, the only Black-owned restaurant amongst the plethora of other small businesses that fill Dorchester Avenue, but other store owners are as well. "It's a tight-knit community, especially this street. We communicate with all of the different restaurants on the strip, we all help each other out when needed."
However, Bred is still in the business of serving its community, and its community is still fueling Bred. Though the restaurant is not receiving the same level of business as they were in the Summer of 2020, Barrow and his small team of close-knit employees -- comprised of family and friends -- are still chugging along. Dorchester, a neighborhood filled with character and culture with nearly 45% of their population made up of African Americans, there was no shortage of residents who felt the need to support their people.
"We are grateful for the support of being a Black-owned business," Mahon adds. "At the same time we're still doing the same business that we were doing before George Floyd was killed, before Breonna Taylor was shot, before all these terrible things were being publicized."
So what happens when the dust begins to settle, and people's lives begin to return to some sense of normalcy? Where people get up from their couches and turn off their televisions? What happens when people starting living their own lives again rather than watching the lives of others?
"I don't say that there will ever be a situation like that again, where we have everything happen at the same time. Between COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement, I don't think that we're going to encounter those same circumstances [of financial success] ever again, at least not all at once," Mahon says, chiming in from the kitchen just before the ring of the phone signals the first order of the day as the clock strikes 11:30.
It's time to get to work.
