TREND OF 2021: CONNECTION

Supporting Local Businesses With EatOkra

EatOkra

Find Local, Black-owned Eats!

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EatOkra

Find Local, Black-owned Eats!

EatOkra is one of our 2021 Trend of the Year winners because... this invaluable resource helped us all find Black-owned restaurants in our communities.

‣ Number of cities in EatOkra: 35
‣ Number of restaurants: 11,000
‣ Number of users the app has connected to restaurants: 380,000

Anthony Edwards didn’t set out to create an extensive guide to Black-owned restaurants. He was just looking for something to eat.

This was years ago, when Edwards and his wife, Janique, moved into a new neighborhood and were looking to support local Black-owned restaurants and businesses. The big directory apps at the time didn’t offer this info—and weren’t much help if you were more in the mood for, say, Haitian food rather than Caribbean. So as a passion (and a side hustle), the couple began building an app of their own. “There was no business plan behind it,” says Edwards. “We were just looking for mom-and-pop places, the ones off the beaten path.”

Search EatOkra for certain types of cuisine, or just cast a wide net and see all the options around you.

Today EatOkra is a thriving user-driven guide to more than 11,000 Black-owned restaurants and food trucks in over 30 cities across the U.S. A few taps get you to the nearest grilled shrimp salads, Cajun dishes, and plenty more, from coast to coast.

The couple spent EatOkra’s early years inputting all the listings manually, often spending 30 hours a week scouring data from web searches, social media, even lists sent from friends. Growth was slow and steady, then word began to spread on its own.

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The app grew geographically too. “It was initially just for Brooklyn,” he says, “but when I’d go to the Bronx I’d think, ‘Well, maybe it should be for all of New York City?’ Then I thought, ‘Wait, what about Atlanta or Oakland?’”

EatOkra now covers nearly three dozen cities, and the app has grown to match. For the first time, they’ve hired a team to keep their bank of listings up to date. They’ve partnered with companies like Pepsi and Uber. In the coming months, verified restaurant owners will soon be able to maintain their own pages.

I started to hear from owners who said, ‘Customers keep telling me I need to get on this app.’

—Anthony Edwards, EatOkra cofounder

It’s an especially impressive achievement for a first app. Edwards, who spent his childhood “hacking away” at robotics and computers, served six years in the army and three in the Air Force Reserve before graduating with a degree in computer science. Shortly afterward, he enrolled in a developer boot camp, where he started picking up the ins and outs of app design. The app is truly a family affair: Janique—whom he met on Tinder—is the app’s COO. “I’m more the logic person,” Edwards says. “She’s the heart and soul of the company.”

In the five years since launch, EatOkra has connected more than 380,000 people to Black-owned restaurants near them. “Our goal was to build something,” says Edwards, “but we never thought we would get to this level.”