Legacy Black-Owned Businesses Get a Reboot

“As a kid, my grandmother always told me, ‘Get these products because they’re owned by us,’” Mr. Miller recalled. But “I got older and started realizing that Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben were models, and none of the proceeds from these brands went back to helping the community and their families; it was just pure mockery.”

Historically, if a white-owned company wanted to emphasize the quality of its food or service, it frequently used a Black person’s image to do so, playing on racist stereotypes about African Americans being valuable only as cooks, housekeepers and farmers.

Uncle Ben’s rice and Aunt Jemima breakfast foods were prime examples of this tactic. Because of their rice-growing and pancake expertise, the real-life Frank Brown and Nancy Green were hired to be the faces of the products, but their skill was not acknowledged or financially rewarded. (In 2020, Quaker Oats announced that it would drop the Aunt Jemima name and change its packaging, and Uncle Ben’s rebranded as Ben’s Originals.)

“These are family brands that they’ve been building and passing that down from generation to generation, and we never got any part of that,” Mr. Miller said, adding, “I wanted to change that narrative.” ”

Mr. Miller sources his rice from Ghana to employ farmers there. A portion of his profits funds programs for low-income children and the elderly in New Orleans and St. Louis. And he uses his own image — a photo of himself in sunglasses — to sell the products.

“We definitely can build generational wealth,” he said. “And once we get into the game, who knows if one of these companies will hit and turn into a multibillion-dollar business?”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/business/black-owned-businesses-fashion-fair.html