GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — This summer, more than 90 percent of restaurant owners in Michigan said they're facing higher operating costs and difficulty filling positions.
The pandemic has hit the Hispanic community harder than others, in terms of job loss and economic stability. A group of West Michigan business owners in the Latinx food industry joined together this week to support one another as the entire industry pushes ahead.
"I think it's very important to have that transparency, that collaboration, the space to share in a safe environment," Paola Mendivil says. "It's been a long time (since we've met). Everybody has been navigating the COVID pandemic, the inflation issue, staff issues."
She is one of the organizers of the Culinary Conversations event, hosted by the Downtown Market in Grand Rapids and in collaboration with Start Garden, Grand Rapids Opportunities for Women (GROW) and Michigan State University Extension.
This was the first event held by the Downtown Market where the panel was a Spanish language discussion.
"Even being a bilingual business owner, sometimes you just want to vent or you just want to express yourself in your native language," Mendivil says. "So having the events in Spanish, I think was really dynamic and energizing for us to be open and discuss our issues in our native language."
Mendivil was one of the panelists, as the Vice President of Catering at El Granjero Mexican Grill and Bilingual Business Development Officer at GROW.
She says the panel related on the issues that continue to hurt the entire food industry because of the pandemic, like traffic and revenue, inflation and staffing. She believes something more unique to the Latinx food community is vulnerability.
"One of the things we discuss is that sometimes the Latino business owners are afraid to ask for help or don't know where to ask for help," Mendivil says.
"We all have to grow together because that helps the community grow as well," Gilma DeLaCruz, owner and chef of El Caribe Food Truck, says.
She was also a panelist, and she appreciated getting to open up about the challenges she has experienced.
"During the pandemic, we had to close our restaurant. And for me, it was very hard to talk about this topic, because I felt I was still grieving about the whole situation," DeLaCruz says.
At the end of the event, she and others knew they were not alone.
"As business owners, we need to support each other," DeLaCruz says.
Mendivil says she hopes that future Culinary Conversation events can include the entire community to diversify the experiences shared by business owners.
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