Sociologist, minority business owners assess challenges

When Alisa Warren got together with central city minority entrepreneurs late last month to discuss the challenges of starting or running a new enterprise, she found that their concerns largely mirrored those of other small business owners: finding capital sources, providing health insurance for employees and staying committed to a vision in the face of exhausting work.

But the University of Missouri Department of Rural Sociology Ph.D. candidate knows that ethnic-minority entrepreneurs can face more challenges than their white counterparts. Working for the state of Missouri in the Minority Business Enterprise/Women’s Business Enterprise program, Warren helped conduct statewide studies that revealed a disparity in how contracts were granted to ethnic-minority-owned and women-owned businesses versus comparable businesses owned by white men.

“Talking to minority business owners around the state for a number of years and seeing the difficulty they’re still having in gaining contracts and growing their businesses, and in having the majority community patronize their businesses as well, it was an interesting thing for me,” Warren said.

Warren is now writing a doctoral dissertation about minority-owned businesses in Columbia, and her research includes facilitating meetings hosted by the Covenant Community Development Corporation in the 1st Ward. The most recent meeting, held Jan. 30, featured business owners Diane Patrick of Nanny’s Neighborhood Child Care Center and Harold Warren of Warren Funeral Chapel. The next one will take place at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Columbia Labor Temple, 611 N. Garth.

Alisa Warren also is conducting in-person interviews and mailing surveys to black business owners to gather data about increases and decreases in Columbia minority business ownership and to learn about successes and challenges.

Some challenges already are clear, Warren said.
“I think African American businesses have a more difficult time securing funding and access to loans. It’s a lot easier to secure a loan if you have a social network,” such as a golf buddy who works for a bank, she said. “Some of those kinds of networks don’t exist for African American business owners. That’s one area I want to explore.”

Local minority business owners are talking about creating a business alliance—particularly in the central city—to help rebuild the sense of neighborhood unity Columbia once had.

“I look back at 50 years ago,” Warren said. “Then there was a thriving black business community that no longer exists. Because of eminent domain and urban renewal, it was kind of wiped out. There are black lawyers and doctors and nurses and businesspeople and contractors, but there’s not necessarily one pocket where everybody is.”

Although a sizable number of minority business owners are located in the 1st Ward, most are spread throughout Columbia. Unlike bigger cities, where residents and business owners from common cultural backgrounds may be concentrated in one area—Chinatown, Little Italy, Harlem, the Mission District—Columbia’s minority-owned businesses are dispersed throughout town.

Downtown

One clear sign of progress in business ownership diversity is the significant number of women-owned businesses downtown—Main Squeeze, Natural Groove, The Pen Point, Calhoun’s, Spanish Fly, Arsenic Leopard, Girl, PS:Gallery, Swank, Blackberry Exchange and Elly’s Couture, to name just a few. Businesses owned by ethnic minorities, however, are less numerous downtown; most are restaurants.

John Pham, owner of the Thai restaurant Bangkok Gardens, has been a downtown business fixture for years. Pham came to the United States from Viet Nam as a child refugee in the mid 1970s and settled in with a host family, as well as his own family members, in Columbia, where he has lived since. Raised by his mother, grandmother and aunts, Pham mastered culinary traditions and, beginning in 1991, worked at Bangkok Gardens as a chef and waiter before buying the business from the owner in 1996.

Last year he made a huge move from 9th Street across from The Blue Note, where the little eatery attracted a largely counterculture clientele, to a sprawling upscale space on Cherry Street, where he oversees a huge staff and high-tech point-of-sales system and serves suit-clad professionals amid the ambient music and chic décor.

It was a big step for Pham, 37, and required considerable funding. But Pham and his business partner, Farshied Amirpanah, opted not to apply for the minority business loans for which they qualified.

“Ethically, I didn’t feel it was correct,” Pham said. “I’d been in the business 10 years. There are other people out there who really need this more than I do.”

Pham resists labels, including the term “minority.” But he does acknowledge discrimination and racism, which he has experienced himself from the mainstream majority culture, from other Asian Americans (in childhood, Chinese and Vietnamese kids called him “banana”—yellow on the outside and white on the inside), and even from other business owners. One example: On the anniversary of taking ownership of Bangkok Gardens, he stopped by one of his favorite restaurants and invited the owner/chef to join him in a celebratory bottle of champagne. The restaurateur kept him waiting for hours and then asked whether Pham planned to hire all Asians, his “own kind,” so he could pay them less.

Ten or 11 years ago, Pham said, it could be difficult to attract customers or even to find necessary ingredients. But as the restaurant’s significant expansion and popularity suggest, the cultural barriers are coming down.
“You reach other people through food, culturally speaking,” Pham said. “The restaurant is a testament to this community and how open people are to other cultures.”

Chapel Plaza

Culture and food—specifically, nutrition—also have played major roles in motivating Michele Reznicek’s business and philanthropic decisions. When the 50-year-old entrepreneur opened, StudioFIT, her new dance and fitness center at 2101 Chapel Plaza Court last year, her aim was to provide an intimate setting for all sorts of clients to improve their health through exercise and lifestyle changes.

“I try very, very hard to get the message out about health because health is not discriminatory,” said Reznicek, a former emergency room nurse.
To help address health issues among low-income young women, including black and Hispanic women, Reznicek has begun working with Columbia Public Schools Superintendent Phyllis Chase to offer a free after-school dance program for girls ages 11 to 17.

“It’s my way of giving back to the community,” she said.
Though Reznicek holds a master’s degree in business administration, StudioFIT is her first foray into the world of small-business ownership. By day, Reznicek, a lawyer, is a campus compliance officer for the University of Missouri.

Reznicek, who has taught fitness since 1979, said she took the time to assess the community’s needs and wants—and to save up enough money to finance the studio on her own—before opening the business.

So far, she says, her 100-member clientele includes fewer men and fewer over-50 members than she would like, but the classes are packed with professional people and students of a range of ages and ethnicities. As a whole, she said, the community has been supportive.

“Columbia is a culture of diversity, and it’s very embracing of business owners,” she said. “There’s just an open market for opportunity. If you have something creative that provides a good service, people will invest in you.”