I am Kwaku Osei-Bonsu, lover of food, hats and foot traffic. My grandma has always been that person who was like… “Screw what your parents think!” Miss Lillie Ben Church, she's just, yeah… she is the epitome of like a maternal figure, the epitome. So in Ghana, this is my grandmother on my mom's side, but in Ghana, we refer to them as Griots, right? So a person who would be your reference for culture, and your reference for wisdom, and so like she was that rock, like, for our family she's been an inspiration to me from an intangible, as well as a tangible standpoint. I look to her even now for wisdom… but even for like fashion inspiration, like I wear her hats. She's a rock. She's a rock. 

I saw an actual need, and so that need is what really drove me to go after things like Black Restaurant Week. I would say that my purpose is to shed light and to bring, not just attention, but actual revenue to people within the Black community. I mean, you know, you have Detroit, which is a city that's 84% Black, and so when you look at the progress that the city is making, and making sure that that narrative actually incorporates people of color. I think that my purpose lies somewhere tucked up in there - and I would say that because I don't think that food is going to be the only conduit by which I actually affect change. I think that it's providing a literal, and figurative seat at the table for a lot of people, but it's only like a launch pad into other things, and not for myself, but for this community. 

When we characterize the owners of these establishments, we're talking about people that you see every day, like you see them when you're driving down 75 to get to work – they’re in the car next to you. You see them at the grocery store with two carts full of food because they're trying to get things for their restaurant, you know, because maybe the shipment was late that morning. Like they're like your next door neighbor. They're not some person that's like 30,000 feet in the air who's looking down and saying, like, this is my Detroit, because Detroit's become a brand, you know, to so many people… but to them, Detroit is home.