At Black Business Expo, Hartford businesses make sales—and build community

Thursday night’s cool weather did nothing to chill the enthusiasm of dozens of Black business owners and community members who came together for what’s become a semiannual event at Dunkin’ Park.

In a room filled with music, silver balloons and plenty of conversation, people traded multiple things — food, money, business tips and more — over the course of several hours as the local Black Business Expo came to life for the second time this year. 

Some 60 businesses took part in the “Black to the Future”-themed event, which aims to promote the region’s growing Black business community, showing off the entrepreneurial spirit of local businesses owners and the range of opportunities under development in Hartford. 

The event first started in 2023 as part of the Black History Month outreach programming for the foundation arm of the Hartford Yard Goats baseball team. But the expo quickly grew in popularity, leading to the addition of a second expo event each year. 

“When we first opened up the registration, we had about 80 to 85 vendors signed up,” said Aisha Petteway, the executive director of community partnerships for the Hartford Yard Goats Foundation, and a lead organizer of the expo. “From then on, we knew that this was an experience that our community needed.”

That the expo has grown so quickly, local business owners told the Connecticut Mirror, shows that it is meeting a growing need. The event has helped fill in the local business landscape, smoothing over gaps and hurdles that have historically made it harder for Black and Latino business owners to find stable footing in the area.

Research over the years has shown that these difficulties are compounded for business owners operating out of Hartford’s poorest neighborhoods: these businesses can have even more issues accessing capital and navigating the process of developing an idea and gaining exposure.

Community events like the expo, organizers say, provide these businesses with a chance to connect directly with consumers. But just as importantly, the event allows businesses to connect with each other, building a community and network that allows local Black business owners to support one another.

It’s a more community-oriented model of economic development, shifting away from a traditional focus on banks, loans and capital and onto community support, social networking and shared resources. And in close-knit communities like Hartford’s, it’s a model that local residents and business owners say is crucially needed.

“To us, it’s about more than commerce,” said Petteway. “It’s about connection, and also highlighting the services, the goods and the culture of Black-owned businesses.”

Hartford has struggled to support Black businesses in the past

Minority businesses owners have faced a challenging time in Hartford. A 2012 survey of business owners conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, for example, found that the number of minority-owned businesses in the nation increased from 2007 to 2012, growing to make up 29% of all businesses by the end of the survey period. Over that same period in Hartford, the number of local minority-owned businesses made up just 20% of local businesses.  

The limited growth of minority businesses in the city has prompted additional research. One study in particular, a 2022 redevelopment study of Hartford’s Arrowhead Gateway area, a 41-acre predominantly Black community running parallel to Albany Avenue and Main Street just to the north of downtown Hartford and the I-84 corridor, offers helpful insights. 

The report’s authors noted that the neighborhood is one of the poorest in the city and has faced “significant disinvestment” as the result of the area being redlined and largely left behind after the construction of the I-84 corridor. The area then faced further neglect and decline as residents moved out and blight moved in during the 1960s and 1970s. 

But the block has still retained a strong cultural identity and sense of community. According to a small business assessment released as an appendix to the report, the Arrowhead area has become a hub for business activity as a number of Black and Latino entrepreneurs began to launch new businesses during the pandemic. 

In the wake of this growth, additional support from the city could be a major help.

“Technical assistance and financial support should be provided to support existing businesses in the area and create opportunities to grow new small, local, and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC)-owned businesses,” the report authors noted.

These “technical assistance and financial supports” could include programs like microgrants, targeted programs aimed at supporting the growing number of local food and beverage businesses in the area, and the creation of an “entrepreneurial ecosystem,” a community-driven collective where entrepreneurs can support one another and collaborate on initiatives.

The city of Hartford is working to create some of these recommended programs, launching new initiatives in recent years. In 2023, the city launched a microgrant program aimed at supporting the city’s smallest businesses, defined as having five employees or fewer, with $2,500 grant awards. In 2025, the city announced the second year of the microgrant program in partnership with the Urban League of Greater Hartford, increasing the grant amounts to a maximum of $5,000.

And the Arrowhead Gateway area has been slated for a significant amount of development in the coming years, including new housing and commercial projects, as well as the first grocery store serving Hartford’s North End.

Other efforts are being driven by the community, building off of work started organically in Hartford during the pandemic. The Sto Marketplace, for example, started in 2021 as a space where Black entrepreneurs could sell goods and trade ideas, becoming a prominent business collective in the area.

One of its founders, Jennifer Wilder, says that the initiative has grown in the years since to include training and workshops and is now a partner in the Black Business Expo events held at Dunkin’ Park, one of the largest attractions anchoring the Arrowhead area. 

“We wanted to be able to fill in a gap for some of the business owners that we worked with,” Wilder said. “And it kind of just grew into this amazing experience.”

Building a business ‘family’

As she stood at the entrance of the business expo on Thursday night, Wilder noted that the event has become a transformative presence in Hartford, showcasing not only the power and influence of the region’s Black entrepreneurs but also the diversity of the types of businesses founded in Black communities. 

Wilder, a business owner herself, was there to promote both the Sto Marketplace and her work at the Big Red Book Truck, a mobile bookstore highlighting children’s books written by or starring people of color.  

A few steps to her left stood Wilder’s son, Courtenay Jackson, a clothing brand owner who was there to promote his apparel line, Eatin’. 

“There are so many cool stories here,” Wilder said of the businesses gathered for the event. “We’re such a family, so tight-knit, all growing and evolving. And as we do these events together, everyone is elevating their craft.”

That sentiment was present throughout the expo as real estate agents, cheesecake makers, candle companies, financial literacy advisors, and local artists sat at booths, speaking with customers, exchanging hugs and passing out business cards. A few women danced as Luther Vandross’s “Never Too Much” played over the speakers. 

In the middle of the room, Brittany Stokes, owner of Sophisti_Hippie Nails, stood next to her table watching people mill about, waiting for prospective buyers to approach to look at her nail art and press-on nail business. A sign in front of her stand read “Leaves are Falling, Nails are Calling.”

Stokes, a Hartford native, said that the business expo has been a valuable space for her as she continues to build her business, which was started during the pandemic.

“The atmosphere is great, a lot of people here are people I know from around Hartford,” she said. “It’s about building relationships.”

A little further into the room, in a back area sectioned off for food vendors, business owners Lance McDougald, Gabriel Boyd, and Mike Johnson were also waiting to make their next sales. The business expo, they said, had become a powerful way for them to get their businesses started and help build a customer base.  

“It helps to meet the other vendors, the other Black and brown business owners and networking,”  said Boyd, who runs The 881 Grab and Go, a Caribbean fusion eatery on Hartford’s New Britain Avenue, with his wife. “It feels good to just be in the building with one another.” 

That spirit of connection and unity, of hustle and fellowship, is what Petteway says the event is all about.

“We want to build with these business owners,” she said. “It’s really a community.”