Local First gets $90K grant to help Black and Latino entrepreneurs

Husband and wife business partners Tajia and Aaron Junior has a knack for making tasty plant-based soul food and coming up with catchy names.

Their vegan soul food truck is called Hot Sauce and Pepper, and the signature dish is called “caulifyah.” It’s a chicken substitute made from deep-fried cauliflower that tastes “fire.” Hence, cauli-FYAH.

But when the couple needed expertise to boost their fledging food truck into a successful business, they turned to Local First Arizona.

The nonprofit organization supports independent businesses and runs a program called We Rise, which provides business skill training at no cost to Black entrepreneurs like the Juniors.

“They’ve been pivotal in helping our small business in so many ways,” said Tajia Junior.

The Juniors completed the six-month program in July. The training helped them develop a business plan, calculate the cost of producing the food they sell, track their business finances and create a website and social media accounts, said Tajia Junior, 36. They also learned how to pitch investors for funding and obtain affordable loans to help grow their business.

The couple has since trademarked the name for their signature “caulifyah” and have begun selling it wholesale. In September, Sugar Jams, a soul-food restaurant in Scottsdale, was the first restaurant to add “caulifyah” to its menu.

The couple has also started bottling and retailing its own sweet and sour “mambo” sauce, which Tajia Junior first learned how to make growing up in Washington, D.C. Aaron is originally from Detroit.

Thunderbirds group donates to support Local First programs

We Rise, along with separate programs aimed at Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs, are getting a boost from a $90,000 grant Local First Arizona recently received from Thunderbirds Charities, which donates millions of dollars annually to local nonprofit groups. The money is raised from the WM Phoenix Open golf tournament run by The Thunderbirds organization.

“The goal of the programs is to provide quality business education to people who don’t normally have access to those resources,” said Kimber Lanning, the CEO of Local First Arizona.

Small businesses owned by Black people and Latinos have a harder time getting business loans, even when categorized as low-risk credit, according to the Federal Reserve Banks’ 2021 Small Business Credit Survey.

We Rise and two other programs that provide business skills to Latinos, Fuerza Local Business Accelerator and Nivel Ejecutivo, also focus on helping Black and Latino entrepreneurs get out of predatory lending loans with high interest rates into mainstream banking with affordable interest rates.

“Financial literacy runs through everything that we do with these programs,” Lanning said. “We’ve been able to drop their average credit score or their average interest rate from 48 down to 9%.“

Nearly 100 entrepreneurs have graduated from We Rise Business Accelerator since 2020, according to Local First Arizona. Ninety percent are women, Lanning said.

Since 2013, Fuerza Local’s Business Accelerator and Nivel Ejecutivo have graduated more than 1,100 entrepreneurs. About 60% are women.

Fuerza Local’s Business Accelerator and Nivel Ejecutivo have pumped more than $24 million in new revenue into the economy and created more than 1,400 new jobs since 2021.

Thunderbirds Charities has invested about $620,000 in We Rise, Fuerza Local and Nivel Ejecutivo since 2017, according to Local First Arizona.

As for the Juniors, their food truck has been so successful that the couple plans to open an actual restaurant.

“That is the 2025 goal,” Tajia said.

Reach the reporter daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com.

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