Brothers James and Jason Edwards are opening Public Square, a new coffee shop at the former location of Always Brewing and Town Hall Caffe’ on Grand River Avenue.
COVID-19 isn't the first crisis Felicia Williams-Patrick has seen her business through. The Detroit boutique owner has weathered the city's ups and downs, and knows a thing or two about what it takes for a retail store to survive.
You've likely seen Tytiana "Ty" Steele's work without realizing it. The set designer and director is behind sumptuous scenes in TV shows like "Queen of the South" and brand campaigns like Barefoot Wine's We Stan with Her, but now the Detroit artist is bringing her talent back to her hometown, starting her own company to help build equity in her industry.
“We want to be involved in the communities our businesses are in,” says Shalyn Getz, president of Eastern Market Brewing Company and the Ferndale Project. “It’s super important to give back to the communities where we work.”
Local entrepreneur who started the independent toy store Toyology Toys with a location in West Bloomfield expands his retail portfolio to include Quality Roots, a chain of recreational and medicinal cannabis dispensaries.
When COVID-19 hit Michigan this year, the Detroit Innovation Fellowship cohort were well placed to support the communities hit hardest. The 23 social innovators involved in the talent development program are proving that their focus on creating sustainable, accessible resources builds the kind of resilience that see communities through a crisis.
In Detroit communities hit hardest by COVID-19, solar power projects provided some relief and continuity of service this year. For engineers and entrepreneurs Ali Dirul and Karanja Famodou, renewable energy is not just about the sustaining the environment, it's about sustaining equity.
It's not just a design hub that Tanya Saldivar-Ali and her husband, Luis, are building on 18th Street — the Detroit couple is developing a construction pipeline to connect residents with sustainable careers. But it's the cutting-edge technology they are using to tell residents' stories that is capturing international attention.
Detroit entrepreneur KaToya Scott has witnessed the joy her truck's ice cream can bring people, but she never expected her community to respond with an outpouring of support to help her business survive COVID-19 setbacks. "You don’t think people care and here are people saying ‘hey we see you.’ "
Juan Carlos Dueweke-Perez has come a long way from selling cheesecakes door-to-door in Southwest Detroit as a kid. Now the co-founder of Southwest Detroit Restaurant Week owns his own marketing agency and works toward bringing equity to minority- and immigrant-owned businesses: "I want to continue a legacy that doesn’t start or end with me.”
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