Silvia Hérnandez’s catering business, La Catrina Grill, was booming before the pandemic. She was serving food at two to four events a week; the uptick in weddings, birthday parties, and meals for nonprofit organizations meant Hérnandez’s sales had doubled year over year. She was even hiring associates to help out with bigger jobs.
“I was doing excellent with my catering business,” Hérnandez told me recently. “It was really good before the pandemic — then it went to zero.”
For a while, Hérnandez was worried she’d lose her business. But today, La Catrina is getting by with offerings sensitive to the realities of COVID-19. Hérnandez is serving more pre-packaged meals, and she even catered a drive-thru baby shower. These changes were implemented with the help of the Comal Heritage Food Incubator, a Denver organization that trains immigrant and refugee women to start their own businesses in the food industry. COVID-19 has targeted immigrant neighborhoods, women, and culinary businesses with devastating accuracy, making support from organizations like Comal more important than ever. By offering immigrant women like Hérnandez coaching, financial support, and connections to social services, Comal is maintaining a vital but sensitive piece of the West’s entrepreneurial fabric.
Foreign-born residents start businesses at a higher rate than the general population, and the proportion is even higher for small shops. Immigrants make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, yet they operate 28 percent of independent small businesses. Their share is far higher — and growing — in Western cities like Denver, Portland, and Seattle. In Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego, immigrants operate the majority of small businesses.
But the pandemic has had disproportionate health impacts on immigrant communities, and the same goes for businesses they’ve started. According to an analysis by University of California, Santa Cruz economist Robert Fairlie, 36 percent of immigrant business owners closed up shop between February and April — double the rate of native-born owners.
While some of these businesses have opened their doors since shelter-in-place orders were lifted, it’s likely that immigrants will have a harder time resuscitating their companies. For one, they are less likely to have established banking relationships that have proven crucial to receiving Paycheck Protection Program money and other forms of financial assistance. In addition, immigrants run 36 percent of the nation’s accommodation and food services firms — businesses that rely on in-person gatherings, and are thus most vulnerable to the coronavirus’ economic toll.
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Hérnandez has watched Denver’s once-booming food industry dry up over the last few months. “I was kind of shocked — I saw a lot of businesses that were good before; and now they close,” she said. In a recent Colorado Restaurant Association survey, 62 percent of restaurant owners said they may have to close permanently within the next six months.
Hérnandez, though, has help in navigating the pandemic economy. After arriving in the U.S. from Mexico in 2013, Hérnandez turned to Focus Points, a Denver organization serving low-income families, for help finding a job. She signed up for a cooking class, and quickly connected with a group of immigrant women who all dreamed of opening their own food businesses. “That is when Focus Points started getting this idea for creating a place for entrepreneurs, especially immigrants and refugees, who don’t have those resources to open a business,” she said.
Focus Points opened Comal in 2016, and ever since has taught women from Ethiopia, Syria, Mexico, and elsewhere the fundamentals of operating a restaurant. At its lunch counter, participants rotate through each station of a commercial kitchen. They start off washing dishes, and eventually orchestrate the kitchen during the lunch-hour rush. Basic English, accounting practices, sourcing ingredients — all are incorporated into Comal’s curriculum. Guests are served a menu derived from the women’s own recipes. Those nearing graduation, like Hérnandez, begin to cater events, and they can request start-up grants for their businesses.
Comal’s 12 to 15 trainees are paid — a rarity among vocational education programs — and the organization’s connection with Focus Points means participants have access to services outside the kitchen.
“When you come to the country and take a job, your outside life isn’t taken into consideration,” said Arden Lewis, Comal’s executive chef. “Here, we take a more holistic approach, looking not just at your skills, but also at your obstacles and how we can help with that. If it’s a health issue, if it’s a housing issue, we have resources for our participants.”
The approach means the women of Comal can work toward starting a company at their own pace without sacrificing income to support their families. Olivia Marcano worked for 30 years as an accountant in Venezuela, but always dreamed of starting her own restaurant. Now in the U.S. — she was granted political asylum last year — she said Comal has finally given her a shot at just that.
“For me, it’s the opportunity to make something I want for a long time. But in Venezuela, I can’t, because of problems in the economy. Comal gave me the opportunity to do this,” Marcano said.
The organization’s goal of late has been maintaining those opportunities in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. When Comal’s restaurant — the source of training and income for participants — closed down in early March, “it was limbo land for all of us,” Lewis said. He immediately built an online curriculum centered around English language lessons and kitchen principles, but delivering classes was a feat in itself. Many of Comal’s participants lacked the digital know-how to use online platforms, if they had adequate internet access at all. To keep the women cooking and earning an income, Comal teamed up with the Denver Metro Emergency Food Network, which has delivered nearly 290,000 meals since the pandemic began.
The lunch counter opened again in mid-June, but it has limited hours, serves fewer customers, and has the staff spread out. In lieu of catering, which Lewis said probably won’t resume until 2021, there’s been more of a focus on wholesale and retail sales of pre-packaged goods. All the while, Comal and Focus Points ensure participants have what they need to endure today’s hardships, be it food, rent assistance, school supplies, or diapers for their children.
“We have participants that are in the at-risk group for COVID. They have underlying health issues, and we have to make sure that we have resources for them,” Lewis said.
Comal’s model is working elsewhere in the West. Project Feast offers culinary apprenticeships in the Seattle suburb of Kent; while its Ubuntu Street Café was closed, members cooked up meals for immigrant and refugee families in the area. La Cocina, the San Francisco incubator that has spun out more than 120 businesses, started selling food boxes and issued stipends to tide over graduates.
For Hérnandez, the pandemic has been trying. Early on, the prevailing notion was that the pandemic was a temporary setback to be weathered, not a structural shift in the food industry. “I was thinking, it’ll be two weeks, that’s it,” Hérnandez said. “I wasn’t thinking about the impact of all these months. … I was really scared, [and wondered] if I was right to keep myself in the food industry.”
Her goal was to transition out of Comal and open her own food truck, but she’s had put those ambitions on hold. Nonetheless, she believes that, with Comal’s support, she and others will join the roster of immigrant entrepreneurs that drive the West’s food economy.
“It’s not going back to the way it was before, but maybe I’ll do more pre-packaged meals, teach more classes, or change my catering business,” she said. “I’m confident it will work.”
