 Hello and welcome to this episode of Fort Worth Forward. I'm here today in front of Fort Worth restaurant icon, Fred's Texas Cafe, where we'll talk to Quincy Wallace, the owner about their move to the west side of Fort Worth. We also have Annette Landeros, who's head of the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, as well as Jesse Herrera Coact. It's a nonprofit that's looking at inequality in our neighborhoods. Let's go. My first guest is Quincy Wallace, President and CEO of Fred's Texas Cafe. How are you doing, Quincy? I'm good, I'm good. Thanks for hosting us here in your new restaurant. Hey, thanks for coming in. We appreciate it. How has it been? You're an iconic restaurant here in Fort Worth. You had a location down in West Seventh that we've closed and now moved here. Tell us about that process and why coming out here and how's it been? Well, we just, the 7th Street area just changed on us. And I feel that our customer is more, lives out to the west. One of the other things is there's no way to help grow this west side of town, the Las Vegas Trail area, without bringing jobs here. So that's one of the reasons and our customer base is here, plus the parking lot. Right, right. Which didn't exist at your 7th Street location. No, we went from nine spaces to 53, I think. Right, right. And tons of street parking. And we're out here alone again, like we were in 7th Street before. It became the booming metropolis that it is. Yeah, you had a lot of industrial when y'all first opened. There was nothing really, there's some industrial. It was an industrial area. We were a greasy spoon in an industrial area. So, to answer your question though, we opened up busting at the seams here. We were well, very well received. I've been here a few times and it's hard to get to the bar or get to a burger. So that's great news, great news. Yes, we're blessed in that way. So, it's safe to come now. There's not an hour wait unless it's at the typical dinner and lunch times which every single restaurant in town now has a wait. So, we're just like everybody else. There's gonna be a small wait at dinner and at lunch. But we get you in and out of here quicker than the first two weeks we were open. Tell us a little bit about the history of Fred's, how it got started. Well, your parents are involved, I think, right? Terry Chandler's parents, my business partner. Who's now moved to Costa Rica and has no day-to-day. Enjoying the life. Living the beach life. But his parents bought a restaurant called Ken's Cafe in the 7th Street area in 1978. My dad had a cabinet shop next door called See Lucky Cabinets. So, I was going to Ken's Cafe before Fred's Cafe. The Chandlers bought Quincy with Fred's. How they tell the story. I got into the restaurant business by accident. I was just needed money and started washing dishes and there's not a job in Fred's that I haven't done. All the way through the, from the kitchen to everything. Right. So. That's great. Yeah, wonderful. So, you talked a little bit about moving out to the West Side and for people that aren't necessarily familiar with this area. It's gone through years of change. I talk about it all the time. You brought up Las Vegas Trail area. This was a booming, thriving part of the city when the base was at full capacity and was Carzwell. Oh my, yeah. I mean, it's the West Side. It's the West Side. It was, it was, it was the every, everything was in the West Side. And then we started growing in other areas. I think the original Neemans was the building right across the street. The new school building is the first Neemans before Ridge Mar Mall was even built. Right, right. So, this is where people went shopping, where people went. We're in the first Staken Ale. The building that built the Staken Ale Empire is where we are. We are, yes. So, it's kind of cool to be in another iconic restaurant. The Fred Street Cafe was a building, a restaurant since 49. Wow. So, the third restaurant, we're the third restaurant here. So, hopefully we'll get another 43 years out of this spot. I think you will. So, I'm glad you're, I mean, in essence, repurposing this building. Yes. Bringing jobs and, you know, people back to here. And again, bringing out some life to this part of the city that where people can go eat. I hope I'm the first of many to come back to the West Side because it seems as if everybody walked away from here through the 90s and early aughts. Right. So, I'd like to stay here alone for a minute. And get as much gas as possible. I miss being alone from being in the middle of it downtown. So, we're glad to be out here West. Well, I think people are finding here. Hopefully people are coming, though. Every time I've been here, people are here and people are finding you. And I know the neighborhoods around here are excited to have something like this here. So, I think you're going to be OK. I hope so. I think we'll be fine here. I'm just looking forward to the growth. You're sure. Well, as you know, growth is going West. And we've got everything that's going outside of 820. But this is kind of a stopping point in between, if you don't want to go all the way downtown. A lot like West 7th was, right between Ridge Rivercrest and downtown, you had a West 7th that was never developed. And, well, looky here. Right between Fort Worth and Alito, you've got a new space that's not really being developed. They'll come. It'll come. It'll come for sure. It'll fill. What do you see as the future for Fred's? This location or just growth in general? Growth in general. We're going to grow. I want to grow the brand a little more locally and then more. I think we have a cool product that can fit in many places. And this is just the beginning. That's great. Well, thanks for hosting us here today. Thanks. Your burgers are great and wonderful. Where can people find you? We have two locations, one north of the loop at 2730 Western Center. And then we have this location, 7101 Camp Bowie West. You can find us online, www.fredstexascafe.com. OK, Facebook. Facebook, Instagram, same handle. Same handle. There you go. Great. Well, thanks for hosting us today. Appreciate it all. Thank you, Michael. And good luck with everything. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Thank you. Now I'm here with Annette Landarros, who's president and CEO of the 4th Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Welcome, Annette. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. Of course, of course. I think this is fun. We've been friends for a long period of time and to watch good people assume good positions and leadership positions. I think it's just awesome. Thank you. I'd say the same about you. Oh, no, no, no. How long have you now been president and CEO of the Hispanic Chamber? Officially three years, actually. Officially three years. OK. How'd you get there? What were you doing that puts you in line to be there? Yeah, so I actually served on the board of the Hispanic Chamber, but I was in the midst of a 12-year career with the federal government, had no intention of leaving or working for a nonprofit. But just through my board service and other nonprofits and being involved in the community, when our previous president, CEO, had announced that they were leaving for a business opportunity, my fellow board members kind of looked to me and said, would you consider? And after saying no five or six times, I started to consider it and I thought, how wonderful to really dedicate myself full time to our city and try to do the best we can. And so it was a wonderful opportunity. I really enjoyed it. Didn't know we were going to hit a global pandemic six months later, but it really has been a wonderful ride and I'm really grateful for the opportunity. That's great. And you kind of intimated to what is the mission of the Hispanic Chamber? What are you trying to accomplish? So we help businesses start, expand, and connect, and all businesses in Fort Worth. We are a membership organization. That's what folks often tell me, oh, so I have to pay to be a member. Yes, we are a membership organization, but we help everyone. Because our hope is that if your business is struggling or you're just getting started, if we're able to help connect you to somebody that can get you started or the resource that you need, maybe later down the line, you'll remember and become a member of our Chamber. So we're going to help everyone whether they're a member or not, whether they're Hispanic or not. We have plenty of members that are not Hispanic in our Chamber as well. We're just here to promote business, advocate for business, and make sure that Fort Worth is thought of first as a great place to do business. That's a wonderful philosophy. You kind of hinted on some of these two resources and what's available. I know you've started a few initiatives under your tenure. You talk a little bit about that, some of the initiatives that you've started. Yeah, absolutely. We're really hoping to make sure that folks access all of the resources that they need. And what we realized during the pandemic was that really, we're the only ones able to do business assistance in Spanish, at least full-time. So we now have a bilingual business incubator in our office. We also realize that we shouldn't assume that all entrepreneurs have the technology they need. So that incubator space is really kind of like a computer lab that has printers, scanners, computers, anyone that's on the road. A lot of business folks are running from place to place. They can stop by here. We have a notary, who's notarizing things free of charge as well. We're just trying to eliminate all the barriers that you have to be able to do business. So that's one initiative. We also are building out a studio. As you have conquered already, creating online content is so important to tell your story and connect with people. We're hoping to offer that as a business benefit as well, where people can talk about their journey or what their business is now offering. Several different things. We also created a business pitch competition. First round is next week. That was really focused on trying to get young entrepreneurs more active with our chamber. We have a lot of folks that think they can't interact with a chamber until they have a business. But we're saying, no, we can be helping you way in advance. You can't help when you just have that idea. So the business pitch competition is a way of encouraging young entrepreneurs to say their dream out loud. That's the hardest part, because you're worried someone's going to steal it, or they're going to say it. Or they're going to tell you all the reasons you shouldn't be doing it. Which happens, right? That's the nature of the process. So the more you can eliminate that, you have a valid dream. Let's move and figure out how we move forward. Exactly. So there's just a few things that we've started into. Well, we want our chamber to be a super support network where we eliminate intimidation where you feel like you're underprepared. We can prepare you. We can connect you to the people you need to know. If you have an idea and you want to create something in our city, we want to be there for you. Okay. You talked a little bit about do you have scholarships and other things as part of the process, I believe? We do. We also have a scholarship program for Tarrant County high school students and college students. So if you're in college and you need a little bit of money to fill that gap of funding, we can do that too. We have a golf tournament that helps with that as well. We believe in investing in our future workforce. So that's where our scholarship program is doing. One of the things that we focused and started to focus on with Forward Forward have created this small business task force where we brought small businesses together. And I know a big part of your membership are small businesses. Yes, absolutely. And so I know you and your husband have now taken a 4A into a small business. I know, thank you. Tell us a little about that. In between taking this job as President CEO having a baby, having another baby that's on the way, right? You have now the small business that you're on. Tell everybody about that and how has that process helped you now be more resourceful for other small businesses? Yeah. Well, one thing I've learned through marriage is that when someone has the entrepreneurial spirit, it is hard to get it to stop. You know what I mean? Yes. And so my husband has it. He has it. I do not. So I was the naysayer for a little bit. I'll be honest of like, oh, you know, that's really risky. But in the process of, you know, coming to the Chamber and then being really surrounded by a lot of entrepreneurs, they were just going out and doing it, not thinking twice. Entrepreneurs are a special breed. You know what I mean? Yes. And so once I started to surround myself with these people, I started to understand my own husband a little bit more and just do it. Right? And now we have the puzzle pieces. Let's put it together. We own a coffee shop now. We're really excited about that. It's called Casa Su Coffee. And where is it located? In the north side of Fort Worth on central, off of North Main. And right now we're the only real coffee shop in the north side outside of the stockyards in the north side area. But it's been such an eye-opening experience for me to be on the other side now. I used to sympathize with the struggles of a small business owner. Now I can empathize. What's been the biggest struggle that you all have had to process? The never-ending to-do list. There's always something to do and not enough hours in a day. Because you know, your dream is big and we're not, you know, there's a lot more we want to do but finding the time and the resources to be able to do it. There's always something you have to be doing here and me trying to get new menu items out, hiring, all of that. There's always something to do. So it's the never-ending this that you have to just get used to. But it's been really wonderful to be able to understand now even better what my chamber members are going through. And even some of it, you know, I've learned through the process of it's not always easy to navigate and hopefully this process of me having to navigate with my husband will allow me to advocate even more effectively on behalf of our businesses. That's cool. What would advice you'd give to entrepreneurs? Advice I'd give to entrepreneurs is really surrounding, I think that that's what helped me personally becoming an entrepreneur with my husband. What's surrounding yourself with other entrepreneurs, right? I think that once you kind of form a network of people who get you, who don't think you're crazy, you know what I mean, that have done the crazy idea and that have made it work and they've also seen the good, bad, and ugly and they can tell you. They're more than willing to share so that you don't have to learn from your own mistakes. I've got stories for sure. Yeah, everyone and it's fantastic. So get involved with your chamber or however you can connect with other entrepreneurs and have coffee with some. Maybe a cafe as well. Yeah, have coffee a cafe as well. I don't feel like you have to do this by yourself because I think they talk about the lonely entrepreneur in trying to fight and get ahead on your own. You don't have to. You can have a whole network of people who've done it, that are trying to do it, that believe in you and that can open doors, introduce you to some financial support, they can introduce you to educational support, they can read your business plan, you know, whatever it made. We had several folks that when we found our property that we wanted to be in, we would bring in business owners that specialize in restaurants and they would tell us like well, you know, you want to put this over here, you want to put this over there, that's going to be out of code, you're going to have to fix that. So just a strong support of people that can help you get it done. Wow, great advice. Thank you for what you're doing at the chamber and thank you for what you're doing just sort of inspiring and encouraging entrepreneurs. Thank you. Tell your husband hello to me. Of course, thank you. This is wonderful. Thank you. I'm now here with Jesse Herrera who's Executive Director of COAC, a local non-profit. Welcome, Jesse. Hey, it's a pleasure to be here, Michael. It's been a while. It has been a while. Tell us what COAC is, how it came into existence and kind of your mission. Yeah, so to give a little background, I have a profession in design. I've been practicing design my entire career and what I recognize is that there's a shortcoming that's separated from the problems we're trying to solve. In the case of the social arena, we're very often separated from the individuals or the communities we're trying to solve problems for. So COAC is a response to that. We use design methodologies and as an organization we're a collective impact organization. We create collective impact by empowering others to be able to achieve the work. And the way that we do that is by creating community-centered projects and through those projects we create capacity to building resources and long-term resources to support systemic change. Let me say community-centered projects. Give us an idea. What do you mean by that? So oftentimes when we come into neighborhoods to address issues, I feel like we often come with very novel, very well-intentioned ideas, but sometimes those can be separated from the day-to-day experiences that community members face, whether they be on the west side, the south side, the north side. You know, something as simple as saying, okay, well, we're going to put a grocery store in a neighborhood. Well, let's also look at the bus routes. Maybe there's a bus route that maybe could be a much more immediate cost-effective fix in the short term to get that person to jobs and also get that person to a grocery store. So it's really just trying to understand those day-to-day experiences and really align ourselves to the challenges, align ourselves to the communities, and then base our solutions on that. And it sounds like common sense, but it's not often common practice. Sure. So you look at maybe holistically an area, they might have food insecurity, but there may be reasons that maybe they don't have real access, whether it's through transportation to fresh food or whatever. So you look at it holistically and how do you solve that problem? Yes, we try to map it out and then when we map it out, we try to identify where are the gaps and where are the trends. And there's going to be organizations when we do this that are already doing really good work. There's no need to go and reinvent the wheel or to compete for resources. They're already doing a good job. Let's try to identify strategic gaps that we can invest in that become viable projects for us to develop something. You have some examples of projects you're working on right now? We're working on growing Southeast, which is an incubator for urban farms to combat food insecurity, and we're working directly with community members to do that. So these become entrepreneurial opportunities to build urban farms in Fort Worth with the long-term goal of being able to address food insecurity in specific attributes. Are those in people's back yard or those areas that you land where do these urban farms exist? So we have a multitude of sites which has been a really good learning lesson for us going back to my previous point of view. One of the sites is on Trinity River Water District land, which is Opal's farm. They have very unique requirements just because they sit on the flood plain. There are certain things that come with that in terms of pros and cons. We have one that's an undeveloped vacant lot that's owned by a church Greater Mount Tabor Christian Center over in Stop Six. Rada Jason to that is another farm operating on a church, but it's an accessory kind of on the back end of a church. Over the past five years that we've been developing these projects is that with vacant sites there's a lot more challenges because the city is going to look at it as a planned development almost. So we have to go through a lot of steps in the ordinance that we're using is still relatively new, so there's not really a well-established operating procedure. With the accessory use, we don't necessarily have to go with that. We can start from day one and get built, but there's a limit to how much we can do because we're working with existing property. The first one, we have Real Stories, which is an art show and storytelling session that we use. We circulate at higher education facilities and art galleries to raise awareness on college homelessness. We've been doing this now for about two years and we're hopefully going to be booking our next show at UTA this fall. We've had a lot of good feedback with that and it's really helping participants build to get a better narrative on the homeless experience and how students nowadays unfortunately are experiencing their day-to-day challenges. Then the third project is called The Mindful Market. It kind of correlates with Gross Alphys. We're introducing a farmers market over at Texas Western University. We did our pilot program last year in June and we launched officially in April. I believe it was April 30th of our call and then we're going to be bringing it back September 24th. We're currently in the process right now of getting it designated as a farmer's market so it can support additional events and higher frequency. I read, I was looking through some of the materials and you brought design earlier and it says design can create change against systemic inequities and that's kind of a core part of your mission, right? Yes. That's amazing, that's amazing. For us, we look at design as a creative problem-solving process so I think a lot of people correlate design to the end products but it really is about the process. The process is what creates those products and if we do the process well, if we align it to community needs, customer needs, whatever phrasing we want to use, it's going to allow us to create a much better product. That's great. Thanks for being here. How can people find you to learn more about what you do? Our primary way is through our website so www.coactntx.org We're also on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The phrasing, I guess, would be coactntx and that's going to be consistent with all our social media platforms. Do you have volunteer opportunities where people can take a little bit of time or a lot depending on what the project is if they just have a few hours to volunteer do you have those kind of projects? Absolutely, so the gross out fees we're doing volunteer events every Friday. We're hoping to be doing those for the rest of the year. We're excited to announce that one of our farms just got to Cowtown Farmer's Market so that's a great addition. They're going to need the help. They need volunteers just to help with harvesting, tuning the weeds, and then we also have volunteer opportunities with the mindful market just to come out and help welcome visitors, help welcome vendors. There's going to be a plethora of opportunities. Well, that's great. Jesse, thanks for what you do. Thanks for what you're looking at problems and help try that we have in our community environment. But thanks for what you're doing to try to address those problems. Really appreciate it. Absolutely, Michael. It's a pleasure. Thank you. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Fort Worth Forward as much as I have. It's been fun to be out here on location at Fred's Texas Cafe enjoying the west side of Fort Worth. If you have ideas of guests that might be fun to have on the show or places that we should go visit and film, please let me know. Send it to me at district three at FortWorthTexas.gov. I hope you all enjoy this beer and this great burger from Fred's Texas Cafe. If you have not been here, come on out, test it out, try it out. If you've been here, come back. It's a great place. Appreciate it. Bye.