 Good evening. I'm Pamela Horn, Director of Cross Platform Publishing and Strategic Partnerships for Cooper Q at Smithsonian Design Museum. We're so pleased to welcome you all to this evening's design talk, Growing Local Designing Sustainable Food Businesses. So this evening we'll hear from two influential and very visionary agents whose organizations champion social and economic empowerment, innovation, and environmental sustainability. Our first presenter will be Davida Davidson, who serves as the Executive Director at Food Lab Detroit. Food Lab is a nonprofit organization that works to support local food entrepreneurs and imagines a new future for food justice. Davida accelerates locals with ideas for food business to take their dreams into reality by connecting them with business advice, help with compliance and licensing, space in professional kitchens, marketing ideas, and more. Food Lab focuses on entrepreneurs and communities who have been traditionally under resourced, aiming to build power and resilience for people around the city. Food Lab's vision to use food as an economic engine, to form a supportive community of entrepreneurs and to make good food a reality for all Detroiters. Davida combines her passion for culinary arts with activism and entrepreneurship. She's worked with the Brooklyn Food Coalition. She's facilitated workshops for WKKF Foundation and spoken at TED 2017. And Davida writes on local food systems. Next, we'll hear from Caba Conte. Caba has invested his life as an artist, food entrepreneur, and community man. He's the founder of Chasing Lions Cafe and Red Bay Coffee Roasters. Through his work, he's embraced and hired people of all backgrounds and strives to be inclusive of those who have traditionally been left out of the specialty coffee industry, especially people of color, the formerly incarcerated and women, as well as people with disabilities. Following their presentations, Davida and Caba will be in conversation and will invite audience Q&A. So without further ado, please help me welcome Davida Davis into the stage. Robin, thank you so much for that introduction. And I just want to say what an honor and a privilege it is to be here at Cooper Hewitt to talk about design and how we're using design to grow the local economy in Detroit. And what I love about the conversation that Caba and I are going to embark upon in our presentations is that you'll see how we're using design principles in two different ways. I use design in the systems that I create for Food Lab Detroit. And Caba, well, he's an artist. So he uses design to create beautiful spaces. And so, again, it's an honor and a privilege for me to be here. And I think I would be remiss if I did not also share with you another way that we use design. So Ingrid LeFluor is in the audience and she actually ran for mayor of the city of Detroit using design as a part of her campaign to promote Afrofuturism and what the city of Detroit would look like using design in her campaign. So we're all about design in Detroit. I don't know what you're heard, but Detroit is really, really pushing the envelope when it comes to design. And so what I want to share with you for a few moments is I want to share with you what a food based inclusive economy looks like. So what is a food based inclusive economy? It's one that from farm to table, from processing all the way to composting ensures economic opportunity, high quality jobs with living wages, safe working conditions, access to healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate food and is environmentally sustainable. And so for a few minutes, I want to share with you a story, a story about how Food Lab Detroit designed systems to support a community at scale of food businesses that are creating this food based inclusive economy. And so as it was already indicated, I am a daughter of Detroit, Michigan. I was born and raised in Detroit. And the city where I was born and raised in the 1950s was the world's industrial giant. It had a population in the 1950s of about 1.8 million people. And we had 140 square miles of infrastructure that was used to support this booming Midwestern center. This is a picture of the Packard plant in 1950. And now just a half a century later, this is the Packard plant in Detroit. Unfortunately has become somewhat of a poster child of urban decay. And as a result of this, Detroit is now a population that is no longer 1.8 million. Detroit has a population of about 680,000 of which 84% are African American. And due to decades of disinvestment in the city and capital flight that left the city for the suburbs, Detroit is severely lacking. It's lacking retail. And for me and the work that I do, I concentrate on the fact that Detroit is lacking fresh food retail. Because I know in a city that is lacking fresh food retail, there's a couple of things that occur. What occurs is that 70% of Detroit adults are obese and overweight and they struggle to easily access nutritious food that they need to stay healthy and to prevent premature diet related diseases. I know that far too many Detroiters live closer to fast food restaurants and convenience stores and gas stations where they shop for food than they do full service grocery stores. I know that you're more likely to find high quality produce in our neighboring suburbs than you would in Detroit neighborhoods. And I know that all of this in some ways are distinguishing characteristics of my city. And I know that it's not a good story, but this is not the story that I've come to the Cupid to tell. No, the story that I want to tell was a story about change and transformation through design and how urban agriculture and food entrepreneurship is changing the city of Detroit. And because of Detroit's history that I just shared with you, Detroit finds itself with some unique assets that is based around the design of the city. Because of the design of Detroit, it now has a lot of open land. I don't know how many people in this room knew that the topography of Detroit Michigan 140 square miles that you can fit the entire city of Boston, the entire city of San Francisco and the borough of Manhattan in the land area of the city of Detroit. And that estimates probably folks are saying probably of that landmass 40 square miles of Detroit are vacant. That's a quarter to a third of the city. That's the design that we're working with. And that's a level of emptiness that creates a landscape unlike any other big city. But here are the assets that we have in Detroit. In Detroit, we have fertile soil. We are proximate to water. We have willing labor and we have a desperate demand for fresh, healthy food. And that, my friends, has created a people powered grass roots movement in my city. That's actively working to turn what was once the capital of American industry into what I want to call an agrarian paradise. In fact, if I could brag, I would say, and I know I'm a little biased, but the city of Detroit, I believe out of all the cities in the world, Detroit may be best positioned and designed right now to serve as the world's urban exemplar food security and sustainable development. So let me make something perfectly clear for those of us who are working in Detroit's urban agricultural movement. Our goal is for the future of Detroit to be designed for us to create us to create an ecosystem that will ensure that Detroit, Michigan becomes the most food secure and sustainable city on planet Earth. And I say us because I believe that the work that we do at Food Lab Detroit is really leveraging the work of our urban agriculture and our farmers. And I think that the most innovative element of Food Lab Detroit, this incubator that incubates probably about 200 small business, the most innovative element about Food Lab Detroit can be summed up in this African proverb that says nothing about us without us is for us. And that design process is very important because here's the thing, at Food Lab we understand that many times what's missing from the design, the deployment and the management of many of these kind of alternative food initiatives is any recognition that inequity in the food system is centrally linked to histories of racial and economic discrimination. Many programs often lack substance of participation from those community members who actually face the challenges of food injustice themselves. So what you have, if they are not centered in the design process, what you will get is you'll get these alternative food initiatives that tend to benefit mostly white folks who are already economically secure and already healthy. If you don't design a system that puts those who are most infected or affected in the middle. So what we at Food Lab have decided to do is that we want to put those individuals, entrepreneurs, community leaders, activists in the center of our design. So we've created what we call an equity framework. We have an equity profile. And that informs our design process, which has resulted in developing tools that allow us to develop a set of what we call community based solutions that might help transform the very political and economic systems that had historically oppressed low income and ethnic minority communities across Detroit. So in my in my last few minutes, what I want to do is I want to take you inside a food labs process. And I want to show you the results of what it looks like when you design a system that sets out to empower local small business leaders to move the needle for poor communities of people of color. Let me take you into our process. The very first thing you have to do when you are designing a process or methodology that we like to consider at Food Lab design thinking and that it requires empathy. That's the first thing. It's important to understand the user. You need to see the solution from the user's perspective. This is a picture of Detroit Vegan Soul. Why is this so important? Because the user of Detroit Vegan Soul, the consumer of Detroit Vegan Soul were the founders of Detroit Vegan Soul. Erica and Kirsten founded Detroit Vegan Soul because based upon their reality, their parents themselves, they were suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes. And so they wanted to create a vegan soul food restaurant that was very much about culture, still keeping that soul food element but taking a plant based approach and making soul food vegan and still having the flavor of it. They were the user. So they designed a restaurant based around what they were experiencing for themselves. They first opened up a restaurant on the east side of Detroit. This picture is their second location on the west side of Detroit. They're also working on a third location in Detroit. It is because when you design a, if you have a problem and you design a solution with the user in mind and you are the user and you're speaking to a community, this is how you can grow and scale a business. The second kind of philosophy that we take a look at in our design process is that design thinking requires the ability to put across a story. It is an iterative process and it requires the understanding of the problem. You have to not only understand the problem but you have also constantly got to be looking for solutions and you can't do that by not talking and thinking of what other people. So this is what we did at Food Lab. We knew there was a problem but we knew that we could also find a solution. What was the problem? In Detroit we have over 1500 urban gardens and farms in the city of Detroit. And we work with one of our sister organizations that's called Keep Growing Detroit. They do for farmers what Food Lab does for entrepreneurs. And these are farmers in the city of Detroit who want to not only farm but they want to make farming an economical, viable business model for them. They want to live off of farming. And so there was a problem. And the problem was is that many of the farmers as they were growing, they did not have a market where they could sell their produce. Outside of maybe farmers markets or maybe community markets, they wanted to create other markets. So this is where Food Lab came in. Keep Growing Detroit and Food Lab came together and we sucked ourselves. There's a problem. We need to grow the market for Detroit farmers. So we created a program that was called Detroit Grown and Made. That program is when Food Lab entrepreneurs who are growing and scaling their business locally source their produce from Detroit farmers. And Food Lab serves as a supply intermediary between the farmer and the entrepreneur. This is a picture of one of our entrepreneurs who locally sources some Michigan wild ginger from a farmer who grows nothing but ginger for Jess McClary. And what does she do? She uses this in her what we call consumer package good, which is called McClary Bros. It's a tasting vinegar. It's a cocktail shrub. You can use it for marinades. You can make vinaigrettes or you can use it in a cocktail for an old fashioned cocktail. As a matter of fact, it was just picked up from a national retailer called West Elm. So you can now find McClary Bros. at West Elm. And here's the thing. This is where design thinking comes in, right? If you pull one lever, what happens on the other side? It's called a rising tide lifts all bumps. So as Jess McClary begins to grow her business, right? She's now in 195 stores across the country, 22 states. What do you think that does for the farmers in Detroit? Where she locally sources her products from, right? As she does well, they do well also. But we weren't able to find a solution to that problem until you sit down the entrepreneur and you sit down the farmer and they build relationships and figure out how to work together. The third really, really important component in our design process at Food Lab is that when we are designing systems, we intentionally put together what we call unlikely bed fellows. People who would have never met if it wasn't for the fact that they were a part of Food Lab Detroit. They bring together diverse perspectives, many of them who have never worked together. But when they begin to talk, when they begin to work together, they find out that there are more differences between that there are more things that they have in common than they do differences. This is a picture of April Anderson, who owns Good Cakes and Bakes, and Shannon Bird, who owns Slow Jams. Shannon has a jam company. April has a brick and mortar that's called Good Cakes and Bakes that's on Livernois. The thing that they found out that they have in common in this particular work group that we were having is that they both hire individuals who have high barriers to unemployment and they both happen to be men. Shannon was bringing on young men, training them who had been high school dropouts. April was hiring men who were returning citizens coming back into the community. And they did not realize that they could form a training program where they could work together to hire and also train food not only to be to grow in their businesses but offer good jobs as well for both Slow Jam and also Good Cakes and Bakes. But that doesn't happen unless you design a process where you are intentionally putting people together in the same room so they can talk. And I would say that the last thing that was important, not the last thing, but the second to last thing that I think is most important is humility. Every year, food lab entrepreneurs that we all come together as something what we call our annual membership summit. And sometimes the problems and the challenges can be so overwhelming for one food entrepreneur that they may not be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But humility is so important. And that is that you have to have an attitude that allows you to go for a preconceived notion about not what's impossible but what is possible. And so we bring our entrepreneurs together. And what we do is we vision together. And we know that when we work together what one entrepreneur may not be able to do on their own. They ask for help from the community. And we decide on one project that we're going to work together as a community to move it forward so they can see the possibility of what they thought was impossible. And then once you have a design process and you've gone through when you designed a process and you've done some type of iteration and you put it on paper, I think the most important thing you have to do in a design process is you got to prototype the thing. You got to see if it works. And one of the things that way food entrepreneurs prototype is that we do pop ups. Here's a picture of Mako and her partner and what you see behind her is an air stream. And so Mako does pop ups at a farm that's called the farm is land in Corktown. But the name of her air stream trailer in her business is called Pink Flamingos. So she doesn't have a restaurant. What she does is she pops up out of her air stream on every Thursday. She's working toward a restaurant. She's trying to get consumer validation. She's trying to analyze the market. She's trying to test out her menu. She's trying to see who her consumer is. It is prototyping an idea before you do the full-fledged launch of that. And here's the deal. Food Lab Detroit, we consist of about 200 small locally owned food businesses, burgeoning food entrepreneurs. We provide hands on education, resources to help these entrepreneurs start and scale healthy food businesses. Last year alone, these small businesses, they generated almost 8.2 million dollars in annual revenue and they hired about 252 Detroiters and provided jobs for Detroiters. Right? This is how you build a local economic development and community development strategy. And I know the examples that I've given you, Good Cakes and Bakes, Detroit, Vegan Soul, Slow Jam. These are just small examples. But these are stories about how you begin to build an ecosystem that creates economy in a places and spaces that were left vacant by the disintegration of the old. And more importantly, this is how you also build participation amongst those individuals who are building businesses and want to create a community. And so last but not least, what I'll say is that I am not here to tell you that designing a system within Food Lab is the end all and be all solution in Detroit. We have several challenges in the city of Detroit. I am just a player in the ecosystem. But here's what I believe. I believe that strengthening the social fabric of your city and jump-starting a local entrepreneurship, it all begins with sitting around the table, talking, designing a system for folks who are not only growing, who are cooking, who are serving fresh, healthy, nutritious, and delicious food. Thank you. I was in Detroit, I would be all up in some food lab. Yes. So my name is Keba Conte. I'm the founder, CEO of Red Bay Coffee Roasters in Oakland, California. About four years old. And I'm going to walk you through three design projects. So really I appreciate it, DeVita's talk, because it really went, you know, from the, it was the macro, the big picture, right? So if there was a food lab in Oakland, we would be one of those entrepreneurs. So this is sort of like narrowing down on the macro of one entrepreneurial story and how we're trying to make a difference in our community. My background is that of an artist and a food entrepreneur and an activist. Red Bay Coffee, at Red Bay Coffee, we strive to develop, you know, beautiful coffees, sustainable communities. And we do that through, through keeping our eyes on, on focusing on creating opportunities within our community in general. And in particular, you know, developing single origin coffees, sustainable, organic coffees. And that's, and that's the business that we create. If you love something enough, it will reveal its secrets to you. This is a quote by George Washington Carver, and it has guided my, my inquis, inquisition into developing in my, my research into coffee. And, and that's exactly what, what I needed to do. Four years ago, five years ago, when I began to roast coffee and learn that side of it, up to that point, I had operated coffee shops, Gorilla Cafe, Chasing Lions Cafe, decided to take a step back into the food value chain, and to learn how to roast coffee. So to do that, I needed a space. And luckily, I had a room in my garage. And, and I applied and I developed this room into a coffee dojo. A dojo is Japanese for a room where you train in your arts, martial arts, but in this case, culinary arts. So this was the room. It was a storage, a storage room surrounded by a garden in our yard, in our home in the Fruitvale District. So much like my artwork, one of my design principles of building principles is by using salvaged materials, wood, you know, fixtures whenever, whenever I can. So the door, so this door, this room is about six foot tall. And depending on the shoes I'm wearing, I'll be about six foot tall. So, so a lot of people would knock their head when they walk through here. So at first I wrote the word duck. And then I was like, no, how about bow? And, you know, so sometimes we have design challenges and it's really, it's really just the perspective that we bring to work through, to work through there. And the angel is in the details. You know, so it's a lot of fun to, to, to, to play with the details. So I don't know if you, everyone recon, recognizes this tool, but it's what the barista will use to tamp down the coffee when they pull a shot of espresso. And it's a door handle. So once we built it, now it's time to start training. So this is Solomon Tyson, my coffee roasting apprentice, who started in an after school arts program where we met. And, and we became friends and, and training in martial arts, which is unique, because he's in a wheelchair. But he had a, he had a, he had a sense for it. And so we became friends in that, in that context. He got a job as a cashier at Chasing Lions Cafe. And then as a barista, he was the only one there drinking straight espresso. So I knew he was developing his palate. I invited him to be my roasting apprentice in the dojo. And, you know, we're a big believer in each one, teach one. So what we do is we roast, we taste, evaluate, adjust and repeat until we created the flavor profiles that we needed to replace the coffees that were in each of my coffee shops. So at the time that we birthed Red Bay Coffee, I had two coffee shops. And our highest invoice was that of our coffee producers, our coffee roasters. So, so, you know, but I chose two of the best coffee roasters in our area, which is some of the best coffee in the world in Northern California is a very competitive environment. So I had a very high bar to create, to pass in order to, you know, to enter that market. They're my own, they're my own coffee shops, but still I needed to step up properly. So we would roast and develop and train in the dojo until we've got results that we feel like we could present. So, you know, once me and Solomon worked through that process, then we got to work and started producing and started to scale up. So this was the place that we would develop the profiles. We had a sort of a commercial kitchen where we can go out and produce in larger scales. We would come here, bag it up and deliver it. We developed and run the business out of the dojo for the first almost two years. And we had eight, scaled up to eight employees in that one little room and, you know, sharing some space in the house sometimes. So that was pretty close quarters. So that's the dojo. So we grew our business initially with the wholesale accounts into restaurants and grocery stores. And then it was time to begin our very first coffee coffee shop. So we got invitation from our friends at the Impact Hub Oakland, which is uptown Oakland in a development called the Hive. There's a barbershop, a bakery, restaurants and housing. So we designed a coffee bar that would be outside in the middle of this plaza. So the design idea there was to create a shop that would, one, reflect Oakland's past and present culture at the same time as addressing some of the challenges that are in our city. So first the physical design of the space. So Oakland, among many other things, is a port town. Much of the goods coming through the western half of this country come through the port of Oakland and that includes coffee. So we designed it, we started with a shipping container. So this was the shipping container and you can see even the shape of that awning reflects the iconic Oakland shipping cranes that were very inspiring to many creatives, such as some of them, the Star Trek movies, I mean Star Wars movies. So this was just a mock-up and what we did here was we ran a crowdfunding platform to create the funds in order to launch this business. I had a lot of apprehension about running a campaign to just start my own business. But to address one of the other challenges in Oakland, which was, which is gentrification, a lack of affordable, well-paying jobs. I thought, well, how can we create, you know, I mean, we created something really cool-looking in a great location with repurposed materials, a salvage shipping container, but at the end of the day they were still just low-age service jobs. So I thought, well, how, you know, what difference is just going to be another coffee shop? So how are we, how could we build a business where the workers could keep the profits? Now that would be something interesting, but you know, but if you're a coffee shop and you're, you know, spending your savings or taking loans or investments, really there's not much profit to share there. So that's why we went to the crowdfunding. And at that time, the highest amount ever raised for a coffee project in the coffee category Kickstarter was $50,000. We needed much more than that. We set our goal at 80,000. Many of, many of folks on my team thought, bring that down, that's too much, lower goal, overshoot it. I'm like, look, we're going to go for 80 and we still need to overshoot that. So we raised $88,000 on Kickstarter, shattered all the previous records in the coffee category, and we put this thing to work. So after design, you know, we actually built it. So this is them delivering it. You'll see this is the hive, the barbershop, the residential stuff in the background, the platforms, the low foundational stuff there. Now it's landed. We're putting the final design touches on painting our logo on the outside. We are, you know, putting artwork on the inside. This is an example of some, some of my previous artwork, some of the medium that I do, which is photographic transfers on wood. Also, a reference to some of the bad assery culture of East Oakland and, you know, so we, we hired, you know, we hired our team at that time, you know, before we're opening, we're training, we're cleaning the box. Half of the folks we hired were formerly incarcerated or former foster youth. And then we opened for business. So not long ago, earlier this year, we caught the attention of BuzzFeed. They did a 60 second video on our box and it garnered over three quarters of a million views. And, you know, and it just continues to be sort of an iconic location in uptown Oakland. Also enables us to practice the cooperative economics that we talk about. So we found a baker, local baker, pietisserie, an African American woman doing some incredible, sweet and savory pies. This is our own cold root coffee and handmade signs in the back. So each one of our hostel accounts gets a handmade sign that we build and burn and screen print. This is some of the staff at the box and also at the at our company, Red Bay Coffee. So got the you've seen the dojo. You've seen our first retail spot. So now we're outgrowing the dojo. We're busting at the seams actually. And so it's time to, you know, build our headquarters. We were looking for a building to buy. Really, we couldn't find anything quite what we were looking for. We lucked out and found a place for lease, right in our own neighborhood. And yeah, so this is the space that we found. It is 6000 square feet. And so this is pretty much what it was that we walked into. And this is kind of a current day. So when you when you hit the door, you stand right here, you're basically able to see the entire operation. Our offices to the left, the coffee roaster right in front of you. You know, there's a production space in the far back center. You know, you'll see a better shot of it later. But that's the lab. The coffee bar is there. And it doesn't take long for the community to find out that there's a space. Inevitably, there's always a demand for venues in space. So we've opened that up from the very beginning. And so we regularly have lectures, performances. We've had five weddings there already. And just recently, we opened up the coffee bar. So, you know, really the our primary business is roasting, packaging and delivering coffee, developing doing our work. I thought it was important one because we had the space. But two, I think what the coffee bar does is it brings people into the space. It allows people to see the process sort of as a transparent production manufacturing and retail all in one. This is these are the cool coffee kids. I call them. So this is the roasting team. So next to me, that's Solomon Tyson, who started, you know, you've heard his story, but now he's our lead production roaster. And that's next to him to his right is Khalib Houston, who really was he became our first director of coffee. His experience was really an expert in chocolate. So he worked for one of the specialty chocolate manufacturers in San Francisco when I hit hunted them from that spot. And he's since went back to school to study architecture. So to his credit, he tapped and introduced me to Alicia Adams to his right. And she is our new director of coffee. And and as much as I love Khalib, man, she's better. She's awesome. But, you know, Khalib brought us so far. But Alicia Adams really took it to the next level. She's only been with Red Bay for a few months now, but she's just lifted our entire, you know, catalog of coffees and refine them. And just, you know, she had years of experience of training in Boston at a hospital in a research lab. And then got into coffee there became really top notch barista. And then got into the industry on the far other side, green coffee importer quality control. So she was then she was just in a laboratory, tasting and scoring and evaluating coffee all day. So it was really two ends of the spectrum. And now she's developing that middle piece, which is profiling, developing coffee profiles and roasting on that machine right there. So in the very first slide, you saw an alter to George Washington Carver. So that really was the inspiration to to sort of have us discover and learn more about coffee. So that alter just never found a place in the headquarters. But we created another alter. And this time it was an alter to Africa itself. And Africa, this is a homage to really the birthplace of coffee. So, you know, coffee is Africa's gift to the world. You're welcome. So with the help of my friend on the ladder, Yael, she is the founder of Verde 360, Verde 360. She is amazing. She's a genius. She's built these green walls in Mexico City and roofs and walls monumental scale. I mean, five stories for a block long, I mean, phenomenal look her up. They've got a great collection of her work on the Facebook page. And this is my man, Marvin, who is my my friend next door neighbor and just a great builder. And he's kind of had his hands building on almost anything in there. So basically what you see here, we we did a rubber seal against the back wall. There were these grids that we started the succulents in outside. There were some tracks. We put them there, built the frame around, and then we'll put planks, you know, around, you know, the rest of that wall there. And those planks are this is us outside. One of the nephews burning the planks with the torch, all salvaged wood. And and that's the that's the finished piece. So it's a living wall. It's a living altar. And it's the people, you know, are up on that Walter. And in this particular photo, this is when David Robinson came to this is David Robinson, the son of Brooklyn's own Jackie Robinson. And he has been growing coffee in Tanzania for 30 years, just quietly, humbly doing, making a contribution to the world. He wanted to have an impact on farmers, but knew he needed to become one first, then formed a cooperative called Sweet Unity Farms. I read about him, made contact, he reached right back. I met him in New York. His coffee was absolutely delicious. And we reached out and and we bought a full shipping container full of his coffee at a time. That's 300 that's 320 bags. At the time we were just buying like four to six bags at a time. So we really took the leap of faith that our business was going to grow. And you know, and much and later on, during the process, we brought him out for this coffee roasting residency. He stayed with me for a week and learned how to roast coffee. You know, the thing is in the coffee industry, a lot of people work in silos. So he's a great coffee grower. But, you know, we figured if he's learning on how to roast and taste coffee, then that may help him, you know, give him feedback on on, and who knows, maybe it could help him. And it sure helped us understand the process. And these are also other coffee producers from Ethiopia and Yemen. Young gifted and black, one of our, you know, if you haven't heard these, they are phenomenal. But anyway, so, so but this is, you know, a living altar. So it, you know, it's the gift that keeps on giving. This is inside lab looking out. And those windows in the back were big recycled doors, glass doors. Now they're horizontal. We framed them out. And Marvin made them into windows. We built this adjustable height table. The gentleman in the middle is a coffee producer from Yemen. The sister on the right is a coffee producer from Burundi, East Africa. And that's Alicia Adams, our director of coffee on the left. And this is sort of what it looks like today. So we have all this space, we open it up into a co-working space, which is really what the cafes were, right, the original co-working spaces. So there's no membership. Just get a cup of coffee, come hang out, spend time, you know, and what happens is when folks gather in a community in the coffee place around coffee, what happens is they bring intel. They bring, you know, connections. They start to build and those creative juices are going. And, you know, yeah, we could talk more about that later. So what you just saw was the beginning of Red Bay Coffee in the garage, through our first retail space in the module, ship container. And now this is the headquarters in the rosary, Red Bay Coffee. Thank you for the time. Thank you. I first want to tell the Cooper Hewitt staff, thank you so much, Rob and Susanna. I mean, just thank you so much when I got the call for, to have the opportunity for this event. And then had the opportunity to reach out to Caba, to ask him to join me. I'm such a huge fan, like you should have just seen my head like, I know this person, I know that. Yes, because I mean, I'm in the Bay Area. We have friends in the Bay Area. I am a huge stand of your work. I love Red Bay. I have talked about you in presentations and talks that I have given all around the country. And so when the opportunity came out for us to actually be in conversation in the same room at the same time, I was like, can we get came? And I said yes. He was like, and he said yes. So thank you. Yes. Thank you so much. Invitation. Yes. And I hope y'all got that. I gave the Mike kind of 33,000 kind of foot in the air of terms of how we're helping to grow and cultivate sustainable businesses in Detroit from a design process in terms of our systems and how we think. And then Caba brought it right down to the macro in terms of how he's applying design. And so I don't really want to take up too much time in our conversation because I want to open it up to Q and A. But one of the things that I do want to ask because there is another organization in the Bay Area that I absolutely love as well. And it is fun, good jobs in the city advisors. And what I want to say, Caba, is that the work that you and I do is so intersectional. It's about more than just food. It's about more than just beverage. It's about community. It's about hiring kind of young people, people in the community. And I'm just wondering when you set out on this journey of red, but did you always think about that? Did you always think about the intersectionality of food? Absolutely, for sure. You don't mean really we started like I started. I went to San Francisco State University in the late 80s and early 90s. And there was a very political time on that. It was a bit it's a political campus historically. And so and I was an activist. I was in South Africa doing photojournalism in 1994 when Mandela was elected. Then I was in, you know, the National Mall during the Million Man March as a photo journalist and kind of pursuing these stories. So, so, you know, I was always an activist and applying these values to the business, to my artwork. So that's kind of where it began. So, of course, you know, that's the first thing I would do. And it really, it was just a natural outcrop of what I do, right? So it was not easy. They're not, not, but not a hard choice. Very easy. And I just I just want to add one other thing, too. And I want to ask this question. And so currently right now in the city of Detroit, there's been a couple of reports that have been released. One of the policy link that's also out of the Bay Area did an equity profile of the city of Detroit. Detroit Future City, they did a kind of 130 square miles analysis. And then there was the Urban Institute that did a report about Detroit. And one of the things that really jumped out in me all these different reports, there was one thing that was constant. And that was the poverty rate in the city of Detroit. When we talk about adults in Detroit, about 40% live at or below poverty. And we talk about working poverty is about 63%. 57% of Detroit youth are at or below poverty and 20% of our seniors. And I mentioned that because there's this misnomer sometime, particularly in the food justice movement, that there is a scarcity issue around food or there is a lack of healthy food access, right? There's an access issue. None of that is true. There's a poverty issue. And so one of the things that I think that way that you're tackling poverty in a way that I am trying to sustainably and at scale grow food entrepreneurs in Detroit to think about poverty is to give folks a good job, a good job in their community, in their neighborhood. And I say that cable because I am always amazed sometimes when I talk to folks, particularly non folks of color, who say they can't find good help in the community, in the neighborhood. I'm looking at some of the folks, if you've hired and found these people of young people, people of color, they're amazing. The entrepreneurs that I work with in the neighborhood, they found the young people that are amazing. Is there a secret to this thing? And because I know it's not right? How is it that you're not finding young folks of color who are young people? But I know plenty of other people who are able to find them and train them and not only train them, but flourish. And so I'm just just wondering, what is it? So I think, you know, there's a couple of things. One, you have to be willing to train. Right. So especially if you're going into an industry that is already underrepresented. So inherently, there aren't going to be many experienced professionals. Just because that's so it'd be so easy to, you know, to just hire a lot of folks who look like the last all the other folks in that industry. So if you're trying to sort of rewrite that story, we have to be willing to train. We have to have that be the intention in the first place and just look harder. And, you know, and it's going to take some luck also. But once once you put that work in and you build some track record, then pretty soon people will know your organization that that's what you're about. And then the talent will come to you. And now, you know, so now we are just inundated, you know, in and, you know, we still face the challenges of business, right, just of everyday business of just of growing, of turning a profit. And the, you know, the more we grow, the more we can hire, the more jobs we can create. But yeah, it just comes start starts with intention. And my last question for you, Cabe, and we can be in conversation when I want to open it up to the audience is that I'm wondering if you receive this, because this is sometimes not so much now that Food Lab has been doing this work for about four years. But I'm wondering if you receive this, you know, we get pushed back in the city of Detroit when food entrepreneurs want to go into under resourced and marginalized areas and say, I want to open up a vegan sit down, casual restaurant or I want to do a a coffee shop that is serving roasted cappuccinos or espresso or I want to do a fresh, healthy food, kind of small micro. I'm going, you call them bodegas in Detroit. I mean, in New York, well, then Silicon Valley tried to call them bodegas in their really cabinet. But anyway, but, but, but these hyper local stores. And the thing is, is that I've got to tell you banks, some people in traditional economic development and community development will tell me, DeVita, why, why do they want to open up a restaurant in Fruitvale? Or why do you want to do that on the east side? Or why as if poor folks don't want to eat well or don't want to sit down and drink coffee? I'm just wondering, do people look at you like you were crazy or give you push back and you're like, no, no, no, I'm going to do a coffee roasting a coffee bar in my community in Fruitvale. Like I mean, it's hard to raise money. No matter what, no matter where you're going to put it, you know, so that's a whole conversation in itself. And I imagine we'll tap into that. But you know, raising money is very challenging, especially, you know, they want to see, you know, I think the funders, they want to see mostly that you have equity and collateral. That's the first thing that they want to see, no matter where you put it. But, you know, then they want to, they want to see a record. They want to back another hit record, right? If that movie was a hit, they want to make part two, right? If that song was a hit, they want to make, you know, the remix of that. So, you know, whenever you're trying to do something new and break some new ground, you're always going to get pushed back from the from the money people and sometimes even the community within the community as well. Okay, sounds good. So, I have the mic. If anybody has a question. I'll start. So, that's a, that is a great question. And so, I think that for us in Detroit, in order to really grow this ecosystem at scale that we have, we could not have done it by ourselves. So, yes, we have had collaboration from government and also from philanthropy. So, I'll give you an example of how government dollars has helped us to kind of grow this ecosystem. And so, there was one point in time in this country where we had a competent person who was at HUD. And so, listen, the person who's at HUD now is from Detroit, but we not even going to acknowledge that. And so, but, but it's important to have competent people in government. And the reason being is because HUD oversaw something that is called CBG Fund. CBG is Community Block Grant Funding. And the Community Block Grant Funding that the Obama Administration earmarked for communities in the city of Detroit. That funding had been able to trickle down to a entity in the city of Detroit that is called the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation. They took that funding and with that funding from CBG grants or CBG funding, they turned it into grants. And what those grants did was they were able then to take kind of like old unused real estate, commercial real estate and do what's called white box those real, those spaces. And when they white box those, those spaces, they allowed entrepreneurs to do what's called pop up in those spaces to test their product, to see if the, to see if the community would like it, to get market validation, to kind of understand their business model. And they were able to stay in many cases in those spaces for six months and maybe nine months. And if it really took off, then they were able to negotiate a lease with the landlord. That's how Kirsten and Erica were able to start Detroit Vegan Soul. They were in a pop up through what was called the Revolver Program and the Revolver Program was funded through CBG grant dollars from the federal government. There is another program too that we were able to tap into a federal program. And that program is called HFFI, which is Healthy Food Financing Initiatives. And what HFFI was able to do is they were able to set aside dollars, particularly for food entrepreneurs, that were actually building and creating and starting healthy food businesses in their communities and neighborhood. And they were able to access funding. And so then organization in this, in Detroit metropolitan area, who was able to hold some of that HFFI funding for us was an organization called Fair Food Network. And they created something that was called the Michigan Good Food Fund. And the Michigan Good Food Fund then kind of distributed that money out through low interest loans to entrepreneurs who were creating good food businesses. So yes, not only did we have federal dollars, but we also, you know, had partnership with the city. We had partnerships with foundations, WKKF, which is the Kellogg Foundation, the CERNNA Foundation, Cresce Foundation. And we could not do this alone. So I, like I said, I'm a part of an ecosystem of partners that I work with. But that was a great question. Have you been able to access any federal dollars or local? No. I'm a non-profit. So I'm a little, so you know what I'm saying? A non-profit is, it was a little bit different. But did that answer your questions, sir? They're in jeopardy. Question in the back. I actually have two questions. These are things that are very close to my heart. I run two sustainable restaurants in New York City. One thing that I find is that it's hard to sort of one of our mission statements, apart from running a sustainable restaurant, is to be able to offer that type of food to as many people as possible rather than to the one percenter. And so I find it hard to combine both sourcing really, really well locally and supporting other businesses that are doing everything right while and paying fair wages and keeping prices so that, you know, we're in a gentrifying neighborhood. We're in the south side of Williamsburg. And I, we've been there for a while and I want to feed everyone that's been there for 30 years and also all of the new construction. And so that's something I'm always kind of, you know, it's hard to have healthy, you know, well sourced food, pay everyone well, you know, use the right kind of energy and also keep it low enough so that everyone can participate. And the other thing is a little bit is on another subject. But I find it when people hear about our sustainable practices and everything we stand for, they're really excited. But it's a little bit preaching to the choir. And also, I don't find that that actually brings people into the restaurant. The people that are already there that already follow us and love what we do are excited to know about it. But in far as as using that as a tool to like bring new people in, you know, I sort of say the rainbow bagel or the, you know, the busting egg yolk is somehow so much more appealing. And so I don't know if you had any experience with that. I'm curious to know if that's something you use in your marketing or is that just in the back end? Well, I'll take a stab at some of those topics. In terms of, you know, really positioning and what we how we communicate our business, like I mentioned, coffee in especially coffee in northern California in the Bay area is really competitive. So, you know, we do have a lot of our mission statement that we could speak on and we usually get there, but, you know, my own bias as a consumer is when, you know, and I'm not sure if this is a hundred percent the right path. But when I when I see a product that is sort of overly leaning on their mission in my back in my head, I doubt that that it's a product that's really built around excellence. First, so, so and to be in such a competitive environment, you know, really, I when when we're trying to grow and sell, you know, our business, we we talk about quality first. We talk about the extent that we go through to quality control and to to research and development and, you know, and we get into sort of the coffee porn, if you will, of it. And then we talk about, you know, sort of as an add-on to discuss, you know, sort of the mission and the and the and the people power and the people work that we do around the environment and everything else. In terms of your first question, you know, that's that that is a dilemma, you know, in terms of making quality products affordable. And that's just a hard that's just hard to do. So, you know, we've gotten, you know, maybe you're familiar with the suspended coffee phenomenon, I think, started in Italy, you know, and we we practice that where someone can come in and buy a cup of coffee for themselves and they can buy a cup of coffee for the next person behind them. Or as, you know, we have a little board and you can sort of just say, you know, there's a coffee for, you know, a student and then if someone's a student, then they could sort of grab that if it's a person that's wearing glasses. If it's a person, I mean, really, you can make it as interesting or general as you like. But so that's, you know, just small things like that. So suspended coffee. So that's one thing to do. And, you know, and we just donate also, we donate a lot of coffee to to to charities, nonprofits for their auctions for, you know, and, you know, we we share coffee with with people who just come and ask for a coffee to, you know, so, you know, then they might say, oh, can I get some whipped cream on top? I mean, like, all right, come on, man, get your coffee. So but no, they're they're challenging issues. And, you know, and that's kind of how it's how we've addressed it. Yeah. So I want to take a stab at your first question. And I'm going to share with you a story. You know, I've I've been doing this work now for for a couple years. And so I am now old enough to remember when food labs founding members who has been with us since like 2012 and 2013, I can remember the excitement, the enthusiasm that they had around why they wanted to start this food business because they love cooking or because, like I said before, Kirsten and Erica knew that through veganism, they can help address some of the diet related diseases and health problems and crisis that they were having in their own family, but wanted to share that veganism love and also teach veganism to the community. And so I remember that the energy and the excitement that they had around cooking fast forward three to four years later, those same entrepreneurs, they come to me and they say to me, DeVita, the very least thing that I do now in my business is cook. It's the very least I do. So I am asking your question like this when you talk about this challenge that you have around not only offering a quality product, but being able to like feed the masses. Number one, you can't be all things to all people. That's number one. You got to realize that. But the second thing you have to do is that you have to get control over your cost, right, and figure out what I tell entrepreneurs now all the time. And I learned this for the entrepreneurs that I've seen growing scale is that it's not good enough to start a food business. You have to create a model for your business. You have to create a business model. So I take Detroit Vegan Soul, for example, and they too come to me. They says, DeVita, you know, our mission was to create a restaurant that served the best vegan food that has that flavor, that love, that feeling of soul food in it. But how can we do it in a way where we're not preaching to the choir? When we're not just feeding the same people, we want to we want to also preach veganism or teach veganism to people who may not otherwise like even think about eating like seitan or tofu, right? And we'll look at us crazy if we like really this tastes like catfish, but it's really tofu. Let me tell you what they had to do. No, they had to revamp their entire business and create a model. That's important. And I'm sorry, I think there's a lot of lessons that small businesses can learn from large businesses seriously. And that's about model creation and creating systems. And so one of the things that they looked at is they looked at Trader Joe's. They're like, what's that Trader Joe model, right? Small square feet, you'll never find a huge Trader Joe's. They are very, very specific about the number of skews that they have in Trader Joe. And a lot of their skews are private label. So Kirsten and Erica thought, you know what, in order for us to cut down on our what's called our cost of goods and to be able to manage the operations of our business. So perhaps we can start bringing the price down of our menu items. There's a couple of things we got to do. Number one is we've got to curate a tight menu. We're not going to try to have everything on the menu. We might do some soups and sandwiches and sandwiches, some main entrees. That's it. That's it. That's what we could do. And the thing is we're going to curate a menu that we can use like one ingredient, six or seven different ways. So now we can buy that ingredient in bulk and that lowers our cost of good. One of the things that we're going to figure out number way a number two is that how that can we use the envelope of our business to manage what we call the zones. Right. This is stuff they taught me because I'm like, whoa, I didn't even realize this. And the zones is kind of like, how are we managing refrigeration? Right. How are we making sure that we're managing the lights? Right. If somebody is not in this particular space, but the lights are still on, is that driving up our electricity? Like so they figured out operationally, like how to bring down the cost of running and operating a business so they can bring down the price and they can make it more approachable and more affordable to other people in the community. And so I say to you, like really look at your business model and how you can look at perhaps driving down what they call the cost of goods and the cost to operate your business. New York, I know that's like I'm going to use an Oakland phrase. I know that's like hella hard, right? Like, I know that's difficult because real estate and I'm I don't know if you own your business, but I'm sure like your rent is like ridiculous. I don't even want to know because I'll probably bust out crying if I even knew how much you were paying a rent. But think of looking. You got it as a small business on our series. You got to look at every single penny and where it is going. This is a business like really small margins. And then the second thing I will say before we open up in the question is that one of the things that I love about what Cabe is doing and Food Lab members are members are doing is they know that it's more than just the food. It's about community. So other than just like putting these menu items kind of like in the restaurant, how are you reaching out to the community? Detroit Vegan Soul does like healthy festivals and things of that nature. Like there's their ways in which they're like engaging communities. Like we're there. We want the community to know that you're a part of us. We're a part of you. This is home man. This is where we live. This is my neighbor. I just hired your son. Like this we all know another. And so it's really important like how are you making your presence known and your presence felt in that community. And anger can tell you because you know anger lives in Detroit when Detroit Vegan Soul opened up their first location. Even when they opened up their second location. The line was down the street around the corner because people felt a part of that restaurant and they still do. How are they are they following you on Instagram? Do they know your story? Like how else are you reaching out to the community? Because I'm going to tell you something baby. You just can't build it and think they're going to come. You got to do the work to reach out to them. And when you do that, if you in the churches or in the mosque or wherever the community is at the parks, you know, in the community centers, that's how you reach the community. You got to go where they are and then they'll support you. So I hope that kind of answers your question. That really did. I'd like to add one more piece of that. Yeah, that did deserve a round of applause. Yeah. In terms of wages, in terms of wages, we you know, start our employees at $15 an hour and that's before Oakland went up to 12 something. And you know, and we do that for a couple of reasons. One where, you know, we also sort of, you know, our highest plate managers are paid a little less as well. But training and retraining is very expensive. So in the in this short term, you're looking at these costs and, you know, and they are high. But also you have to be efficient. And there's a lot of efficiencies that you can do. But it's the retraining. And when you're paying someone $15 an hour, when they know, you know, it might be $9 an hour, it might be the alternative at a place where they respect it, you know, it's a way to retain employees. And that's going to just that's going to create consistency in your business. It's going to create sort of an institutional wisdom and it's going to help you retain those employees and save costs that way also. So sometimes things look expensive and they are, but they could save you money in the long run. Thank you both for your presentation. I learned so much. You're so inspiring, both of you. So this has been on my mind lately because of the hurricane season and that's climate change and ensuring cities are prepared for this shift because Detroit, as David, you said, is surrounded by 20 percent of the freshest water in the world. We really have to think about population growth and season changing. But when thinking about food security, I'm wondering how does climate change factor in and especially as we're imagining futures and designing futures as, you know, we have all those vacant land, but also what we can grow and where it grows and how that changes over time. You know, where does that factor in in the now? But I just wanted to put in, I just wanted to say a couple of things to that ingrant because we were at Idea Cities over the weekend. And I think the conversation was about setting the table of the future. And Jeff, the moderator, had asked the question, what is the most what they feel, what we feel urgent issue of food today? And I was really surprised when when the none of the panelists who are dear friends of mine who I love didn't really touch on climate change and didn't really touch on how that is going to affect the food that we eat. Here's the thing that's the most important issue for me. As I look at what Food Lab is doing is there is so much brilliance. There is so much genius that lies in the Food Lab community with with with young people. I'm shocked and surprised. They are thinking about how climate is going to affect not only how we eat, but what we eat. There are entrepreneurs in the Food Lab community and even funders are looking at them like they're crazy like what are you talking about who understand that if we don't do something right now about how we are consuming protein and that the fact that we cannot continue to raise, kill and slaughter animals the way that we are doing now we are going to be in huge problems. So intro Detroit, which is Anthony and Tim, they are looking at how to not only use crickets but even in the city of Detroit like how to grow them like they are now want to start like a cricket factory farm where they're like you know growing and manufacturing like like crickets and using crickets as like a source of protein and making like cricket powder like say these young people are like thinking about this stuff. Here's another thing in Ingrid I know you know this too is that not only are they thinking about growing food like how we're going to consume it but they're also thinking about growing like cannabis and how cannabis is also going to be used in like food products for medicinal reasons like how can you grow cannabis and like put it in your baked goods like seriously they think about this and this is what a food entrepreneur told me this is a situation this is for real this happened just I was just up at the University of Michigan and I got my one of my entrepreneurs got their wrist slap for this and you know it was it was it was kind of controversial because this entrepreneur is starting something that's called grass fed bakery and we thought oh grass fed cows and stuff and the milk is going to be like you know organic milk and it's gonna be bigger. She was like girl no that's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about grass like in my big girl what are you doing. So anyway yes you're talking about like growing cannabis and like putting cannabis in the bakery but here's the problem this is what I learned this is why policy is so important. And so right now cannabis can only be sold through dispensaries right and and it can only be sold to people I don't know how it is in New York but in but in Michigan with people with like medicinal cards and they have to go to dispensaries in order to get it and I heard that what right now was holding up legislation in order to open up the cannabis market in Michigan wide open is Big Pharma in RJ Nabisco they want to write the policy around how to grow it who's going to own the industry who's going to own the fields and I thought to myself this is nothing but systemic and institutional racism all over again shutting out entrepreneurs like who have this these brilliant ideas and how to be a part of what I would call the new future of food and it's more than just growing this nothing wrong with growing growing tomatoes and carrots and potatoes you listen I get that but they're entrepreneurs who are thinking far beyond that they're thinking far beyond that they're thinking about not only soil to grow they're thinking about hydroponics right they're thinking about how to grow inside and so you're absolutely right but if we aren't exposing these young people if there's not policy out there to support these entrepreneurs particularly entrepreneurs of color like we're going to be shutting them out of another billion dollar industry and I need and if I'm just speaking for myself came you can go ahead and touch on this but that the thing is is that I need the support and English you notice but I need and I'm just going to speak for David because I can't speak for anybody else like the support of like local our local officials and we need state wide officials and federal officials so that we can start to shape and create policy of what we want to see our cities look like in the future like not right now because we beyond like rooftop garden in Detroit like we beyond now like we seriously we beyond all of that now we're really thinking about new and innovative innovative ways on how to not only grow food but we're really starting to think about what the food is going to be of tomorrow and we don't have to support we we're also we're addressing that in oak sardam I mean Oakland so in in Oakland in terms of the policy around medicinal marijuana they are they are allocating licenses for dispensaries for people of color they have set aside a certain number of licenses specifically for that and my daughter has applied for one that's policy that you're talking about that's the policy I have adult children by the way and your order has applied for one yes yeah she's 30 she's 31 years old so so that's one piece in terms of in terms of you know I mean our in terms of how we're addressing climate change and resilient communities when you see you know the people who who are you know really frontline suffering from some of these natural disasters you know for the most part it's the poorest people suffer the most so it's economic it's an economic piece so what we're trying to do in in at red bay is you know in our little piece in terms of creating a model is trying to create some more economic justice model where where folks are one they're getting paid more so they could create situations and be more resilient for their families and just live in a safer environment you know and part of part of doing that is not just paying them a bit more but also trying to get them to think think like entrepreneurs and start their own businesses so part of even at the at the shipping container business we have since some of the revenue is tied into the profits now the sudden instead of just clocking in clocking out and they know how much they're going to make they're invested in how to how to make that business and make more money so we have monthly meetings around marketing around you know how do you upsell how do you you know how do you run a business to generate greater profits one you know in terms of our product we've got one product and it's coffee and coffee is you know grown around the world in a lot of very vulnerable communities and it's a coffee is a vulnerable product agricultural product it is you know it's a commodity so it it fluctuates and and it's a volatile commodity I could say so we're doing you know some of the same things we're doing here you know we're we're finding ways to support our farmers in order to make them more resilient for instance you know today the commodity price for coffee is about a dollar forty one with fair trade coffee you know they'll add fifty cents so now fifty cents will go back to the farm to their co-op or their family farm and they're able to spend that fifty cents how they want so that's like a dollar ninety one a pound so for dollar ninety one under a fair trade uh... system those farmers are incentivized to grow more coffee uh... at red bay coffee what we do is we have direct trade relationships with ninety percent of our farms uh... and what that means is is we're able to one influence the processes on on how they grow their coffee uh... but we're we're also able to incentivize them to grow better quality coffee and we do that by paying them more money the average price that we pay is three dollars and thirty cents per pound so we're almost doubling no we're greater than doubling the commodity price but we're doing that for them to pick only the coffee is a fruit it grows on a shrub it the fruit is called a cherry the the pit of that cherry is the coffee bean now generally when you know most of the coffee is ripe is red when most of his red they just harvest the whole thing it's cheap and it's efficient or that's the cheapest and most efficient way to do it uh... we incentivize them to grow pick only harvest the red cherries only and you know it takes more work they have to go through two or three passes uh... but they could take pride in growing quality and they're also getting paid to do that so so with and they're also able to hold on to their land as well right so even when the price the general commodity price dips below a certain livable wage you know it's it's not untypical for coffee farmers to abandon their farms this is not even worth it for them to harvest the coffee you know it uh... so so what that's that's why we're sort of work doing the work that we're doing is one they could hold on to the land uh... and when the uh... environmental climate challenges happen they're able to be more resilient at that time so i think we have time for just one more question is there anybody who hasn't had a chance to share have a question uh... i just wanted to echo thank you very much so far for all the conversation has been really incredible and inspiring uh... i'm actually wondering from a school scholastically uh... from an education standpoint especially youth education high school grade school uh... i haven't heard that talked about as much what is some of the connections in detroit in in in california to what what's your mindset related to the kind of educational infrastructure uh... getting some of these ideas you know beyond just uh... the business the genius entrepreneur that has a really good idea but even into like a core curriculum or something that's for the for the youth how how's that getting how are you thinking about that from a detroit perspective uh... and what i'll what i'll say is i'm going to echo a sentiment that i said earlier and that is you can't build it uh... and expect for them to come there's been numerous there's a word that uh... i just have a complete this role reaction to uh... because it really is based around like the solution is all about economics when it's not and that word is food desert like i have a total visceral reaction to it because uh... it word that really came out of uh... academia and it has been uh... used as an economic development ploy for uh... supermarkets usually corporate-based supermarkets to get what's called new market tax credits to create uh... supermarkets and uh... what they call these food desert areas studies now have shown that those supermarkets that have open grocery stores that have opened in those communities have done nothing to change like the dietary like uh... challenges or the health risk in those communities at all right and it is because you cannot just build a grocery store in the supermarket without that very much so educational component that that educational piece because if you put a supermarket there without the educational component period the kids go for the hot doritos all the time or that busy single mother who's right maybe you know working two jobs or just another and she's like just trying to like get food on the table like she may go for the process me or i was at the farm just recently and i was with the young with the young uh... he was in middle school what is uh... sixth grade is that middle school is that elementary that's middle school right and he said to me he said mister vita what is that you're holding in your hand and i said and he said yeah what's that and i said this is a sweet potato like he was kind of like oh this is what sweet potatoes look like i said well yeah where did you think sweet potatoes came from you like sweet potato pie he said sweet potato pie is my favorite i love sweet potato pie i said where did the sweet potatoes pie the sweet potato came from he said i thought sweet potatoes came and they came like no seriously that's what he thought and so that so here's the thing and so when i talked to you when i said and brought this uh... slide up earlier and i said that detroit has over fifteen hundred community farms like that i mean or community gardens like or it's though it's fifteen hundred gardens like that number it's like that's impressive like it's fifteen hundred gardens in detroit but a large majority of that fifteen hundred is like family farms or family gardens and people's home and so that fifteen hundred is broken down and not only family gardens but school gardens community gardens and something that we call market gardens like that's the entrepreneurial piece but here's the most important thing that's impressive like fifteen hundred gardens but what's even more impressive that during the season over fifty thousand detroiters are engaged in urban agriculture like that's the learning component right there when you get the babies out in the farms doing internships with an organization called keep going detroit when you get the babies in their schoolyard you know we had reached out to a good friend of mine we wanted to bring him on to kiba his name is ron finley and they call him the gangster gardener and ron said when kids grow tomatoes kids eat tomatoes right ron is famous for saying that and that is the educational component if you have a child who has a relationship with food and grow that food they will eat it and be curious about it so everything that that even though i'm talking about entrepreneurship like building businesses i love what kiba said is that where we try to train the entrepreneurs the business owners is how are you educating the consumer how are you educating the staff and let me tell you something and i say this because my goddaughter is nine years old now she lives in harlem oh i'm sure she lives in the Bronx now she goes and dances at a harlem school of arts and she has been probably a vegetarian since she was six years old right i blame a lot of that because whoever let her see food ink i don't even know what like who lets a six-year watch then she's just kind of like to her brother lance you know you're eating a cow right that hamburger like a cow died for you to eat that like i don't eat that but the only reason why i say that is because what is so important is that the number one influencers on parents are their kids if you can get the children you can get the parent and so Keep Growing Detroit is an organization that works with young people Detroit Food Academy is another organization in Detroit that works with young people and we have schools in the city of Detroit that use gardening as a part of the curriculum in their program so yes that is i don't do that work but there are organizations who do that work in Detroit do you got anything to say about the young people um no not a lot you mean we do we do tours so you know we there's a lot of charter schools in our neighborhood so the teachers are drinking coffee so so then they come in and and they like to see sort of the open manufacturing and the equipment and the tasting going on and so they bring their children to to see you know um on on tours you know but i i will ask this i'm always curious uh when we get a room for the people you know me now you guys know so much about us but i'm a little curious of who's in the room can i get a show of hand for the educators in the room can i get a show of hand for uh like food activists food justice people can i get a show of hand for uh entrepreneurs and business people um can i get a show of hand for the uh white supremacist in the room where's my supreme is that i mean uh what about about artist designers the artist designers yeah there they are oh there they are the museum of course the design museum of course exactly yep yep yeah all right cool well thank you guys so much yes thank you thank you