We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ederique Goudia. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ederique below.
Ederique, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s talk about innovation. What’s the most innovative thing you’ve done in your career?
One of the most innovative things I’ve done in my career was to dream up an idea that manifested into an initiative that became a culinary storytelling experience known as Taste the Diaspora. Taste the Diaspora is the brainchild of myself, Raphael Wright, and Jermond Booze and was born out of our intention and desire to: 1. bring attention to the contributions of the African diasporic cuisine to the American culinary landscape. 2. provide much needed revenue to Black-owned restaurants, chefs, and farmers in the midst of a global pandemic that disproportionately affected Black-owned businesses (across the country, 41% of Black-owned businesses shuttered as a result of the pandemic compared to 17% of white-owned businesses) 3, Provide mutual-aid – Detroit’s food insecurity is at an all time high; 69% of residents are food insecure.
Through weekly diaspora-themed dishes created by a collective of Black chefs, restaurants, farmers, and producers, each dish honored specific cuisines of the African diaspora. These meals were sold as shoebox lunches – paying homage to food boxes used by African American travelers during the Jim Crow era. During our initial run, we sold out of 500 shoebox lunches in 3 days and were able to put $10,000 in additional revenue back in the hands of Black chefs and restaurants.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Yes of course. My name is Ederique Goudia, commonly known as “Chef E” – I am a Louisiana native, Chef, food activist, and foodservice consultant in Detroit. At 17 years old, I realized that I wanted to become a chef and restaurant owner. I thought…hmmm…I should probably know learn how to run a business then! So I attended Louisiana Tech University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Management/Entrepreneurship. Upon graduating, I moved to Michigan to begin my career in the restaurant industry as a restaurant manager. In those early years of my career, I’ve held positions as restaurant manager, operations and regional marketing manager, as well as an account executive for a broadline foodservice distributor.
I left that world to finally attend culinary school and get more involved in the local food system. My work with FoodLab Detroit, a local non-profit comprising of triple-bottom line businesses, and Detroit Food Academy, a non-profit that teaches the Detroit youth about culinary, business, and food entrepreneurship provided the impetus to launch In the Business of Food (IBF Detroit) in 2017. Utilizing my 20 years of experience in the industry as its foundation, IBF Detroit is a consulting agency that aids women and BIPOC-owned food, entrepreneurs startups, and businesses by providing them with the necessary coaching, mentorship, and curriculum-based learning to start and grow successful food businesses. At IBF Detroit, we write curriculum, facilitate workshops, teach classes, providing one-on-one coaching as well as consulting specifically for those that are typically underresourced under resourced.
Now more than ever, I am committed to the community, health, and sustainability of our food system. In 2021, I was able to really hone my skills in the kitchen as the lead chef for Make Food Not Waste (MFNW), a non-profit committed to keeping food out of landfills, slowing climate change, and creating lasting solutions to food waste. I developed and lead the MFNW Upcycling Kitchen in partnership with Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church, where each week our team of chefs rescue surplus produce and other items from farmers, farmer’s markets, grocery stores, and distributors and turn them into delicious, nutritious, and complete meals for members of our community that are facing food insecurity. To date, we’ve made 85,500 free meals for the community and we’ve managed to divert 76,000 lbs of food from ending up in a landfill. In 2021, I also co-created Taste the Diaspora Detroit, a food agency that strives to bring awareness to the contribution of the African diaspora to the American culinary landscape through mutual aid, education, farming, and cooking. Our efforts earned us an Eater Detroit award for Best Collaborative Food Experience and I most recently I had the honor of presenting at the Culinary Institute of America’s International World of Flavors Conference 2022: ‘Africa and the World’. Truly an honor and humbling experience.
Throughout my long standing career in the restaurant industry, I’ve been able to use my voice and platform to be a fierce advocate for child nutrition, food waste, food insecurity, small business support, increasing minimum wage and mental health support for hospitality workers.
Have you ever had to pivot?
This is more of me wanting to pivot, and less of me having to pivot actually and the ending is in the making…
Before I knew that I wanted to be a chef, I actually wanted to be a therapist. I have a love for helping people and wanted to do that in the mental health field. Soon after though, I realized that I could make a career out of cooking (I went to a college prep high school so there were no cooking programs or home economics classes) and I absolutely loved food and cooking so I decided to go that route instead. I wanted to work in the restaurant industry to really understand what it’s like to run and operate a restaurant before jumping feet first into starting my own.
Several years into my career, I went through a very difficult personal situation that landed me in my first therapist’ chair. However, this was a time before most insurance providers included mental health coverage. I had really good insurance that covered 10 whole therapy sessions for the entire year. My therapist was amazing and we were really able to make some headway in those 10 sessions but I could not afford to cover those sessions out-of-pocket so there was a lot of work that I was going to have to do on my own. It was then that I fell back in love with the idea of being a therapist; particularly after learning that only 4% of mental health professionals were Black. So I enrolled in a Master’s degree program in Therapy. Unfortunately I had put my schooling on pause as work increased and I could no longer balance full-time work and school. I never fell out of love with it; it just became increasingly less important as my career shifted. Now, as I continue to stand more as a community resource and advocate, I’ve found a way to marry my two loves – food/cooking and mental health/helping/healing. I’m working to finish my Master’s degree so that I can be a mental health clinician specifically for the hospitality and Food & Beverage industry. The high-stress work environment, inconsistent income, long hours, and lack of medical benefits for hospitality professionals puts them at a higher risk for mental health issues.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
I met both Raphael Wright and Jermond Booze through a local non-profit called FoodLab Detroit. FoodLab was a non-profit that provided local food entrepreneurs with the resources and tools necessary to start and grow their food-based businesses. More than just an organization created to help underresourced food entrepreneurs though, FoodLab Detroit was a community of like-minded, resilient, and determined triple-bottom line food businesses. Businesses that weren’t just community-based, but more importantly community-minded in how they approach all aspects of their business. I was the program manager for FoodLab Detroit (as well as an active member and fellow food business owner) and both Raphael and Jermond were FoodLab members. We connected through the different workshops and member events that FoodLab hosted over the years. Taste the Diaspora was born out of Raphael’s desire to support, educate, and nurture his community. As we started to imagine Taste the Diaspora, we felt there was a missing piece to this founding team. With a degree in Culinary Arts and a Bachelor’s in African American studies, Jermond completed the puzzle.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ibfdetroit.com; www.tastethediaspora.com
- Instagram: @egomichele; @tastediasporadetroit
- Facebook: Ederique Goudia; In the Business of Food; Taste the Diaspora Detroit
Image Credits
Valaurian Carter – V.W. Photography