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| Businesses such as Towfiq Restaurant are the heart of Kansas City’s African immigrant community, but the ongoing recession has tested the ability of many immigrant- or refugee-owned businesses to survive, much less expand their customer bases. |
On a Thursday evening, Cabdul Barrow sits in the dimly lit Somali restaurant and waits for customers.
Usually at this hour at Towfiq Restaurant in Kansas City’s Northeast area, African immigrants who work late shifts come in for a meal of goat meat and rice or just a cup of green tea.
These days, the restaurant is quiet.
“Kenyans, Sudanese, Ugandans, they all come here,” said Barrow, 42. “But there have been a lot of layoffs, and that’s why business is slow.”
In this recession, immigrant business owners and operators such as Barrow, a native of Somalia, face the challenge of expanding their customer bases beyond their communities to stay afloat.
The Northeast area — bounded by the Paseo and Interstate 435, and Gladstone Boulevard and Truman Road — has seen the bulk of the Kansas City area’s new immigrants and refugees, including families from Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Cuba, Myanmar and Vietnam.
The city’s 5,000 or so Somalis make up one of the metropolitan area’s largest refugee populations. Businesses such as Towfiq, near the corner of Brooklyn and Lexington avenues, are the heart of the Somali community.
“When they open their own business, most of their products are geared toward their community,” said Martin Okpareke, a refugee employment training manager at Jewish Vocational Services, which has resettled 650 refugees in the last three years, including 487 in the Northeast area.
“Most of their patrons reside there,” Okpareke said. “Many don’t think beyond their community base.”
Language barriers also can hinder expansion, said Maria Meyers, the director of the Innovation Center at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
“But from any business point of view, they need to get beyond friends and family to sustain themselves,” Meyers said.
The effort to help immigrant- and refugee-owned businesses expand has become a priority for the Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, which envisions the Northeast area becoming an international market for Kansas City, a place where families can sample foreign foods and other products.
Bobbi Baker-Hughes, the president of the Northeast chamber, called the immigrant and refugee community “one of Kansas City’s best-kept secrets.”
“As the market becomes more diverse, then it becomes that much more important for these businesses to market out beyond their base,” Baker-Hughes said.
Despite economic pressures, many immigrant- and refugee-owned businesses may not want to expand, said Richard Zarate of the Hispanic Economic Development Corp. It may take one or two generations for a family to fully adapt to a new culture and consider expanding a business beyond its community.
“If a business is seeing success, it may see no reason to go outside the community,” Zarate said. “The mentality can be as simple as, ‘I don’t want to work for somebody else. I’ll just make enough for me.’ They are not looking to grow.”
The value of these businesses lies not so much in whether they expand but in what they give back, Zarate said. They not only buy property in a community, but hire from within that community and keep business there.
Zarate has worked with Alvaro Galindo, 42, who owns Charritos Taqueria at 3831 Independence Ave. Galindo opened the restaurant in 1996, nearly 10 years after he moved to Kansas City from Mexico. At that time, most of his customers were non-Hispanic. Now, he estimates 80 percent are Hispanic, as more Spanish-speaking people move to Kansas City.
The recent economic downturn has forced Galindo to reduce his staff from 10 employees to four.
“I have cut hours, and I work more hours myself,” he said.
Barrow, too, has increased the time he spends at Towfiq.
Most of his customers live within four blocks of the restaurant and, like him, are from Somalia.
Barrow was born in Mogadishu and left after the civil war of the 1990s tore Somalia apart. He arrived in Kansas City in 1997 and cleaned rental cars at Kansas City International Airport before he became the restaurant’s manager in 2003. His family owned a supermarket in Somalia, and he understood the food business.
Next door to Towfiq is the Somali-owned convenience store Al Rahman Halal Market. Across the street, the Sharif store offers African-made clothing, rugs and decorations.
Barrow starts work at 6 a.m. Customers begin drifting in about 8 a.m. Prices for breakfast, lunch and dinner run from $2 to $7.
In April, when gas prices neared $4 a gallon, Barrow considered raising his prices but decided against it, afraid he would lose customers, most of whom were low-income. Now, as the economy has worsened, some of those same customers can’t afford to eat at the restaurant.
“Before, business was good,” Barrow said. “Now it is very slow. I make less food. I’m lucky if I have to make more rice to get through lunch.”
Barrow considered opening a restaurant downtown but could not afford the space. He has not thought of expanding beyond his niche in the Northeast area.
“Business now does not cover bills, but I survive,” he said. “I don’t have a choice.”
To reach Malcolm Garcia, call 816-234-4328 or send e-mail to [email protected].