Meet The Team Celebrating Local Business With “Black-Owned Brooklyn”

Last week, our list of black-owned coffeeshops generated an enormous reader response. Even Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams got in on the action, launching a #BLKCoffeeInBK Tour, and pledging to visit all of the shops mentioned to shine a light on local businesses.

It’s also how Bklyner met Cynthia Gordy and Glenn Alan—two Brooklyn residents who recently launched their own project to celebrate and document the black-owned businesses of Brooklyn. They’d been kicking the idea around since last summer, but about eight weeks ago, Cynthia and Glenn launched Black Owned Brooklyn, an Instagram (and website) dedicated to curating and cataloging exemplary black-owned businesses throughout the borough.

Calling the project “love letters to Brooklyn’s people, places and products,” the two spend a few hours each Saturday seeking out new black-owned businesses to highlight, from boutiques with handmade clothing to carry-out food counters, swanky bars to vegan cafés.

Gordy, 36, grew up in Philly, but she’s spent the last three years living in Bed-Stuy, by way of Harlem and D.C. Alan grew up in the Bronx, then found himself living in Harlem once he was on his own. A few years back, as all his uptown friends seemed to migrate to Brooklyn, he too made his way across the East River, and has spent the last couple years in Crown Heights.

Surprisingly, given its polish and professionalism, Black-Owned Brooklyn is a side project for the very busy Gordy and Alan. They wanted to catalog and celebrate the businesses they love, but they were also looking for a creative outlet outside of their nine-to-five work. Alan, a project manager in the fashion industry, handles the project’s photography, while Gordy, a former journalist who works in marketing, writes the copy and tells the stories for each store and owner they feature.

Many of the posts so far have been focused around Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy, which makes sense—it’s where the creators live and it’s what they know. But as their Instagram following grows, they’re excited to branch out to new neighborhoods and types of businesses, they said.

Moving between restaurants and retail, plant-shops and bars, the two are conscious to keep a mix of everyday and elevated, affordable and splashy, and make sure they appeal to all types of Brooklynites. One of their first posts was about Jemz, a “quiet, inconspicuous” spot they knew and loved.

As Brooklyn communities, and especially communities of color, see a major influx of new residents, supporting local businesses is a key part of keeping some sense of community and culture, they said

“When I say [Brooklyn] residents, I don’t just mean black residents,” Gordy says of their audience. The guide is for everyone, she stresses, and especially those concerned about how and where they spend their money, who they support.

“I think that is what’s most important: conscious consumption,” says Alan. “Yes, it’s Black-Owned Brooklyn, but it’s local—it’s about the neighborhood.”

Not only do consumers want to support local businesses, the two realized, they also want to know the stories behind them. As each series of Instagram posts for the businesses goes up early in the morning, Gordy and Alan find that those focusing on the story of the business and its owners—not just the food or products—attract the most audience engagement.

“We thought of it more as a service at first,” says Alan, “But it morphed into storytelling.”

While they originally hoped to attract 1,000 followers to Black-Owned Brooklyn by the end of their first year, two months after they launched, they’d broken 2,000.

What’s next? Well, first there’s a wedding coming up for Cynthia, which is taking up just a bit of their focus. But after that, it really looks like the sky’s the limit.

The two hope to expand the storytelling scope of their projects, hopefully by adding a video component and expanding their interviews with business owners. They’ve already had followers reach out to say they’d like to contribute and get involved. Of course, they’ve found it incredibly encouraging and flattering, they said.

Gordy and Alan also want to involve their audience in talking about the issues inherent in covering local, black-owned businesses in a changing Brooklyn. Without even mentioning issues of gentrification, class, money and mobility explicitly, they’re always there. The two want to create “an intentional space for conversation” to expand on the discussion that’s already finding its way into the Instagram comments.

No matter where they take things, it’s not likely they’ll run out of material anytime soon. Each business owner they interview has another recommendation to make and readers are shouting out their favorite spots as well.

Both creators are happy to learn more about the borough they call home in the process. It’s made them more intentional, more aware of their neighborhoods, they said, as they go through their days and interact with local businesses.

“People were hungry for this,” said Gordy. “It’s not a well that ever runs dry.”