As a child growing up in the rugged Rust Belt city of Rockford, Ill., Michelle Youngblood loved to make sketches of dresses and outfits. After high school she went to design school in Chicago.
“It was the best thing that happened to me,” Youngblood, 44, said of the layoff, “just pushing me, catapulting me into doing something that I love to do versus staying with a job, working and having a comfort level that says, ‘Oh, I’ll be fine, day in and day out because I work and get a deposit every two weeks.’”
Some 40% of Black-owned firms closed in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak versus 20% of all active U.S. business, according to research by Robert Fairlie, an economics professor at UC Santa Cruz.included businesses that were simply reopening after closing during the early days of the pandemic, according to Fairlie, who coauthored the Kauffman report.
For some, he said, that meant “Let me try something else.” And so they opened up a daycare center or used their cars to get into delivery service, Sands said. LaShone and RaeShawn noticed that no one delivered the popular steamed crabs and decided to create R&L Crab. “That is a perfect crab,” RaeShawn said as she took one out of the pot, folded an upper leg and felt the texture under it.The sisters want to have their own kitchen and envision five locations covering the Washington region. They also plan to open a bar.Last month R&L Crab, established during the pandemic by LaShone and RaeShawn Middleton of Laurel, Md., filled 648 orders for thousands of crabs, plus countless hush puppies, corn and other sides.
Loving this Lemonade, that’s sweet