New app will highlight local black businesses
When Rick Banks and Paul Wellington met each other in middle school, they became fast friends while building a model city on Mars for a school project.
Now they’ve built something else: An app that will highlight Milwaukee’s black businesses, important cultural sites and venue spaces, as well as an events calendar.
They’re calling it MKE Black. Banks, the political director for Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, and Wellington, a librarian and the author of Black Built, started working on the app about five months ago.
“Originally, we were quoted by a professional app developer and told it would cost $18-20,000,” Banks recalled.
So Wellington started fiddling with Buildfire, a mobile app builder, and soon, the idea began to materialize.
The learning curve, Wellington said, was steep. But the price point was much better: $60 a month.
The idea of the app came to the cofounders at different times. Five or six years ago, Banks — struggling to support local black businesses — had wondered why there were no apps identifying black businesses.
Wellington said the idea also came to
him spontaneously.
“I was in the shower one day, and I was like, why don’t we have an app for African American businesses?”
When he set out to create one, Wellington admitted the research process was challenging, sometimes requiring him to go in-person to verify if a business was black-owned.
But he and Banks agreed that meeting that challenge was important.
“A lot of people talk about the importance of supporting the community and black-owned businesses but it’s so hard to know,” Banks said. “How do you know what is a black-owned business?”
With the app, Banks believes they will.
They plan to keep the app current by monitoring the businesses and said they are also relying on community feedback to find out if a business closes or changes addresses.
What kind of businesses will be featured? Wellington said everything from restaurants, caterers and podcasts to mental health and economic development resources.
Banks noted that they will also highlight local startups, such as the Gifted clothing brand.
Although there are no churches, the co-founders said there might be a space for them as they continue to make updates.
The app, which went through a soft launch in late January, is already available for android devices and Wellington said they’re working through Apple’s verification process.
The co-founders have planned a celebration from 6-8:30 p.m. at SkyBox Sports Bar, 2213 N. King Drive, for the hard launch, set to take place Feb. 10.