The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Creating and giving back
Philanthropic legacy
Andréa Hawkins and Doug Barber’s paths first crossed when they were young children attending the same church, and then they met again while working for the same company in the early 1990s. They went on a date and didn’t feel a love connection, but the third time was the charm.
Barber, a physical therapist, and Hawkins, whose professional background is in strategic planning and culture transformation, connected again on a dating site in early 2014 after they had divorced their respective spouses. They fell in love quickly, they say, and later that year, as both faced layoffs from their jobs, they saw the opportunity to try something new.
Barber, a physical therapist, wanted to pursue his love of coffee. He and Hawkins decided to open a coffee shop, even traveling to Portland, Ore., for barista education. Their first cafe, Berkins Blend in Glastonbury, opened in 2015, its name itself a blend of the married couple’s two surnames and a reference to their blended family, with three adult daughters between them.
Nearly eight years later, they now own three cafes, adding two Hartford locations to the family: Berkins on Oak and most recently, Berkins on Main at the Wadsworth Atheneum. Hawkins also runs a consulting business, Leading Culture Solutions.
Barber and Hawkins also recently established the Berkins Family Fund through the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, intended to support nonprofit organizations that assist entrepreneurial people of color who are interested in starting a new program.
“Over the last six years, we’ve started four new businesses,” Hawkins said in the Foundation’s announcement of the new fund. “We know what it takes, and we’d love to help earlystage nonprofits, or support two organizations with similar missions in combining forces and delivering solutions together.”
The philanthropic effort was actually inspired by a diamond ring, Hawkins said – a gift from her husband she loved, but said she felt it might be “selfish” to keep. Instead, they returned the piece of jewelry and took the money to seed the new fund, with hopes to eventually get it to $100,000.
“We really wanted to have this fund to be able to do microgrants for people that have really amazing ideas, but, you know, they’re [just] starting,” Hawkins said.
“The community has given us so much, the least we can do is try to do what we can to give back,” she said.
Welcomes the community to his table
Craig Wright can see Rockville Superior Court from the front window of his Vernon soul food restaurant. It’s a reminder of the life he left behind.
From the age of 18 to 25, he found himself in that court often, as a defendant.
“I was either in prison or probation or parole or some kind of supervision,” he said. But his longest sentence, three and a half years, would be his last.
“I sat in front of parole and told them I was 25 years old, and I just wasn’t proud of myself, I wasn’t proud of my life,” he said. “I let my family down. I let a lot of friends down. And I have nothing to show, and I don’t want to live this life anymore.”
Determined to turn his life around once he left prison in 2013, he transitioned to a halfway house in Hartford and started working for an Italian restaurant in Windsor, enjoying the culinary industry and working his way up to a sous chef role. In 2017, a friend alerted him that a restaurant space was up for sale – the former
Russ’s Time cafe on West Main Street.
Wright seized the opportunity, and transformed the space into Craig’s Kitchen, a welcoming soul-food spot with specialties like fried and jerk chicken, BBQ ribs, macaroni and cheese, red beans and rice, fried okra and cornbread.
In September 2018, a little over a year after he opened the restaurant, he arrived one morning to find the back door forced open and the cash register missing. Upset about the burglary, he posted to the restaurant’s Facebook page, and was met with an outpouring of loyalty from local diners who rallied to support him and the eatery in the subsequent weeks.
“I wanted to give back to the community because I thought that was pretty awesome,” he said. He repaid them the best way he knew how – through his food, hosting an open-invitation Thanksgiving dinner for anyone who wanted or needed a good meal. That November offering has become an annual tradition, and Wright also organizes a yearly Easter basket giveaway for local children.
Modest about his accomplishments and contributions, Wright says he doesn’t want to put himself on a pedestal. But he’s proud of where he is today.
“I feel like I’m kind of accomplishing a little bit of Black history myself,” he said. “I came from nothing, and I’m striving to be my best, but more than anything, I’m showing other young Black men that we have options.”
“There was a point in my life where I didn’t know I could do this,” he said. “I’m very proud of the fact that I can show people, period, that you can bounce back.”
Adapting to digital
Look up toward the ceiling at Ricky D’s Rib Shack in New Haven’s Science Park and you’ll see a variety of colorful pennants, all representing historically Black colleges and universities. Ricky Evans’ alma mater Virginia State University is represented, along with Howard, Morehouse, Spelman and several others.
After leaving the corporate world behind, Evans opened Ricky D’s as a food truck in 2013, inspired by backyard barbecues he loved with friends and family – “good music, good vibes, bringing people together, good laughs, good everything,” he said. “I’d rather be cooking on the grill or doing some kind of hospitality than going into the office.”
Once Evans found his brick-and-mortar space in 2016, he gave up the truck to focus on the restaurant, expanding the menu of smoked meats and sides to include chicken wings, salads, loaded baked potatoes and “Kansa-Lina fries,” featuring his trademark sauce (a blend of sweet tomato-based Kansas City and vinegarbased Carolina styles.)
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Evans lost a significant amount of business from nearby offices, as employees transitioned to working from home. The drop in sales, coupled with the general stress of the pandemic and “everything that the country was going through” made for a depressing stretch of time, he said.
Inspiration struck in an unexpected place. Evans noticed his daughter, now eight, was playing a virtual restaurant game on a digital app, and he began thinking. What if he could create a game that looked like a virtual version of the Rib Shack?
Connecting with game designers, Evans made it happen. The Ricky D’s branded game, with avatars in T-shirts bearing the restaurant logo, encourages characters to serve customers as quickly and accurately as possible to gain points. The virtual workers must get ribs into the smoker, build pulled pork sandwiches with sauce and coleslaw, and pour drinks in a timely manner (or else the customer leaves angrily, in a huff.)
The free app is available in Apple’s App Store and Google Play. Evans said he’s working on further development of it, hoping to connect game results to food discounts and other incentives for customers.
“With the app, I kind of got my second wind,” he said. “It’s exciting. It’s a new challenge.”
Cultural culinary touches
Damon “Daye” Sawyer, a native of Norwalk, says he’s still “wrapping his head around” the early success of 29 Markle Ct, which he opened in November with business partners Wesley Arbuthnott and Ishalee Green. The Blackowned restaurant takes its name from its Bridgeport address, and features upscale New American cuisine with cultural touches from the owners’ family backgrounds.
Sawyer serves as the restaurant’s executive chef. His menu features seasonal local produce, with vegetable-forward small plates like Napa cabbage salad, roasted carrots with a wine and citrus glaze, and charred broccolini with whipped feta and chiles, along with entrees like grilled shrimp and grits and a spiced and smoke-kissed half chicken.
“I wanted to think about [being] seasonal, and looking at my surroundings and what was available,” Sawyer said of his menu. “We’re coastal, so we get a lot of good fresh seafood…then I went into my own personal life and things I’ve picked up along the way throughout kitchens.”
He pulled some flavor inspiration from his parents’ Southern upbringings – mom is from North Carolina, dad from Virginia – along with a nod to Arbuthnott’s Haitian heritage. The Manmita’s black rice and crab appetizer, served arancini-style as fried rice balls, is served with pikliz, a Haitian pickled condiment made with cabbage, carrots and peppers.
Sawyer previously told Hearst Connecticut that 29 Markle Ct’s aesthetic and menu would be “unique and an experience” for downtown Bridgeport. This month, he said the wave of positive feedback has been “pretty amazing.”
“It’s extremely humbling to know that people are passionate about a city again, or feeling more…confidence, or pride in the community because of what we’re doing, is really special,” he said.
Sawyer said he would tell other potential Black entrepreneurs to “be intentional [and] set goals and boundaries without ceilings.”
“Do good business, be smart, work smart, work hard, [be] diligent,” he said. “If you have a vision, it’s important that you kind of stick to your guns, but you’re also bendable and flexible. Because ultimately, all business is communication, so you won’t always be right. It’s good to have people around you that can tell you when you’re not right, and that you’re humble enough to accept other people’s opinions.”