Where Ottawa’s Black-owned businesses are finding financial support

Jae-Anthony Dougan Holder is the owner and chef of Tingz Restobar — a resto-lounge type of restaurant in the heart of downtown Ottawa.

Like many businesses during COVID-19, any help has been welcomed help, especially since his new restaurant Tingz opened at a time when the pandemic was taking off in Ottawa. But with resources like Uber Eats’ initiative to support Black businesses, it’s making the transition back to reopening a little easier and Holder is feeling the support.

“It was very quick to pivot and transition from a sit-down with wine,Caribbean, modern plating… and now we’re putting this food in boxes and Uber Eats and pick-up and deliver — so really, it wasn’t hard for us and we did it really quickly and we never stopped.”

He’s owned restaurants in Montreal before, but Tingz is new — not only to him, but to Ottawa’s restaurant market.

And Holder hopes more help will come in the form of financial assistance for other Black-owned businesses in the community. 

“Black businesses are more mom and pop shops — they maybe have five people on payroll,” Holder said. “I wish the government was able to help more Black businesses because in terms of the community, if the community is not making money, the community cannot go back into Black hands.”

But sometimes that help can come from somewhere else — in this case, a new initiative with Uber Eats in partnership with the Black Chamber of Commerce in the form of an in-app promotion for Black-owned independent restaurants in select cities across Canada and the U.S. 

According to Uber Eats, customers who order from such restaurants will have a $0 delivery fee until the end of the year (however, this doesn’t apply to franchise restaurants).

If customers see that a Black-owned restaurant is not included in the promotion, that could be for one of three reasons:

• The restaurant doesn’t qualify as a small-to-medium-sized business
• The restaurant is not in one of the cities where this initiative is offered
• The restaurant opted-out of this initiative or has not opted in yet

“This project is focused on helping Uber Eats users easily support the Black-owned restaurants in their communities,” Uber says on its website.

“This has helped us tremendously,” Holder said. “I think we’ve increased our sales by 20 per cent just on pick up and delivery, through Uber.”

The downfall for Holder, however, is the fact that Uber Eats will take 30 per cent of sales from businesses using their app.

“Otherwise, they’ve done an amazing job,” Holder added. 

Before the pandemic, Holder said his business was doing well. But his business, he says, has changed since the Black Lives Matter movement has been picking up steam. 

“Since this  Black Lives Matter movement started, Black business on my end has increased between 20 tp 30 per cent,” Holder explained. 

Tingz has even been listed among the top five restaurants in Ottawa that has seen an uptick in business, thanks to Uber.

“That has helped us a lot in terms of sales,” he said. “We also change our menu every season. We just changed to our summer menu, which has so many beautiful dishes, and it’s different than what you see on Uber… our Uber sales are off the charts.”

Other Canadian cities participating in the in-app promotion are Toronto and Montreal.

To further support Black businesses, the program will be offering discounted rides for Black-owned small businesses and is providing $500 to voucher to 100 Black-owned small- and medium-sized businesses in Canada.