Feed the Soul Foundation, a nonprofit by Black Restaurant Week and Latin Restaurant Weeks, awarded Baton Rouge restaurant and food services company Tre’s Street Kitchen a $10,000 stipend and six months of business development under its Restaurant Business Development Grant Program.
The cohort program supports marginalized restaurant entrepreneurs in the U.S. financially and professionally. The nonprofit selected 30 small businesses to receive $10,000 stipends and six months of business development services at a total value of $25,000 investment per business.
Tre’s Street Kitchen was the only business from Louisiana selected this year. The program provides restaurant entrepreneurs with financial literacy training and coaching, business operations tools, human resources support, advertising and marketing recommendations and group consultations from industry experts.
“This really came at the right time to help us do what we want to do,” Kristen Smith, co-founder and chief experience officer of Tre’s Street Kitchen, says. “We feel more secure in some of the big dreams we have that might’ve been just something on the wall. Now we’re living it.”
Smith says the team plans to spend $3,000 on marketing; $4,000 for labor costs, including hiring a full-time dishwasher and food truck manager; and the remaining $3,000 on working with a culinary consultant to help with standard operating procedures and expansion.
The company has major plans for the future. Smith says Tre’s Street Kitchen’s goals are to open a location at the LSU Student Union, expand into New Orleans and cater at the Caesars Superdome. They also plan to start selling Tre’s Street Sauce, an all-purpose BBQ sauce, in retail stores and open a standalone brick and mortar location that is franchisable. Smith says the company also intends to offer internships and scholarship programs for BRCC’s culinary department in 2025 to support culinary students with tuition and cost of living.
Tre’s Street Kitchen opened its food truck in November 2020 and opened its restaurant inside BRCC’s student union in August 2024.
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