Black businesses matter

Uber has partnered with award-winning chef, restaurateur, author and food activist Marcus Samuelsson to help Black-owned restaurants through the Black Businesses Matter Matching Fund. This fund gives grants and support to Black-owned restaurants that have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and historically under-capitalised.

We’re also excited to celebrate the powerful history and creativity behind Black food with a new digital episode series in collaboration with Samuelsson and 4 fantastic chefs and restaurateurs: Nina Compton, Kwame Onwuachi, Rodney Scott and Leticia Skai Young. We hope the film not only inspires thoughtful eating but also allows people to hear some of the many stories yet to be told from Black restaurant owners.

Elsewhere on the Uber Eats app, initiatives such as Black Restaurant Week in the US have helped Black-owned businesses reach the top of the Uber Eats feed, letting locals discover new neighbourhood eateries. In the UK, we have completed some research with Be Inclusive Hospitality into the lived experience of Black and minority restaurant owners in order to identify how we can best support these communities.

In Canada, Uber has partnered with the Canadian Black Chamber of Commerce to launch The Black Pages—the first national digital directory for Black-owned small businesses from coast to coast. The Black Pages is free to join and free to view, ensuring that Canadians have a single online source to help them easily discover and support new Black-owned restaurants, retail shops, vendors and entrepreneurs.

All these initiatives are just the start of a long commitment to spotlight Black-owned restaurants in the US and around the world. We’ll be making our way to new cities to support these businesses, helping them recover from the impacts of the pandemic, working to build race equity and helping to create a more inclusive society.

You can read more about our work supporting Black enterprise here.