In 2020, Vice News reported that only two of 328 UK restaurants reviewed by major British newspapers between January 2019 and January 2020 were Black-owned.
Four years on, chicken + bread has checked in on the same six national publications – The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph – and found that out of 194 restaurants reviewed, only two were Black-owned.
This means Black proprietors owned 1% of restaurant reviews published between January 2024 and August 2024.
As with Vice’s investigation, we defined the restaurant “owner”/”owners” as the person or people identified publicly (in press and social media, or on the restaurant website) as the owner, and/or listed as the majority shareholder on Companies House. If a restaurant had multiple owners, and one of these owners was Black, we counted this as a “Black-owned” restaurant. If a hospitality group, parent company or hotel owned the restaurant, we looked at the owner of that company.
The Telegraph/Sunday Telegraph reviewed no Black-owned restaurants between 1st January 2024 and August 2024.
Akara, West African restaurant in Borough Market owned by Aji Akokomi was the only Black-owned restaurant to be reviewed in The Sunday Times. It was also reviewed in The Guardian. Hooyos, a Somali restaurant in Luton was reviewed by The Observer and is owned by the Abdi family, led by Foz Abdi.
As was true in Vice’s investigation, none of the reviewed restaurants in 2024 specialised in food from the Caribbean. Of the 194 reviews this year 18% of these restaurants were owned by a person of colour.
Why is this cause for concern?
A positive write-up provides unbeatable PR for a business, is read by thousands of potential diners and often leads to increased bookings and further press coverage. The hospitality industry continues to try to bounce back from the pressures of rocketing energy bills amid the cost of living crisis, as well as the after-effects of Covid and Brexit.
It’s reported that 1,932 restaurants entered insolvency in 2023, equating to an average of more than five closures per day, up from 3.6 closures per day in 2022.
Four years on from an investigation published in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020, it’s disappointing but not surprising that Black erasure in the British Food Industry is in the same place we left it.
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