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Chef Shanita McAfee Bryant is the founder of The Prospect KC. We stop in for a coffee and conversation to talk about The Prospect KC’s amazing work fighting food apartheid, promoting food education, and teaching the next generation of chefs. And you can just stop it with the cake pops anytime you want. Plus, our marketing tip is going to help you focus your marketing by helping you test the factors that make the biggest impact.
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing, and we’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward. This week we sit down with Shanita McAfee-Bryant. She’s the executive director and founder of TheProspectKC.org. But first we’ve got another marketing business tip for you.
In our tip today, we want to talk about how we prioritize our marketing and how we get the most bang for our buck in all of the things that we’re doing. In all of that planning, where do we get the most bang for our buck? What should we be testing? What should we be looking at? If we want to prioritize our marketing, we know we should be A-B testing some factor of our ads so that we use the best messages more frequently once we find out what those messages are. So it makes sense to test something. But what should we test? When we look at the variables, the media plan accounts for about 13% of the success of that campaign in terms of contribution to sales. So the media plan, that’s what channel you want your ad to run in and how much money you’re spending to do it. 13% of the contribution to sales.
The other P’s in marketing, marketing’s famous for P’s like price and promotion and distribution or place if you want to make it a P word. Account for just 35% of that contribution to sales. So we’ve got a 13% in the media plan and we’ve got 35% for all kinds of other things. Well, if you want to know what you should really focus on when it comes to testing, where you can make the most impact, test the ad quality. The ad itself, how it resonates with the audience, what gets them to click, what gets them to remember that ad. That ad itself accounts for 52% of the success in contributing to sales. So if you’re going to save budget and time, so you can do some testing, test that creative and it will have the biggest impact for you. That’s our marketing tip.
Welcome back to the podcast. I am here with Shanita McAfee-Bryant. She’s the executive director and founder of TheProspectKC.org. Shanita, welcome to the show.
Chef Shanita:
Hi. Thank you guys for having me. I’m excited.
Jeff Randolph:
And we’re here at The Prospect KC.
Chef Shanita:
We are.
Jeff Randolph:
Theo and I have already gotten our morning coffee. We’re very excited to be here.
Chef Shanita:
You guys are a step ahead of me.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, I know we can find it for you if we had to.
Chef Shanita:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
First, let’s talk about The Prospect KC. You have labeled it as a culinary social enterprise, and I want to get to all of the components of what makes that up. But give us the kind of overall vision of this place.
Chef Shanita:
We are a customer-facing sixteen-week workforce development program. So I like to say customer-facing because when you are here ordering your coffee or getting your sandwich or your croissant or whatever, you have entered a live training environment.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh man.
Chef Shanita:
And 99% of the time the person who is handling your food, taking your order or making your coffee is one of our prospects or trainees. So that’s what… In a nutshell if I had to condense it down.
Jeff Randolph:
If you had to boil it down to just the most intense version of that. So The Spot is part of this, and so you may see The Spot around. Sustainably sourced coffee shop and fresh grocer.
Chef Shanita:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
Tell us about that.
Chef Shanita:
So we have the coffee and then we are hopefully this summer we’ll be able to, we kind of opened under gun fire last year, so a lot of things that we wanted to do, we didn’t get quite the way we wanted them. So we started our market, we have that with produce from Canby’s, but you will see this summer some grab-and-go and some more items where people are able to get some healthy, nutritious meals that they could just heat and eat as well. So that’ll kind of come into that. There’s some spices in there now. And then we have our cohort Alpha, that’s our first cohort. They’re developing some items that you can purchase on the shelves and things like that, granola. So that part is growing.
Jeff Randolph:
Excellent. Yeah. And you’ve also got the neighborhood account, so community members can enroll for grocery funds and that stuff?
Chef Shanita:
Yeah, so that is really simple. I was kind of thinking of when my grandparents grew up and they were in this neighborhood when they first moved here and there were corner markets and things like that, and sometimes you just didn’t have it right and you could put it on your account and come back and settle up later.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh gotcha.
Chef Shanita:
But they were still going to let you get your necessities.
Jeff Randolph:
Can still eat today.
Chef Shanita:
Yes. So it’s that same premise, except for instead of our guests or community members having to come back and settle up, the community settles up for them so they’re able to get what they need. And it’s not one of those kind of things where… I’ve been places and they have programs like that and it’s like you got to fill out a form and I need to know your blood type and can you put your first child up as collateral for this sandwich that you absolutely need to eat. We’re not trying to make it that way.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Chef Shanita:
Even this summer, we plan on even expanding that program out to make it even easier. So at the register, you could just buy a meal right then if you wanted to, and then we’ll have a board and people can just pull a voucher off the…
Jeff Randolph:
Pull a voucher and go.
Chef Shanita:
And go. In a very casual way. I don’t like how sometimes within food access people feel like you have to have no money in order to need access to food.
Jeff Randolph:
I have some money and so I really shouldn’t take this or whatever.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah. But sometimes you have some money and that money is, if we’re being realistic, is allocated to other things. And healthy food might not be the thing that you can allocate your funds to. And so we don’t want that to be a situation where you have to make a choice.
Jeff Randolph:
Like food deserts or food apartheid are issues that you have at your…
Chef Shanita:
Yes. I’m more of a food apartheid girlie and less of a food desert girl.
Jeff Randolph:
Less of a food desert.
Chef Shanita:
Not a food desert person at all.
Jeff Randolph:
Talk to us about the food apartheid side of things.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah. So apartheid speaks to systems. Desert speaks to, it’s a term or something that people get to use. It’s like, for example, when you look at photos of the Civil Rights movement and they’re all in black and white. Well, that’s because they want you to perceive that was a long time ago. My grandparents and my parents were born at that time. I have colored pictures of them, so I know they had colored film during that timeframe.
Jeff Randolph:
That was possible. But…
Chef Shanita:
Same thing with a desert. When you say desert, it’s like, oh, what could we possibly do about this?
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Chef Shanita:
There’s absolutely nothing. When you speak to apartheid, we know that particularly when we get to the east side of Kansas City, this financial disinvestment was intentional. So when we just say, let’s just call it what it is.
Jeff Randolph:
Call it what it is.
Chef Shanita:
We are in this situation because of intentionality by people who did not live in the neighborhood and really wanted it to be the way that it is. So that’s why I’m more of an apartheid girlie.
Jeff Randolph:
And part of that, you’ve got the Kitchen Confidence Program workshop that helps fight food apartheid. Tell us more about that program.
Chef Shanita:
So that came out of COVID. During, we were funny. We launched a nonprofit January 13th, 2020.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh yeah. It was a good time to do that. It was really…
Chef Shanita:
It was in January, in March.
Jeff Randolph:
In March, different story.
Chef Shanita:
All of our plans failed and we had to pivot into something else. I don’t even like saying the word pivot. It’s so traumatizing. I feel like for a year and a half, I was perpetually pivoting.
Jeff Randolph:
I was pivoting so much that my pivot foot got…
Chef Shanita:
Really pivoted.
Jeff Randolph:
Pivoted right off my foot.
Chef Shanita:
So what we are trying to look at now, what we came out of that is dealing with food access does not mean giving people food. There’s a next step to that, which comes with a nutritional education piece of it. And for a lot of people who have not had access to food, there’s a shame factor in that. You get shamed for buying your groceries at the Zip Mart. As if people were like, forget Walmart, I’d rather go to the corner store.
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Chef Shanita:
Right? In most cases, that’s what’s available. So they have to shop where it’s available because there’s not a lot of opportunities to get anywhere else. So with the confidence class, it’s us really working on repairing that relationship that people have with food, because for a lot of people, we’ve learned that it’s a survival thing. “I just need to live, so I’m going to eat something”. And not more of an enjoyment factor. “I want to think about what I’m going eat. I’m going to…” No, I just need to live, so I’m going to eat. So that’s kind of where that came from. It’s just working on people and understanding that, hey, you don’t know because you don’t know. And that’s okay, but that’s why we’re here to make this easy.
I have some chef friends who write recipes. I’m like, girl, who’s going to make that? I don’t want to make it. And I have the skill set.
Jeff Randolph:
You have 120 ingredients there.
Chef Shanita:
There’s a lot of steps. Can you get that in about six, seven steps?
Jeff Randolph:
That is an entire dishwasher full of…
Chef Shanita:
Dishes.
Jeff Randolph:
Things that you will need to clean right afterward.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah, no one’s doing that. So we want to make it accessible. We want to make it easy. And then most importantly, we want to make it culturally appropriate. A lot of times people who are dealing with access issues rely on pantry systems, and if you have a different food culture, you have a hard time really accessing the things that are special and near and dear and would be something that you grew up eating.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it sounds like exactly the right thing to help fight that food apartheid. Education is an important piece. I think if we can learn more, whether that’s the poverty side of things, where if I have one ingredient and I know what I can, like the billion things I could do with that ingredient, then I have a lot more opportunity to survive on just that one thing.
Chef Shanita:
Absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
But if I look at that giant cut of meat and go, “I don’t know, we could put it in the oven”, then my skill set doesn’t have…
Chef Shanita:
Boil it.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, I don’t have enough tools to really get where I need to go.
Chef Shanita:
Right. It works, but the education piece, I think sometimes people who are working in that space feel like education is one way. It’s a one-way street. It’s actually a two-way street. Because in order for me to effectively teach someone something, I have to be willing to learn about what they need. And then a lot of times in this food access space, we are more about telling people what they need and less about listening to what they need. So it has to be a little bit of both.
Jeff Randolph:
Man, I love the philosophies. Let me stay on this kind of philosophical piece for a second, because I want to talk Gumbo Fest.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
On the one hand, it’s a competition. You had your second annual competition in October of 2023, but it’s also a philosophy, and the way I understand it, you were inspired by a book called The Gumbo Coalition that uses gumbo as a metaphor to bring together some of those diverse backgrounds, dive into the competition, the metaphor, all of that. All of that.
Chef Shanita:
I think that when we look at this community, whenever I get to speak about what’s happening, even, we’re just going to narrow this down to the district, what’s happening in the district. You think that it’s just people feel like it’s one-sided. Like there’s residents here, there’s businesses here, and that’s a huge part of the gumbo. But you have to have traveler’s here who spend dollars, you have to have city support. You have to have large development or business support. So we are not going to be able to reinvest or revitalize this neighborhood if we’re only relying on two pieces of the gumbo. That makes a very nasty gumbo. You don’t want to eat just the stock. You’re like, okay, it’s a brothy broth.
Jeff Randolph:
Right, right.
Chef Shanita:
Thank you for, but no. Or you don’t want to have just the trinity or just the root. You kind need all of those pieces in order to make something successful.
And the beautiful part about gumbo is that there’s a hundred million different ways to make a gumbo, right? So no one person’s particular gumbo is the exact way to do it. You can do it all different kinds of ways and still come up with something that is tasty and beautiful. So that’s kind of the philosophy behind Gumbo Fest, is really bringing people into the district for a family fun, positive time, and getting to showcase some of the art and some of the culture that’s here to people who might not have even thought about coming down here before.
Jeff Randolph:
Excellent. And I can’t get out of this interview section without saying you won Cutthroat Kitchen.
Chef Shanita:
I did.
Jeff Randolph:
Tell me about that experience and what changed for you after that episode.
Chef Shanita:
It was intense and nothing changed.
Jeff Randolph:
Nothing. Nothing changed.
Chef Shanita:
Not really. It was intense, and honestly, it was just more of a personal journey for me. I think that all throughout my entrepreneurship and just my chefdom, I don’t know if that’s a word. Let’s call it that.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re going to say that. It’s chefdom.
Chef Shanita:
My chefdom, the person that I’m in most competition with is myself, and I’m always looking for ways to challenge myself, push myself to the next level, and be the best version of me that I could possibly be. So that was a challenge for me. It’s something that I competed in college when I was in culinary school. I mean, not nearly in that intensive of a setting, but it was intense in its own right. So it was just one of those kind of things where, can I still do this?
Jeff Randolph:
I think the answer was yes, though.
Chef Shanita:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
I think the answer was…
Chef Shanita:
Thank God.
Jeff Randolph:
You absolutely did that.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
No, we… Check out that episode. It’s a good episode. You’re ready to go into a lightning round? Do you want…
Chef Shanita:
Yeah, let’s do it.
Jeff Randolph:
You ready for this?
Chef Shanita:
All right.
Jeff Randolph:
Here we go here in a shout-out to the Bon Appetit food cast, my first question for you is butter or olive oil?
Chef Shanita:
Butter.
Jeff Randolph:
Is it always?
Chef Shanita:
Butter.
Jeff Randolph:
Butter. No question.
Chef Shanita:
Butter.
Jeff Randolph:
As much as we can get.
Chef Shanita:
Is it a carb? I need it.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. Perfect.
Chef Shanita:
I think it’s a vegetable.
Jeff Randolph:
Perfect. It’s a… Butter is a vegetable. You can use it everywhere. In the lightning round, I sometimes ask people about that desert island food, the food that they can eat all the time, anytime. This is my go-to food, I will eat this no matter what. If I just had it yesterday, I’m having it again today. Do you have one of those?
Chef Shanita:
Grilled cheese and Raising Cane’s.
Jeff Randolph:
And Raising Cane’s? There’s a lot of comfort going on there. I can see what that is.
Chef Shanita:
If don’t go to Raising Cane’s when I leave here two or three times a week, there’s something wrong with me.
Jeff Randolph:
Fascinating. As a chef then, do you look at Raising Cane’s and go, “I know I can make that sauce. I can duplicate that sauce.”
Chef Shanita:
I can. I’m not.
Jeff Randolph:
I can do the chicken the same way.
Chef Shanita:
I couldn’t.
Jeff Randolph:
But you want that comfort and you want it fast.
Chef Shanita:
It’s hot.
Jeff Randolph:
And it’s ready to go.
Chef Shanita:
It’s fast, and I can eat by the time I leave from there and get home. I’m done eating and I can go right to bed.
Jeff Randolph:
Perfect. What about a piece of cooking equipment that you couldn’t live without? Is there a, “Oh, this makes my life so easy.”?
Chef Shanita:
I just need a good knife. That’s it. A good knife. I can do a lot with that. Nice, sharp, good knife.
Jeff Randolph:
Is there a food that, a food fad that you can totally live without? Like something that you’re seeing in the food world? What is that?
Chef Shanita:
Cake pops?
Jeff Randolph:
Cake pops. No more cake pops. Yeah.
Chef Shanita:
Cake pops are gross.
Jeff Randolph:
I was going to say, maybe it’s the kind of thing like an egg on everything where it’s just fried egg on a burger, fried egg on a pizza, fried egg on whatever.
Chef Shanita:
That too, but really cake pops gross me out.
Jeff Randolph:
I like that.
Chef Shanita:
They really gross me out.
Jeff Randolph:
I could do without cake pops as well.
Chef Shanita:
We could have skipped over that whole genre of things.
Jeff Randolph:
Perfect. What aspect of the business do you wish you knew more about, that you wish you had a better handle on? Because entrepreneurship, the cooking side is one thing, right? You’ve got that side down, but what about the business do you wish you knew more about?
Chef Shanita:
I don’t know that I wish I knew more about it, but I wish I had a magic wand to solve it. It’s the ever-evolving customer expectations. That’s the part that’s always the unknown factor. We can plan for everything else, but we cannot plan for that.
Jeff Randolph:
For what people are into at the moment?
Chef Shanita:
What people are into.
Jeff Randolph:
What you’re excited about. And so you were just talking when you came in here about a menu change and menu change is happening today.
Chef Shanita:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
Is the menu change trying to deal with that? You’re trying to guess where people are going back?
Chef Shanita:
The menu change is more about seasonality and creativity.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, okay.
Chef Shanita:
Y’all have to understand that we get tired of making this stuff.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, sure.
Chef Shanita:
People are like, “But I like that sandwich.” “Okay, well, I’ve made like 700 of them. I literally don’t want to smell, see, look or have anything else to do with it.”
Jeff Randolph:
And if that’s the most popular thing.
Chef Shanita:
Also, there are other sandwiches.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. And if that’s the most popular thing and people keep coming in for it, then it’s that double-edged sword.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
You come from a strong family of entrepreneurs. I saw an interview that said that your father built a janitorial service company with more than 300 employees. What role did that have on your mindset in starting down this journey?
Chef Shanita:
I think that watching him and participating in that, I was not disillusioned about what entrepreneurship was. I think a lot of people come into entrepreneurship cause they think they’re going to be their own boss. That’s the not at it at all. Actually I’m not my own boss. And they think that you get time off and you get to make your schedule and you get to… Successful entrepreneurs are people who deal with extreme personal sacrifice and personal discomfort all of the time.
Jeff Randolph:
All the time.
Chef Shanita:
All of the time. And then if that’s not what you want to do, then I suggest that you don’t become an entrepreneur.
Jeff Randolph:
Let someone else have the headache and just do a good job for that person.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, yeah. How about passing along that tradition of either entrepreneurship or cooking to your kids? What is it that you hope you pass along?
Chef Shanita:
I don’t necessarily know that they will be entrepreneurs. They might. I think what I would like for them to see is my grit and my perseverance, and then they take on those characteristics and then they can apply that to anything that they decide that they want to do. And a little bit of discipline. So those are the three things that I would want for them to have. They don’t necessarily have to be… And I think if we tie it all the way back to The Prospect, that’s what I’m trying to show or trying to work with in this live action environment where they’re seeing us work is that it takes grit, it takes perseverance, and it takes discipline. Those are the three things, and you have to be consistent in that all the time, even when things get weird.
Jeff Randolph:
I could not wrap it up any better than in what you just said. I’m going to say, let’s see. First you’re out of the lightning round. Congratulations. Well done.
Chef Shanita:
Yay.
Jeff Randolph:
Where can people find you if they want to know more, if they want to connect?
Chef Shanita:
Well, I live here. You can find me sleeping on the blue couch. No, I’m just kidding. But also I’m serious. No, all of our socials are really consistent. It’s mine and Chef Shanita personally. And then all of this stuff for here is The Prospect KC. We keep it real simple. So it’s easy to find us.
Jeff Randolph:
Hey, highly recommend. Come down, hang out. Have a great cup of coffee and a different sandwich every time.
Chef Shanita:
Absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
Shanita McAfee-Bryant, executive director, and founder of The Prospect KC, thanks for being with us on the show.
Chef Shanita:
Thank you guys for having me.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show. Thanks to our guest, Chef Shanita McAfee-Bryant. And thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles podcast. Remember to subscribe. Leave us a five-star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at eagadv.com if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another Small Business Miracle.