Erin Williams grew up amid the rich food culture of Bayview-Hunters Point, a San Francisco neighborhood where recipes play a vital role in celebrating the community\u2019s shared heritage. Local restaurants and stores, with their specialty dishes, helped form her culinary tastes. But Erin\u2019s biggest influence was her mother\u2019s Creole-influenced cuisine. \u201cI always believed my mom was the best cook in the world,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I believed in feeding people with love. My mom fed the church her gumbo, her cornbread dressing. Everybody came over to pick up a plate at Thanksgiving.\u201d<\/p>\n
As an adult, seeking to give back to her neighborhood, Erin became a social worker. But food remained her true passion: \u201cFeeding people is a love of helping people too,\u201d she says. After attending culinary school, she founded her own small catering business, WeFeastSF. She became an increasingly visible member of the local small-business community. She networked tirelessly.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how Stacy Dickinson, Business Banking Area Manager and Executive Director of JPMorganChase\u2019s San Jose office, first encountered her\u2014at a local networking event, where Erin\u2019s energy and fearlessness, and her pride in her product, made a strong impression. \u201cShe comes out with her basket of jambalaya mix,\u201d Stacy recalls, \u201cand she is literally selling it to every person at this event.\u201d It was clear, she says, that Erin \u201cdidn’t want to just cater. She didn’t want to just sell at a farmer’s market. Her goal was for a mass audience to enjoy her food.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stacy grew up in the Bay Area herself, and it\u2019s her passion to find and develop local entrepreneurs. Small businesses, which employ about 360,000 workers in the city, play a vital, sustaining role in the economy of San Francisco. They also play a crucial role as both community and commercial hubs, and bolster the city\u2019s cultural districts.<\/p>\n
Over the course of the following months, Stacy kept in touch with Erin and offered advice. When Chase and the Golden State Warriors launched the Alley-Oop Accelerator, a small- business training and mentorship program, she immediately recruited Erin. The Accelerator brings together entrepreneurs from underserved local communities to learn how to grow their businesses. \u201cWhen I told her about it, she got quiet,\u201d Stacy recalls. \u201cThen she said, \u2018I\u2019m in. What do I do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
For seven weeks, Erin attended workshops both in person and over Zoom\u2014about accessing capital, managing cash flow, marketing online and in person, pricing, and hiring. About fraud and cybersecurity and merchant services. Participants pitched their products every day to each other, to local business owners, and to workshop leaders. The objective was to implement what they were learning into their businesses immediately, in real time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe worked on the things we were lacking in,\u201d says Erin, who describes classes on financial literacy, taxes, sales projections, and using social media, among others. \u201cThey taught us how to redirect what\u2019s working and what isn\u2019t, and how to create more revenue through what is\u00a0working. They helped us connect with people at Chase Bank\u201d for additional guidance and prospective funding. \u201cAnd we uplifted each other as a whole cohort.\u201d The program enabled her to focus her business plan for the first time. \u201cIt made me rethink my demographics,\u201d she says. \u201cIt made me find my lane\u2014because I was in every lane.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the Accelerator\u2019s participants were told that executives from the Warriors would join them on the last day of workshops, Erin decided to bring in a batch of her peach-cobbler nachos. This recipe is a twist on the pie her mother used to make (after extensive experimentation, Erin discovered that deconstructing the recipe helped maintain the crispness of the crust). \u201cEverybody tried my nachos,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThey were tearing it up, even people that didn\u2019t like desserts. It was overwhelming.\u201d She boldly announced that her goal was to serve the nachos at the team\u2019s home court, the Chase Center.<\/p>\n
She was in luck. Erin applied for and was accepted into the arena\u2019s F&B program, which features small businesses in the area; this allowed her to showcase her peach-cobbler and apple-pie nachos throughout the Warriors and Valkyries seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the program allowed her to continue to build her confidence,\u201d Stacy says. \u201cNow she goes for everything. And if they tell her no, she asks again.\u201d With 270,000 small business clients in the Bay Area, JPMorganChase is committed to supporting local business owners and entrepreneurs at every stage of their journey. Stacy speaks with the program\u2019s alumni regularly; she joins them at milestone events for their businesses. And the participants themselves stay in touch via social media. The Alley-Oop Accelerator\u2019s next cohort will run in tandem with the Golden State Valkyries season. Going forward, Stacy says, the intention is to host the program at least twice a year. \u201cIt\u2019s so important for these business owners to take a chance on themselves,\u201d Stacy says. \u201cAnd this program creates the opportunity for people to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Erin is currently working to introduce her products into cafeterias at San Francisco public schools. She\u2019s also pursuing the possibility of serving her nachos at Oracle Park, where the San Francisco Giants play.<\/p>\n
The small businesses of her childhood helped shape Erin\u2019s culinary ambitions and curiosity. Her goal now is to offer her products to the biggest possible audience. \u201cI want to be worldwide,\u201d she says, \u201cin all the stadiums.\u201d<\/p>\n
The testimonials are the sole opinions or experiences of those featured and not those of JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. or any of its affiliates. These opinions or experiences may not be representative of what all may achieve. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. or any of its affiliates are not liable for decisions made or actions taken in reliance on any of the testimonial information provided.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Erin Williams grew up amid the rich food culture of Bayview-Hunters Point, a San Francisco neighborhood where recipes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64858,64859,64857,101,103,102,104,106,105,47182,8761],"class_list":["post-124230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-business-growth-and-entrepreneurship","tag-customers-and-clients","tag-our-communities","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-stories","tag-united-states-of-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}