Announcing Shop Black Fest 2023: Get The Details

Shop Black Fest is back and bigger than ever and is excited to announce the 2023 fest lineup beginning in Huntsville on April 1st. Nine festivals will take place in 5 cities, providing a chance to support over 1500 local Black-owned businesses in a COVID-safe festival space.

After seeing huge enthusiasm and success in the past 2 years for vendors in twelve cities (Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Tampa, Miami, Cincinnati, Huntsville) in the last two years, Shop Black Shop Black Fest is consolidating its tour to 5 cities. This will help make our event larger and create a larger impact in the cities. Each city on the schedule will host a Shop Black Festival experience featuring tons of businesses, food trucks, musical performances, plus education and networking forums for Black entrepreneurs.

Greg and Tee Westbrook founded Shop Black Fest, formerly known as Shop Black City Tour, in 2019, hosting vendor markets for local businesses in Nashville. In 2021, they transitioned from hosting virtual marketplace events during the pandemic to hosting in-person festival events for over 1400 Black-owned businesses. Now, that work has become even more important - Black-owned small businesses were impacted disproportionately by the pandemic, with the House Small Business Committee reporting a 41% drop in Black business ownership between February and April 2021. With Shop Black Fest, the Westbrooks hope to help businesses across the country rebound from these losses.

“During the pandemic, we helped hundreds of Black-owned small businesses generate over $450K in revenue, and we’re especially proud of that,” said Greg Westbrook. In 2023, Shop Black City Tour will be able to provide opportunities to even more Black-owned businesses in communities across the country. “If we can help 1500 BIPOC owned businesses generate at least $600 of revenue at each event, we’ve made a huge step forward in the right direction,” said Tee Westbrook.

Shop Black Fest Huntsville is the kick-off event of the tour and is April 1st at Butler Green. Visit www.shopblackfest.com or our Facebook page, Shop Black Fest, for more details as we make more announcements.
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