By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff Writer
The holidays weren’t looking all that sweet for baker Jamie Mack, who recently had to make some hard decisions to keep the business open.
Mack is the owner of SpiderMonkey Dessert Studio, located at Arden Fair. Alongside food court vendors such as Jamba Juice and Hot Dog on a Stick, SpiderMonkey attracts customers with the tantalizing smells of freshly baked beignets, mini peach cobblers and sinfully rich cupcakes.
“I’ve had some reduced hours for my employees and around the holidays, that’s a hard choice to have to make,” Mack said.
“Payroll was killing me. I love my employees, but I can’t pay them and not be able to keep the doors open. Either you get less hours or all of us get no hours and we’re not going to be here,” Mack said.
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Enter the grant that saved Christmas. SpiderMonkey was among the latest restaurants in Northern California to be awarded $5,000 grants as part of the California Restaurant Foundation’s Restaurants Care Resilience Fund. Seventy-seven recipients received money as part of the grant financed by California’s energy companies, including the PG&E Corporation Foundation.
The grant will help Mack offset the reduced hours and pay employees through the holiday season.
“I’m really grateful for the grant because I will be able to give them a little bit of a bonus like I wanted to this year. I try to give them a bonus every year, but it wasn’t looking good,” she said.
Designed to invest in the long-term health of California’s independent restaurants, the $5,000 grants can be used for equipment and technology upgrades, unforeseen hardship, employee retention bonuses and employee training. Since the resilience fund’s inception, the fund has provided nearly $6 million in financial assistance to 1,325 independent restaurants across California.
“We are thrilled to close out our biggest resilience fund year yet by awarding 182 restaurant owners with these business-supporting grants, especially as they enter the holiday season and new year,” said Alycia Harshfield, the fund’s executive director. “We are confident that our new cohort of deserving restaurant owners will use their grants to strengthen their business’ resiliency and further cultivate a vibrant food scene across California.”
In 2022, The OBSERVER highlighted Daddy O’s Smokehouse, another Black-owned business that received the grant.
Mack said it’s vital for Black entrepreneurs to be linked into such resources as they can help sustain their businesses. She was told about the grant by Brian Zscheile, a business development officer with California Capital, a champion for small businesses.
“He’s actually the one who brought it to my attention and told me this might be something that I apply for. So I did. If it wasn’t for him sending it to me, I wouldn’t even know about it,” Mack said.
Sometimes Black business owners get left out of the loop for opportunities that can bolster them.
“Networking is everything,” Mack said.
Equally important, she said, is diversifying who you network with.
SpiderMonkey Dessert Studio has been at Arden Fair for two years. Mack previously created cakes for birthdays and other meaningful occasions.
“It’s been eye-opening,” Mack said of the transition of going from being a single proprietor to having employees and operating at the local mall. “A lot of people look at businesses when they open and they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re doing great. You’re making money.’ On paper, yes, but all that money goes right back out because there’s a lot of stuff that they don’t tell you. Like the fact that you have 10 different taxes that you have to pay as a storefront and when you have employees, you have payroll and labor. That’s expensive.”
Finding a balance has been a journey, the local entrepreneur said. Flexibility has been key for her.
RELATED: Local Restaurants Can Apply For ‘Resilience Fund’
“You better learn fast.” she said. “I think why a lot of businesses fail is because they go in thinking that their business is going to pay their rent and it’s really not. I hope you have another job because it’s going to take awhile to actually be able to pay your bills.
“When I first opened here, I was still delivering for DoorDash. I still worked for the state to do what you have to do. Pride has no part in this game. People say the harder you work, the luckier you get, because luck doesn’t come by osmosis. You have to put the work in there.”
Mack considers herself fortunate to still be around.
“A lot of Black businesses were welcomed into the mall during the pandemic. A lot of them have not made it, but there are some of us who are still here. It’s been really good for some of us, being resilient and really tough through hard times,” she said.
“I hate to toot my own horn, but my stuff is good. Not saying that anyone else’s isn’t. I really believe in what I’m doing here and I believe in the food that we put out,” she continued.
Mack shared what she wishes someone had told her when she was starting out.
“A checklist would have been nice,” she said.
She also offered advice for others.
“You just really have to be resilient. You have to be hard-headed enough to not quit because it’s going to get harder. You’re going to want to quit and sometimes you’re not going to be able to see where you’re going to be able to make it through. But you’ve got to keep pushing. The harder you push, the further you go and you’ll figure some things out. I’m still figuring it out. I can’t even say that I’m comfortable or anything like that, which is why the resilience fund grant is really helpful.”