Supply: C/O: Partake Meals
Introduced To You By Walmart
It’s a improbable factor to have a imaginative and prescient and make it a actuality. It’s much more spectacular when that imaginative and prescient lets you make a distinction in your neighborhood.
Such is the case for the 2024 City One Honors Greatest in Black Neighborhood Hero, Denise Woodard, Founder and CEO of Partake Meals. She’s created a profitable enterprise and, within the course of, gave the subsequent era of younger Black entrepreneurs the instruments to realize in an area the place they’re underrepresented.
Woodard began her enterprise in 2016 after her daughter, Vivienne, had been recognized with a number of meals allergy symptoms. As she shopped for snacks that had been secure for Vivienne, she realized that a lot of what was stocked in shops wasn’t appetizing. That frustration led Woodard to begin Partake Meals, a model providing scrumptious snacks freed from the highest 9 meals allergens: peanuts, milk, eggs, tree nuts, wheat, shellfish, soy, fish, and sesame.
Woodard’s aim was to make scrumptious snacks, whether or not or not you’ve gotten meals allergy symptoms. The model contains an assortment of cookies, grahams, and pancake + waffle mixes. Woodard didn’t enterprise into this world mindlessly—she had a decade’s expertise working in shopper packaged items, so if anybody was certified to do it, it was her. Woodard took a threat, stop her job, and constructed her firm.
Her dedication and grind have since paid off tremendously. Woodard turned the primary Black lady to publicly elevate over $1 million for a shopper packaged items startup. The success didn’t cease there—she raised over $25 million for her model, now on the cabinets in additional than 14,000 retailers, together with Walmart.
However there was extra Woodard needed to perform. Her continued success in shopper packaged items impressed her to pay it ahead and assist different underrepresented Black folks within the house. As Woodard notes, the business isn’t notably strong in range—she was typically the one lady within the room earlier than she began her model. Her Black and Asian heritage made the disparity much more obvious.
From its inception, Partake was constructed with deeper intentions in thoughts. Woodard has made it her aim to be the change she needed to see, guaranteeing her employees displays the range of the neighborhood Partake serves. To elevate future generations of minorities transferring into shopper packaged items, she based the Black Futures Fellowship. Yearly, the 501c3 program invitations energetic HBCU college students to use and helps them land paid internships within the shopper packaged items business.
It’s another step towards making the world extra equitable for budding Black entrepreneurs or any HBCU pupil with their eyes on thriving in shopper packaged items. City One Honors is proud to award Woodard with this well-deserved prize. Partake Meals is a testomony to the greatness that may be achieved when Black entrepreneurs are properly supported, thriving, and in a position to pay it ahead to their neighborhood. Walmart is proud to sponsor this honor as a part of its ongoing dedication to uplifting Black entrepreneurs.
You may watch Woodward and different honorees obtain their flowers at City One Honors: Greatest in Black, Premiering Feb twenty fifth at 8/7C on TV One.
