Through Sunday suppers, cooking clubs and soul food catering for events large and small, Harmony Edosomwan says she’s creating community.
Edosomwan started her small business, Harmony's Kitchen, while attending the University of Vermont.
And she’s since gone from one campus to another — in this case, New York University. This year, Edosomwan was chosen to participate in a 10-week summer program hosted by NYU’s business school. It’s part of a Goldman Sachs investment initiative intended to lift up Black women entrepreneurs while addressing gender and racial pay gaps.
Recently, Vermont Public's Mary Williams Engisch and Adiah Gholston visited Edosomwan in her Winooski kitchen to learn more. This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Mary Williams Engisch: I'll start off by asking: you just returned from New York City, participating in the One Million Black Women program. How was the trip?
Harmony Edosomwan: Well, New York City is the place of my birth, so it was just great being back in a Big Apple, overall. But overall, the trip was just, honestly, life changing. I had the opportunity to be around 300 other Black women, Black entrepreneurs. And one, I haven't been around that many Black people in a really long time living in Vermont — not a bad thing, but it was just like — whoa! I was just soaking in all the melanin, and it was great.
And I was just, I left so inspired. I got to meet so many amazing people. I just left, kind of, feeling really reinvigorated to take the next step.
Mary Williams Engisch: What attracted you to that program?
Harmony Edosomwan: When I first started my business, I was very new to the business world, very new to cooking on a professional level. I didn't go to culinary school.
A couple years ago, I got a really strong desire to be better at business. I wanted to know what was going on with my business. I want to know all the numbers. I want to know everything, and I want to be really good at what I do.
I had a desire to go back to school, but I didn't know how I was going to be able to do that while working Harmony's Kitchen full time. So, when I saw this program, and saw it was a 10-week program that I can really immerse myself in, I was like, "OK yeah, this is for me!"
Mary Williams Engisch: Yeah, tell me more about how that worked. What was the motivation to, sort of, shifting into being full-time catering?
Harmony Edosomwan: I feel like everything with my business kind of just kind of happened, a little bit. I started selling plates of food because I noticed that there just wasn't any soul food options, or at least authentic soul food options here.
I describe soul food as food made with the soul. It's authentically Black, Black made. And it's more so known for a lot of its Southern origin foods like fried chicken, baked mac and cheese, collard greens — all that good stuff.
I just noticed that just wasn't here in the way that I grew up eating. And so that's when I decided, "You know what? This is a niche. I should do this." And I needed extra money.
How I shifted to catering, though, as I was just doing this takeout thing — so I started doing it when I was a senior at UVM, did it all throughout my senior year, graduated and noticed it was still, it was doing pretty good. And I just started getting requests to like, "Hey, can you help me cater this event" or do this or cater this event? And so that's kind of how I fell into catering, just by people requesting it. I'd never had any prior experience.
Mary Williams Engisch: What keeps you going?
Harmony Edosomwan: What keeps me going? I'm very passionate about what I do, and that is the mission of bringing soul food to New England in the way it hasn't been done before.
When you think of New England, particularly when you think of Vermont, you're not thinking of soul food. And I want to change that. I want people to recognize that, no, New England does have good food here. And New England does have some soul in it, and it's with Harmony's Kitchen.
So starting in Vermont, I want to just impact this entire state to, you know, understand that soul does exist here. One of my favorite things to do with soul food in Vermont is to kind of add that Vermont flare. I love doing like a maple fried chicken, or like a maple baked mac and cheese, or something like that. Oh — I do a nice maple lemonade. People love that, they go crazy for that.
Mary Williams Engisch: You mentioned on social media before that after going through this program, you'd like to help raise up young entrepreneurs in Vermont. How is that going to look? How are you going to support young entrepreneurs in Vermont? And why is that important to you?
Harmony Edosomwan: Yeah, so I hope to inspire young entrepreneurs in Vermont actually through my position currently as Miss Chittenden County. So currently I'm serving as Miss Chittenden County. Next year, I hope to run for Miss Vermont, as well.
Part of my community service initiative is to inspire entrepreneurs to start their own businesses.
For me, starting my business was my way of kind of pulling myself out of poverty. When I first started my business, I was very heavily dependent on the food banks around campus.
Another part of my community service initiative is fighting against food insecurity, which is something that deeply impacted me as just a struggling, poor college student. And so starting my business is what pulled me out of that, though.
I just want other young folks to know that if I can do it, you can do it too. I hope to go into different schools, communicate with students there, help them to be able to find that business inside of them. A lot of our hobbies can be turned into businesses.
Mary Williams Engisch: So right now, you're in your catering era, but you mentioned that after going through the program, you might be thinking about opening like a brick and mortar restaurant. Can you share any juicy details about what that might be and what kind of timeline you're thinking about?
Harmony Edosomwan: I'm a girl that has big dreams, and that's something I also want to inspire folks, is just keep having big dreams and keep going for it. But like I said, my mission is to change the way that New England thinks about, consumes and just interacts with soul food. And so my big goal is I would love to have — starting in Vermont — a fast, casual soul food restaurant. Then I would love to have fast, casual soul food restaurants all throughout New England, you know? Just so folks can have that sense of comfort to take home with them. I would say something of that nature would be very cool.
Now, when that's going to happen? I'm learning through this business development program now that it's OK to have phases in your business. And so right now, I'm not in the phase of where I will be having a restaurant, but what I will say to the Vermont public, is that I will be embarking a soul food tour, and I'll be going all throughout the state of Vermont — so if there's a spot, and if there's any people that would like to collaborate, I want to bring soul food to the deepest parts of Vermont. I'm talking like the Northern Kingdom. Let's, let's bring it to Irasburg. Let's go to the south. Let's go to South Royalton. Let's, let's go [to] Montpelier. Let's go all over.
I want to bring soul food to every part of Vermont. And so that's the next, that's the next step.
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