The EatOkra App Makes It Easy to Find—and Support—Black-Owned Restaurants in Your Neighborhood

The recent movement for racial justice has inspired a number of changes in American life. One new development is in how some people are spending their money. In the month following George Floyd's death while in police custody, Yelp searches for Black-owned businesses skyrocketed by 1785 percent. As Kristen Adaway reports for Thrillist, an app called EatOkra makes it easy to turn supporting Black-owned businesses into a lifelong habit.

Anthony Edwards Jr. and Janique Bradley, now husband and wife, launched EatOkra in 2016. The app started as a directory of Black-owned restaurants in Brooklyn, and today it lists businesses under Black ownership in Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities across the U.S.

Instead of using Seamless or Grubhub, users can search EatOkra for restaurants by location and cuisine. The restaurant pages that show up list information like phone number, address, hours, and user reviews. If the business offers delivery, there may even be links for diners to place online orders through outside apps.

"Gathering and food play a key role in defining our sense of community, and EatOkra provides users with a tool that gives them an opportunity to locate these communities and support them in some way," EatOkra's website reads. "Nothing embodies this idea of community more than the act of feeding someone or coming together to eat or be fed."

Since rolling out four years ago, EatOkra has amassed more than 150,000 users. You can start connecting to the 2600 Black-owned businesses in its directory by downloading the app for free today.