Today we’d like to introduce you to Phillip W. Dunn, CEO & Founder of 2TheTable, LLC.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Phillip. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
2TheTable started in November 2015 in a small Facebook group called the Black Business Focus Group (BBFG). The mission then was to connect as many consumers to Black-Owned Businesses (BOBs). The membership initially totaled a little over 30 folks all seeking to find value within the Black Community. Since our founding we initiated such events as Black Restaurant Week, Black Tax Week, Spring Cleaning Week and Healthy Eating Week all designed to drive consumers to BOBs. Today we have grown to a community of over 12,000 consumers and BOBs all poised to practice group economics in an effort to transform our community. Our members measure their BOB purchasing activity in an effort to draw wealth, income and other resources back into our community. Our current mission is to improve the collective condition of the Black Community. This is fully aligned with our vision to create an economy that transforms the Black Community for current and future generations. We are not just interested in having “a seat at the table” we are pursuing a table of our own and will re-write the rules of our economy.
Has it been a smooth road?
Not at all. Getting a community of people to change their attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs that have been instilled in them generation after generation is hard. Data suggests that Black consumers have not supported Black Owned Businesses since integration. As a result, many of our businesses were lost due to no community support and boycotting from other communities. I shouldn’t even say boycotting. Other communities just practice successful group economics. I don’t take it personally. However, I have leveraged my experience in Corporate Change Management and Corporate Governance to drive change in our community. It is a challenge to get people to change their mentality to believe what our community has to offer in terms of culture, quality and value is as good as other communities, but I do believe we can do it. At 2TheTable we don’t believe that communities themselves change but rather the people in the communities change in time. If there is ever a time in history to change the time is now. I truly believe it’s our time!
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the 2TheTable story. Tell us more about the business.
Without giving too much away to competing platforms I’ll share that 2TheTable is a directory, rating and review service for BOBs combined with a Change Management Tool for the greater community. We operate primarily from a social media focus group called the BBFG for now, but we make our website available to businesses to list their company information and manage a private platform for our consumers. We also make our website available to consumers looking to find value from the Black Owned Business sector. Our website address is www.2thetable.com. Plans are in place to develop an app to make our business more accessible beyond our focus group.
We leverage our 12,000 consumer community membership to pool transactions that are dedicated to Black-Owned Businesses. This sets us apart from other directories in that we are actually driving consumer transactions to our member businesses. Since launching a small portion of our planned app to our membership, we have aggregated over $350,000 of transactions back into the Black Community. Imagine what we can do with 43 million + Black Americans and our allies. In short, we are taking on the responsibility for drawing wealth, income and other resources back into our community.
A great deal of data has been generated that confirms the market needs and wants this type of platform. 2TheTable is ready to deliver.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I do believe that our community has begun looking inward for solutions to the many social and economic issues impacting our community. The wealth gap, income inequality, unemployment will all be addressed as we begin to practice Group Economics within the Black Community. This will create a big shift in where consumers spend their dollars. As a result more consumer dollars will begin to flow towards businesses in the Black Community and this should translate into increased partnerships with other communities and even increased competition with mainstream businesses across all consumer goods segments. The directory industry itself will still have the major players such as Angie’s List, Google, Yelp and OBWS but they will all be forced to compete with more nimble platforms such as 2TheTable
Currently, Black American consumers spend $1.3 trillion annually, and most of those dollars are spent outside of our community. Once we begin to channel those dollars back into our community, we will facilitate economic self-sufficiency and help BOBs become more competitive and viable partners. We can do this in less than ten years.
Pricing:
- Currently, Consumer Membership is Free!
- Currently, Business Membership is Free!
- Currently, Limited App usage is Free!*
*Currently accessible via social media platforms listed below.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.2thetable.com
- Email: admin@2thetable.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/2thetablellc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2TheTableLLC
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/2_thetable
- Other: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BlackBusinessFocusGroup/
Image Credit:
Lina Hidalgo, Marcus Davis, The Cookin’ Ques, Philip J. Yates, Kimberly Barnes, Leah Chase, Laoulu Davies
Getting in touch: VoyageHouston is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
