Great food is only part of what makes a restaurant successful, something many aspiring chefs and restaurant owners don’t always realize. Developing entrepreneurial skills is challenging, and people in underserved communities face additional barriers, including access to capital and mentors.

Sunshine Enterprises, a local nonprofit based in Woodlawn, has been supporting restaurant owners and other small business owners for eight years through a series of courses, matching them with mentors, helping them find the right neighborhood for their restaurants and helping them navigate the often confusing world of permitting. Part of Sunshine’s mission is to “bring vacant storefronts back to life,” says Sunshine’s program executive director Laura Lane Taylor. Earlier this week, Sunshine gathered food vendors at Navy Pier for Taste of Sunshine, the first-ever presentation for 16 of its graduates.

Tammie Williams of Baker Sister, a Beverly-based cookie wholesaler, was one of those vendors.

Williams founded Baker Sister in 2014, so it’s not a new business. However, Williams says she needed Sunshine’s help launching an eShop with Amazing and Walmart. Sunshine’s advice was crucial: “They provide us with lawyers and a lot of different services that we need to keep the momentum going or open new doors.”

For example, through networking, Williams connected with representatives from Wintrust Arena, home of the WNBA’s Chicago Sky, and she hopes her products will one day be available at the McCormick Place sports stadium.

Social media marketing has become more important than ever, but people from marginalized groups don’t have as much reach. Sunshine helped Williams with that too: “The marketing aspect was paramount for me,” she says. “We desperately needed it.”

So Navy Pier presented Williams with a unique opportunity: “I know Navy Pier is one of the most sought-after tourist spots in the world,” she says. “I want to advertise from that standpoint, both here in the city of Chicago — for those who don’t know me — even though we’re in grocery stores and stuff, but we can still expand our presence.”

Taylor talks about the need to strengthen local chambers and introduce more educational programs. Building permits and liquor licenses, for example, can be difficult.

“We need more academic programs like Sunshine’s,” Taylor says. “We need them in multiple languages ​​- we offer them in English and Spanish now – but you need them in Polish – you need them in other languages.”

The group assigns coaches to participants to guide them. If specific skills or knowledge are required that are beyond the coach’s area of ​​expertise, Sunshine’s Helpdesk steps in and draws on the group’s network of business experts.

Sunshine was founded in 2016 as part of Sunshine Gospel Ministries, which is affiliated with Moody Church. They have also helped Nestor Correa of ​​Humita Express, a restaurant near the Irving Park-Avondale border. Humita is one of only a handful of restaurants serving Ecuadorian cuisine. The pandemic forced Correa to close his restaurant, and he turned to Sunshine for help. Correa says when he opened his first restaurant in 2003, there were only three Ecuadorian restaurants in Chicago, but that number has now grown to 20. Many in the community ask him for advice, and it’s challenging to run a restaurant and support other restaurant operators. Correa also has a food truck and bar.

“We come from Ecuador and our mission is to introduce our cuisine to the city,” says Correa.

Humita is working on expanding his menu to include ceviche. Sunshine can help with that because she knows food costs and accounting, but Correa hopes to open a larger restaurant, more of a cafe, where he can offer an expanded menu. He’s not sure about the location, though, and that’s where Sunshine has helped.

In the past, Sunshine The Shark Cat-like competitions for its participants. There is a thorough application process for the Community Business Academy, a 36-hour boot camp.

“They need to demonstrate in their application that they have the resources to execute their particular vision and they need to be able to commit the time and effort needed to invest in their business model,” says Taylor.

Sunshine is fortunate to have support from the City of Chicago as well as private donors.

“The small business ecosystem is there, but it needs to be strengthened. It needs to be much more connected to the system that helps people do business, to anchor institutions and certifications and, you know, what the civic associations of the world are doing,” Taylor says.