Our Story

Soul Food Connection was founded in the year 2000 by Rene Couret. The idea for this business venture came about when she moved to Los Angeles and couldn't find a soul food restaurant. She looked on the internet and found little to no results, and nothing specifically catered to our industry.  From word-of-mouth she drove around to find restaurants, but they were closed.  It was shocking and sad to see so Rene decided to do something about it. Since then she and her team have been doing market research and PR in San Diego, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, Columbus, and Toledo/Detroit to advertise soul food restaurants. 

This site was created so that people who love soul food can come together as a people in the community. Any person in any city will be able to put their zip code into the search engine, how far they want to travel, how much they want to spend, and which type of soul food they want.  The website is also a community for people to come together talk about all things 'soul' and find a shared passion for this wonderful cuisine.  

The Impact

The Soul Food market is very large.  According to a search on Google Maps, there are over 1.4-Million Soul Food restaurants in the world.  With that being said, there are no other websites or search engines directly catered to Soul Food restaurants alone. At least four times an hour someone uses the Twitter Hashtag #soulfood.  At least three times an hour someone mentions a Soul Food restaurant or recipe on Twitter and on New Years Day 2012, there were 2 posts per second about eating Soul Food cuisine for good luck and prosperity.  

Soul Food Connection is the bridge that connects people to supporting these restaurants and people in this market.  By supporting us you are helping support Soul Food restaurants and black business.  Soul Food Connection not only helps by giving advertising opportunities to all Soul Food restaurants but also helps us promote knowledge and history of Soul Food as well as healthy alternatives, recipes, and influential people in the industry.  

The Soul Food search portion of our website has been inactive for years and while people can manually go through and search for Soul Food restaurants by state, I want to actually have a new re-defined website go live and be functional for all people!  The goal is to get it up and running by March, 2012.  By helping us you are helping an industry that gets little to not much respect, yet everyone in this country in some way loves/eats/celebrates this food and culture.  Soul Food Connection aims to reconcile all the thoughts, beliefs, and gossip surrounding this cuisine and get people excited about supporting the original American food.  

Anything you can donate will help us work towards reaching our goal.  Even if we don't reach our goal in time, it doesn't stop us!  This business has been a long time coming and 2012 is the time it will shine!

What We Need & What You Get

Website development: 30,000

Business Insurance: 500

Accountant: 1800

Direct Mail Marketing: 2000

Printer/Copier/Fax Machine: 180

Office Supplies, including biz cards: 2000

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Total Startup costs: $36,480

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As you can see from the breakdown above, I am asking for a specific amount of money to make this happen.  All money donated to us will go to use in these specific areas and the most important of all is the website development.  

Ideally, an Angel Investor will help us get this going faster, but in the meantime any money that you can donate will definitely make a difference in getting this site up and running so that we can start helping people find Soul Food restaurants all over the world.  

By helping us you will get a variety of gifts in return such as gift certificates to restaurants across the country, window stickers, recipe books, sponsorship links on our website, and more.  

Other Ways You Can Help

We understand that in this day and age finances are tough.  This is the reason why we are reaching out to a website like this so we can hear from you; the people in the community.  If you cannot help financially, you can help us a great deal by following us on twitter, facebook, or sharing our website with your friends.  Also in the meantime, if you do a search for soulfood on our website it will help us learn more about your demographics and help us find restaurants in your area to list in our search!