Candice Matthews Brackeen

The tech and finance leader talks about barriers to growth for local food entrepreneurs.
interview by Bryn Mooth & portrait by Michael Wilson

Describe a favorite food memory from childhood. Food was a huge part of my family.
For lots of Black grandmas their house is open to anyone after church. My grandmother never knew a stranger so she always had a huge spread and there was an extra plate for anyone to take home. Cooking is a hobby for me, not just how I nourish myself. I have a binder of recipes and lots of cookbooks. When I entertain, I overcook and send people home with extras. I’m a vegan and one of my kids is vegetarian so we are very into what goes into our bodies.

Does food feature in your work today?
When we first started our bootcamps, I used to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner for everyone. We believe that when people break bread together they get to know one another on a human level. We see a lot of stories about eating together from the founders we work with.

In the local food economy, what’s the biggest obstacle for people to access capital?
It’s not only access to capital, but it’s also the access to the ability to make mistakes. Running your own food-based business is incredibly difficult and the margins are very thin, and if your numbers are even the slightest bit off you can put yourself at a disadvantage really quickly. Some of the dollars people have access to aren’t very forgiving.

What’s the biggest barrier to growth for food businesses?
Producers locally don’t have access to scale—opportunities to can, bottle, package, and distribute nationally. Our food retailers do a good job bringing in local products, but people have limited access to production. It’s risky—you have to buy all the equipment and hire the people, and it takes a while to go from red to black ink.

How can food entrepreneurs leverage technology?
Enabling your business with tech is the way to go. Think about how to use QuickBooks, use ChatGPT to answer questions that come into your website, use Canva to create advertising and flyers, use tech to help manage planting and planning.

What does our food economy need most?
We don’t have real food investors locally. That would typically be a CPG investor willing to take the risk to scale a food company. We’ve done that well with beer but not necessarily food products.

How are we helping people with funding over time?
Microloans are great, grants are great, but where is the long-term, patient capital?

There’s probably a way to leverage the support of local angel investors who have slow and patient capital who are willing to coach these businesses. We have to create a pool of investment capital and working capital to help that part of our economy scale.

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VITAL STATS

Hometown: Toledo, OH
Lives in: Clifton
Family: Husband Brian Brackeen, children Wes and Briggs
Career path: Earned a BA in economics from University of Cincinnati. Founded Hello Parent, a mobile app to connect parents to their kids’ schools, in 2014. Launched the venture firm Lightship Capital in 2020 to support women, particularly those of color, access financing for tech-focused startups. CEO of the Lightship Foundation, which offers bootcamp and accelerator programming for minority and female tech entrepreneurs tech. Founder of Cincinnati’s Black Tech Week.