Taharka Brothers

The idea of being the owner is that every time I leave my house every morning I tell my girlfriend, 200% every day, 200% and that's what it takes to be an owner, 200%. I'm happy that we're achieving the things we set as our goal. I keep pushing and I hope to influence other young guys It's a dream come true to be coming on. It's just good to see that you can work hard and believe in something and see it come to fruition. It doesn't happen often and it's just good to be a part of it. Having six owners is amazing. I think we've had the goal of becoming an employee ownership for ten years. It's a bond almost like as were signing the doc It's I mean it feels So it's a strong feeling. It feels good. I came to Baltimore for a job as a CPA, working for a CPA firm and the experience I had coaching basketball team just exposing to a world that I didn't know much about especially the inequities that you see in urban America kind of led me in a different direction based on that experience. So Harka McCoy was one of the kids from our original basketball team that inspired the organization and he was a good kid. He didn't get in trouble. He lived in an area where there was plenty of opportunity to get into trouble and he really didn't do that. And then as he got older he got more involved in his community, continued to be positive and tried to be a leader. Unfortunately Harka was killed when he was actually mentoring someone younger than him who was on the wrong path, getting into trouble and tried to guide him and unfortunately was killed by that person. I was inspired by an organization in San Francisco called the Delantis Treat Foundation and what they were doing to help address some of the inequities and social ills that you see in all of society really. And I thought that I could start something So in 1994 I started a nonprofit called Sylvan Beach Foundation and it was a social enterprise which is an organization that combines a business with a nonprofit purpose. So the first business that we started with Sylvan Beach was a lawn care business. The manufacturer of Harka helped us start that and we did that for a while. It was very successful but it was very labor intensive and we wanted to open another business that would be a little more interactive with the community, especially around food. In 1995 we bought a house, a big row home on Preston Street right across from your Baltimore, moved in there. The model was to use the model of an extended family to provide nurturing, support, accountability, all that kind of good stuff that you get from living in a family. The mission of Sylvan Beach was really to use the structure of a business to help transform the lives of the people who are part of the organization. So as a nonprofit Sylvan Beach was really more of We added on to that mission and now Tarakabose is really using the business as a platform for our young people to be leaders and change makers in the community. My dreams for the future of Tarakabose is doing bigger things I would love to use Tarakabose to rebuild some of those houses and offer a little income housing. I believe it could happen. Definitely my first goal is to make sure that this person in the company has the opportunity to become an owner and Tarakabose. For the future I would love for Tarakabose to play a major impact in communities and different neighborhoods even if that's just consistent of a young guy coming to our job and being able to use all our resources to become a better person. So my dreams for Tarakabose is bigger facility, more customers, more shops, just doing the damn thing It is being successful, being a change maker and selling damn good ice cream