I am someone who loves to patronize my own whenever possible and I guess because we are blessed with the shortest month to celebrate our heritage this is when I get tons of emails requesting to support or informing me of businesses that I was not aware of.

So to help out my fellow business owners I will attempt to do a weekly or monthly tribute to businesses that I am aware of and will vouch for their services.

First to my fellow entrepreneurs I would love to share some tips that I myself am faulty of not doing at times.

1. Respect the customer, without them we have nothing. Make sure you are open at the time you state and have set business hours if you don't already.
   
   
2. Train your employees. I hate to visit an establishment and the employees are talking to each other and can clearly see me, look me in my face, but continue their conversation cause it's just too important for them to stop and do their job to provide service.
   
   
3. Keep your standards up. I often see business that are wonderful and I tell everyone I know about them, then a month or two later their food is horrible, their customer service has fallen way off. You must always strive to be the best, the Chicago market is over saturated for you to neglect your standard of service.

Now to my new favorite Black Owned Business.

Farmers Best
Bishop Plaza
1424 W. 47th St.


Farmers Best is the only African-American full service grocery store in Illinois, I received an email last week informing me to take some time and visit the store.

Now I do small group catering and had a catering event on Friday night so i decided to stop by to see what they had to offer.

When I walked in I was amazed at their quality and quantity of various produce items (this is what welcomes you into the store). I was floored to see real whole coconuts in Chicago in February looking fresh as ever.

They have wonderful prices I walked out with a tab of $75.oo for meats & produces that would have ran me about $150 else where. They have a great selection of meats also. I will say their non-perishable selection and quantity is not comparable to Jewel or any other big name but the prices are much better.

That night I purchased parsley & Bisquick, now at FB the parsley was $.59 and the Bisquick was $3.49 (not sale prices). Now right after, I took a trip over to Jewel and their parsley was $1.96 and the Bisquick was $5.49. Now that is a difference worth me traveling outside of the neighborhood.

The service was also wonderful, the only sad thing was that there was not alot of customers in the store. So with this I do request that next time you need to go grocery shopping please head over to 47th & Bishop to visit Farmers Best and support a great store with a wonderful selection.

Peace & Blessings,

Tiffany

Farmer’s Best Market is located at 1424 W. 47th Street. For more information, call (773)584-6222.

Another article for your reference: Farmer Knows Best