Lisa Reisman Photo
Co-owners Donald Moody and Mujahid Mohammed with Dannie Beverly of Made in Greenwood smoke shop.
Mujahid Mohammed had a dream. So did Dannie Beverly. And Donald Moody. It was, as it turned out, the same dream.
“All three of us did time in prison, and we wanted to come up with something for the community, a platform to give back, and that was starting our own business,” said Mohammed on a recent afternoon at Made in Greenwood.
Greenwood Street, where it all began.
“The idea was to be our own bosses, to create our own destiny,” said Moody, amid the pulse of hip hop in the tidy, brightly lit shop on Dixwell Avenue just over the New Haven-Hamden border.
Greenwood refers to the street in the West River neighborhood of New Haven.
“I started on Greenwood, Dannie started on Greenwood, Kris is Greenwood, and Kris and Brian helped us get this going,” Mohammed said, of Gorilla Lemonade founders Kristen Threatt and Brian Burkett-Thompson. “That’s the street that we all grew up on.
“We all support each other, we’re all there for each other, we all have a common goal, which is to lift up the next generation.”
“There are always going to be smoke shops because people are always going to smoke, but we wanted to do it right,” said Moody, who co-hosts the YouTube podcast “Darc & Moody” with Darcus Henry, to “give a voice to the voiceless in our urban communities and give a platform to those who have a voice.”
Like other smoke shops, Made in Greenwood offers tobacco and an array of smoking paraphernalia. “And then we do other things,” said Moody. They stock clothes from local vendors like Da’W.O.R.L.D. menswear and collaborate with area businesses like hair stylists, accountants, and restaurants.
“If you go to another of those businesses, you get a 10 percent discount for the whole month here,” Mohammed said. “That’s community over competition, and that’s directly from [Gorilla Lemonade’s] Kris and Brian.”
Threatt emphasized the significance of more Black business owners. “I know what my brothers had to go through and to see them wanting to make a change in their lives and build a legacy for their families is a blessing,” he said.
For Moody, “the best part of all this is having friends that raise you up,” he said.
