Lacys Get Their Wings

Aspiring local restaurateurs Lachelle and Linwood Lacy had a productive Thursday: They graduated from the city’s small business academy, and they got word that the lease for their first restaurant, planned for Whalley Avenue near Ramsdell Street, had been signed.

Result: Opening day for the new business, dubbed Woody’s Wings, is coming, and Linwood cried with joy.

Over the last three years, the Lacys have been developing their cooking and catering skills, along with 40 different glazes for their chicken wings.

They had persevered through parents’ deaths and other family crises with a dream to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant, but they had never studied cash flow issues or developed a formal business plan.

Until they came to the city’s small business academy training program.

That long, often deeply emotional journey to see a business dream fulfilled was one of many stories shared Thursday night, amid cake and, of course, the Lacys’ sweet and tangy chicken wings, at the city’s Small Business Resource Center on Dixwell Avenue.

There the Lacys and some 20 others and their families and friends celebrated their graduation from the center’s 11-week entrepreneur training program for small businesses, which is run through the city’s Economic Development department. Lachelle Lacy participated in the program, which offering triaining (no money).

The 23 who graduated from 30 who began the free course — from among hundreds who applied – are all New Haveners, and they range in age from young 20s to 60s, and all had to enter with a minimum credit score of 600.

They are all also people people. Their passion for the various projects about to be launched – restaurants, real estate consulting firms, and even a mobile music listening lounge – was evident in both hoots and hollers for each other, along with a lot of networking and exchanging of business cards as certificates were ceremonially handed out. Preparing those business cards along with that business plan were required for graduation.

The keynote speaker, Mayor Toni Harp, hailed the graduates as one of the key engines of New Haven’s economy.

“Small businesses drive the economy. They are more likely to hire locally and to get supplies locally,” she said in her charge. ​“You’ve got a dream and we are counting on your success.”

She hailed also the resource center’s teachers, its director Cathy Graves along with Gerry Garcia and Ana Winn, and city economic development staffers. ​“If you’re having a problem, please call. Annoy them!”

Chalyce Jacobs, whose OEO, LLC, stands for Organic Experiences Only mobile music listening lounge, may be driving through your neighborhood in the months and years to come. She was passionate about her idea, all the networking and the friends she had made during the course’s run.

Access to city staff and resources, to the various bankers, successful business owners, and marketers who addressed the two-hour per week classes, were also among Chalyce Jacobs’ big takeaways from the twice-a-year course, now in its fifth cohort.

Paula Walker, who worked for ten years for a company that sells Medicare plans, finally decided to go out on her own. She’ll be her own consultant now, with business cards and a big idea, although an office is farther in the future. She said her husband’s support will carry her through the transition. ​“I wish I’d taken the course sooner.”

This reporter was struck by not only the enthusiasm and camaraderie of the graduates but how they are all so personable and passionate.
You’ve got to be that way, said Graves, who took over helming the center in 2017 and has been tweaking the curriculum ever since, making the current cohort the strongest yet.

The participants learn about financial readiness to open a business, the legalities involved, and finance, and marketing all within the first four weeks, and that material is repeated as needed. All along they are developing the business plan, which teachers review and help revise throughout the course.

Rashad Cruthird, who wants to start a real estate acquisition and management company, said he came across the course by perusing the city’s website. Through the course, his idea, which had been just a dream, he said, is now taking shape: ​“The plan, the profit and loss statements, a formula that will work. Learning how to structure it. That was big. Just an idea and dream, but then you realize the steps to get there.”

Graves said those interested to be part of the next small business training can contact the center via the city’s website, tabbing over to small business under economic development, or visit her on the sixth floor at city hall.

On tap in the near future is also a rolling out of an online management training program for mature small businesses, those that have been going on for three years and have at least three employees.

This year’s 23 graduates had among them three people re-entering society after incarceration. Further down the road – this is one of Cathy Graves’s dreams, a dream dependent on funding – is to have the small business academy course, which is free to all participants, have one cohort designed specifically for ex-offenders who want to become small business people.