Amplify diverse stories to build lasting community and brand

Executive overview

Businesses built on a single voice or perspective plateau. The ones that endure create platforms for many stories — from customers, communities, and collaborators — and keep expanding whose narratives count.

Marcus Samuelsson's career shows how this works in practice: from a Scandinavian restaurant in Manhattan to a Harlem community institution, he repeatedly widened the circle of whose stories shaped the food, the space, and the media around it.

The core insight: your brand becomes durable when it amplifies more stories than your own.

From personal story to public platform

• Samuelsson was born in Ethiopia, adopted to Sweden after his mother died of tuberculosis
• Grew up navigating multiple identities — Ethiopian, Swedish, Black — across food, language, and culture
• His grandmother's meatballs taught him early that the same dish tastes different depending on who makes it
• Cookbooks by Charlie Trotter and Marco Pierre White showed him that chefs who didn't fit the mold could still succeed
• Time in Japan introduced umami and a food worldview beyond French fine dining
• A French chef told him a Black chef could never own a restaurant in Europe — he left rather than lower his ambition

Building a base in New York

• Arrived in New York in 1994 with $300 and a massage bed shared with four roommates
• Joined Aquavit, a high-end Scandinavian restaurant, and within a year became head chef at 23 after the previous chef died
• Radically rethought Scandinavian cuisine by drawing on his global experience — clean water, seafood, pickling, the outdoors — as building blocks
• Received a three-star New York Times review before he fully understood what it meant; it filled the restaurant every night
• Grew Aquavit's reputation for six years before September 11 forced a rethink

Moving to Harlem and building community

• After 9/11, his mother challenged him: why is your food always expensive? Do something for your neighborhood
• Moved 50 blocks north from Midtown to Harlem — felt like a different country
• Discovered Harlem's food existed outside restaurants: subway-side oyster vendors, church ladies with cornbread, a Jamaican jerk cook whose location you had to know
• Became a student again after 10–12 years at the top of his field — discarded what he knew and observed
• Opened Red Rooster in 2010 to celebrate Harlem's heritage through food, gospel brunch, jazz nights, and block party energy

Becoming a media company

• Recognized that Black food culture was regularly miscommunicated because few journalists or editors shared that background
• Decision: become both a hospitality company and a media company, and drive the narrative directly
• Created cookbooks: The Rise, Black Cooks, The Soul of American Food
• Hosted No Passport Required on TV, showcasing immigrant food stories across America
• Founded the Harlem EatUp! Food Festival — 15,000 attendees, a TV show on ABC, kids' cooking classes, charitable component, sponsor integration
• Core lesson from media: you have to constantly innovate and make it sticky, or the audience doesn't come back

Storytelling at the White House

• Cooked a state dinner for President Obama hosting India's Prime Minister: four courses, 44 minutes, 400 people
• Noticed state dinners were always French — didn't fit an Indian delegation
• Solution: break bread literally; served baskets of cornbread and chapattis together, blending American and Indian ties in one gesture

The pandemic and community kitchen

• COVID hit restaurants across Canada, Bahamas, Sweden, London, and New York simultaneously
• "It took 20 years to build and 10 days to break down"
• Co-founded the Independent Restaurant Coalition with chefs including Danny Meyer, Tom Colicchio, and José Andrés to share knowledge and advocate for the industry
• Andrés challenged Samuelsson: if we serve food, will people come? First day: 200. Within weeks: 1,500 per day
• The Red Rooster Community Kitchen ran as a full-service experience — guests gave feedback, debated the chicken, asked for dessert
• The kitchen transformed the restaurant's purpose: the most important work came at the toughest time

Hav & Mar and leadership by design

• Pandemic and the George Floyd killing created space to reconsider what wasn't working in the industry
• Opened Hav & Mar with all leadership positions held by women of color — built the structure to reflect the values
• On Black food: it is not monolithic — Jamaican griot and Haitian jerk chicken are both Black food but entirely different experiences, and both deserve celebration
• Leadership means not sitting on the sidelines: "rather than complain, ask what you can do about it"