Inside Angel Gregorio’s model of free space and Black business incubation

Angel Gregorio didn’t stumble into entrepreneurship by accident.

A former assistant principal and mentor to court-involved youth, Gregorio worked as an educational advocate, helping students find appropriate school placements after returning from youth detention centers.

The solutions-based skills she developed during that experience shaped, in part, why she wanted to build systems of access and support for others.

Access to capital and physical space remains one of the biggest barriers for Black-owned businesses in the United States. A new LendingTree analysis found that in 2024, 39% of Black-owned businesses were denied financing—including loans, lines of credit, or merchant cash advances—compared to Hispanic and white-owned businesses.

Against that backdrop, Gregorio has built a model that removes upfront financial barriers altogether, offering entrepreneurs free or low-cost access to physical space, customers, and community infrastructure. She is the founder of The Spice Suite, a spices and herbs shop that also serves as a free pop-up space for entrepreneurs to sell their products. She also manages Black and Forth, a Washington, DC–based commercial community that leases a unique collection of converted industrial space and reclaimed shipping containers to Black-owned local businesses and hosts a biweekly farmers market.

When Founder Brew visited the eclectic space in May, commercial tenants included a skincare service, cafe, loctician, nail salon and hair salon.

Sharmica Drayton is the founder of BeautiMarc, the hair salon at Black and Forth, and said the unique setup of shops allows for tenants to regularly refer customers to one another.

The commercial space is quieter than some higher-traffic areas in DC, especially outside of market days and events, but Drayton says the affordability and support made it possible for her to open her first brick-and-mortar location.

“Being able to be here is a blessing,” she said. “It’s allowing us to do things that we probably wouldn’t be able to do if it were a different place because things are being outpriced or they’re too high.”

The farmers market is supported by Gregorio’s nonprofit, Dream Incubator, which helps fund programming and creates access for entrepreneurs. Through this ecosystem, Angel also runs the Community Business School, which offers free monthly classes on topics like bookkeeping, marketing, and tax preparation, taught by a network of experts and business owners, with the goal of supporting community growth.

This is an excerpt of our interview, which has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you walk me through how the Black and Forth model works? How do businesses participate at The Spice Suite and farmers market?

Black and Forth is our business model, going back and forth for Black business owners. That just means that we find unique ways to, I don’t want to say barter, but unique ways to go back and forth with business owners to sustain a brick-and-mortar location. Some of them are Spice Girls, who pop up at The Spice Suite regularly, and they sell their products free of charge, while helping run the shop. Some of them are paid to work in our tea and coffee shop. We have a farmers market, where we have Black farmers and vendors sell their products for free at that market.

What problem were you trying to solve when you built The Spice Suite and Black and Forth?

A lot of Black people just need space and opportunity, and so I had the space and gave them an opportunity. I met two needs at once. The space is free, so that just cuts your costs, your investment. That makes it a low-risk opportunity for them when they come in and do a pop-up here or decide to participate in our farmers market or pop-up shop or our residency program at Something Suite.

The farmers market has a noncompete model. Was that intentional, and how do you make sure it works in practice?

The noncompete is definitely intentional. We did not want people to have to compete and sell the same products. Our physical footprint is too small to have three people here selling the same product. It would be a waste of time for one or two of those business owners.

We carry that out through vetting folks before they pop up to make sure their products don’t compete—that they’re handmade or uniquely sourced are the two criteria we use.

Have you seen any of the businesses or founders that have come through here, go on to become bigger brands?

Several. Yes. A lot of them, I’m still a customer of many of them. It's not just transactional, where they just come and do a pop-up and leave. Sometimes I don't make it to every single pop up that we host, but I try to come in and shop with them, and if they have a product that I love, then I become a customer and a fan of theirs too. So I end up staying in touch as a customer.

What do founders actually learn from being in a space like this that they might not learn elsewhere?

What they’re able to learn is community and what cooperative economics looks like in action—not just a principle you recite on Kwanzaa. What does it look like for all of us to operate in a space together and not be competing and clamoring for the same dollar from the same customer? How to grow a business in this capitalistic world and still remain community-centric.

Were there any early challenges in building this model, and what did they teach you about working with businesses?

I don’t know that there’s been any particularly hard, daunting thing that stumped me in business. I expect hard things to happen in business. They happen and it’s cool, and we roll with it, and we keep moving.

It’s like parenting and everything else I do in my life. I’m a parent of a teenager—when he does something, is it like a lesson learned? No, girl, that’s on brand. That’s what he does. That’s what teenagers do.

My perspective around challenge is just a little bit different, because it’s not that I don’t see challenges. I know that hard things will happen. I know that difficult things will come in business. But knowing that they will come just makes me immediately think about how we move forward, and not stay in it. Maybe that’s the lesson—to move through hard things more quickly and not stay in it, so it doesn’t stop your business.

What should founders understand before joining—or trying to replicate—a model like this?

You have to do it with fidelity. If you want to do the model, do the model right. I think that’s the biggest concern of mine when people decide to replicate the model. People say they want to replicate it, but then they’re like, “I’m only going to charge my farmers $20 a month.” That’s not the model…If you’re charging them and you’re not taking my model, you’re doing your own thing.