Creole Cooking and Community Connections: How LeRoux’s Kitchen Landed a Coveted Spot at Mother Road Market with Business Lessons and Lending from TEDC Creative Capital
Table of Contents:
Scratch Kitchen Dreams, Tough Business Realities
Stuck in the Trial-and-Error Cycle
Creating Community and Connection Around Good Food
Gaining More Solid Footing—with the Help of TEDC
Guardian Angels of Business Are Out There for You
The fourth time’s the charm—at least, it is when you’re talking about LeRoux’s Kitchen, a highly popular Creole restaurant located in Tulsa’s food entrepreneur incubator, Mother Road Market. As co-owners Renauld Porter and Gabriela Castañeda will tell you, their winning recipe for success is built on persistence, passion, taking hold of opportunities, and fostering strategic relationships with entrepreneurial supporters like TEDC Creative Capital.
“To go through all we’ve gone through to even be sitting here like having this conversation—it’s all still surreal,” says Renauld. And he should know—because the journey of building LeRoux’s Kitchen has been a wild roller-coaster ride to success through community and connection.
Scratch Kitchen Dreams, Tough Business Realities
Like many successful restaurateurs, Renauld got his start cooking at home—with his family, in his own kitchen, at friends’ houses. Tired of working a job he didn’t love and desiring something more, he quit his position at Whirlpool and began selling shrimp and gumbo dishes full-time. It was a whirlwind adventure, one that was overwhelming, even though he loved making meals.
“I didn’t understand consistency, continuity, and I definitely didn’t know business structure,” Renauld says. He was in his early twenties, excited about business and improvising as he went along. “I just knew I wanted to sell plates of food. Where are people going to find good gumbo, right? I had that angst like I was supposed to be doing more, but I was not sure what that was.”
Stuck in the Trial-and-Error Cycle
The food Renauld made was delicious and popular, and he realized he was onto something with his unique approach to Creole-style cooking—which was new to a food scene largely dominated by Cajun cuisine. Leaning into Creole’s spices and ingredients was a space in Tulsa’s market that Renauld could eagerly and successfully fill.
However, managing the business aspects of a restaurant still posed its challenges. Renauld kept things going as he experimented with text-to-order and catering models, but it was tough. Eventually, his fiance (and now co-owner) Gabriela challenged him to go all in.
Renauld catered an art show that Gabriela hosted for EmpowerHER, an event she co-runs that brings women of color together to highlight their contributions to the arts. While he was admiring the art on display and patting himself on the back for the praise his food was getting, Gabriela decided to get real with him.
“This is cool,” she told him, referring to the food he’d prepared for her friends. “But if you’re going to do it, you need to do it. I don’t want to hear about it. You need to do it.”
Renauld’s sister chimed in too, saying, “Your food is too good for you to be playing.”
Creating Community and Connection Around Good Food
The vision for LeRoux’s Kitchen crystallized, ironically, just as the pandemic set in. It didn’t look like the best time to launch a restaurant, especially when people couldn’t be within six feet of each other. But even in the midst of Covid shut-downs, Renauld remembers seeing people pull up curbside to pick up their food and running into folks that they hadn’t seen in a long time. They’d pick their orders up—and they’d visit with each other. The food was just one part of that deeper sense of shared community.
“Food is a conduit to a life rhythm,” says Renauld. “If you give someone a really good meal, that’s a conversation waiting to happen. That’s what I saw as a kid, and that’s what made me really love food—to watch folks have an argument and then sit at a table and break bread like nothing ever happened. Food is powerful, and so are the conversations you get to have with folks over it.”
And despite the odds, LeRoux’s Kitchen flourished because of the people who supported their business—and still do. “We formed a bond with people during that time,” Renauld says.
“What we do, it’s more than the food,” he adds. “It’s that embrace to the person, the handshakes, the hugs that we hand out to people. That’s who we were before the cameras and spotlight, before the podcasts, before anybody was paying attention to buying the food. This is who we were and who we are when we walk in the room. That’s what we do. It’s only going to translate through the food.”
Gaining More Solid Footing—with the Help of TEDC
After the pandemic, Renauld and Gabriela realized they needed to learn more about the business aspects of running a successful restaurant. They learned what they could from organizations such as Nest Collective, an entrepreneurial program hosted by the Black Wall Street Chamber of Commerce. Soon, they took part in the highly competitive Kitchen 66 program, after which they were voted in by their customers and fellow merchants to have a permanent spot in Mother Road Market.
Making the most of that opportunity was especially crucial, says Gabriela, because opportunities don’t come their way every day. “When they do,” she says, “we want to capitalize on it.”
To do that, they needed both knowledge and capital. And that’s where connecting with TEDC became crucial. “TEDC came in and kicked it all into gear,” Renauld says.
What they got from the TEDC team amounted to far more than just a business loan. They took part in TEDC’s entrepreneurial development program to learn essential skills and put together key planning strategies for building their business. They received guidance from TEDC’s knowledgable, engaged staff and answers to questions that helped them move forward while avoiding mistakes that could break their business.
TEDC made it possible for Renauld and Gabriela to take what they had mastered—Creole cooking—and level it up to a thriving restaurant model with their combination of business education and financial support. “They had our best interests in mind,” says Renauld.
Guardian Angels of Business Are Out There for You
For other entrepreneurs trying to make it, Renauld and Gabriela would say it’s key to foster relationships that help you have access, opportunity, and information so you can overcome the challenges of building a business. Find those “guardian angels of business”—like TEDC—that you can lean on when you need help.
“I honestly feel like God gave us a lot of great people around us,” says Renauld. “Those weak points ain’t weak no more. And that’s a beautiful thing.”
TEDC Creative Capital is a community development financial institution (CDFI) that focuses on serving start-ups and growing businesses in Oklahoma. Through valuable non-traditional capital and funding vehicles, as well as practical and vital educational opportunities, TEDC helps local entrepreneurs from all walks of life to gain the essential business building blocks to sustain and expand their small businesses. Learn more about how TEDC’s caring, experienced team can help your small business thrive.