At family gatherings, relatives and friends were always telling Monique Hawkins that she made “killer wings.”
So, she and her daughter, Kara Hawkins, took the big step of starting their own food business: Taste of Innova Wings + Greens. Monique Hawkins used her experience in marketing and higher education, while Kara Hawkins drew on her architecture and industrial design background.
“We never owned a restaurant before,” Monique Hawkins said. “But we thought it would be a good idea.”
“We just brought all of that knowledge and experience and ventured into our business,” Kara Hawkins added.
As of 2020, census data indicated that only about 1,100 Black-owned businesses were operating in the Indianapolis metro area, which includes Indianapolis and several other nearby cities and counties. That number amounted to just 3.3% of all businesses — a shortfall of at least 6,000 Black-owned businesses, according to a Brookings Institute analysis, if the percentage were to be equivalent to the area’s Black population.
But things appear to be looking up, at least in Indianapolis.
Yelp reported last month that openings of Black-owned businesses in the city grew 59% in 2023 compared with the prior year, which ranked third in the U.S.
Part of the story is playing out in the AMP at 16 Tech in the city’s Riverside neighborhood. The marketplace and food hall at 1220 Waterway Blvd. has emerged as a welcome home for businesses owned by people of color and women.
That includes the mother-daughter team behind Taste of Innova Wings + Greens, which opened in the AMP in 2021.
What is AMP all about?
The 40,000-square-foot, European-style marketplace, housed in the former service bay of the Indianapolis Water Co., features local shops nesting in colorful shipping containers, food stalls filled with the aroma of freshly cooked dishes, a coffee roaster and coffeehouse, a fish market, specialty bakeries, a bar, a barber shop and ample open-air seating.
Of the 21 restaurants and retailers located at the AMP, 77% are owned or led by minorities or women, and half are “new concept” enterprises, said Jacqueline Eckhardt, director of communications for 16 Tech. Another restaurant vendor will arrive this month, and there are two shipping containers still available for lease, she said.
The AMP offers subsidized rental spaces and competitive leases, Eckhardt said, and those rates include utilities, Wi-Fi and preventative maintenance on restaurant stall hoods.
The AMP also offers chef- and restaurateur-led classes on restaurant operations to help vendors improve their businesses, she said. There is also a development program for emerging Black chefs called Melon Kitchens that includes use of a “ghost” kitchen at AMP.
Eckhardt said the AMP welcomes nearly 500 visitors on a weekday for lunch and hosts the Indy Winter Farmers Market on Saturdays from November through April. It has a stage in the center of the eating area, where it hosts events with other organizations, including Goodwill and the Indy Chamber of Commerce.
Home-grown bubble tea
One of the businesses that has been with the AMP since it opened in June 2021 is Boba & Everything, owned by Liza Christian. The shop, which sells her own bubble tea creations and bagels provided by Bagel Fair in Nora, is a direct result of her family’s love of her homemade, fruit-flavored tea drinks.
“My kids are huge bubble tea lovers,” Christian said. “We did it in my family, before we decided to start our business. Eventually I realized that I had created a whole drink menu of flavors.”
“Boba” is a nickname for the tapioca balls at the bottom of each drink, and the beverage, which originated in Taiwan, first became popular in the U.S. in the 1990s. Christian, who funded the business with her husband’s assistance, gets help from her three daughters and employs high school kids from the area, who work after school and during the summer. She said the small, family-run nature of her business sets it apart from other franchisee-owned boba shops.
This is her first foray into running a small business, and Christian admitted she initially underestimated how long it would take to become a success.
“It’s almost like a baby,” she said. “I thought it would take off on its own, but it’s not like that. It very much needs to be tended to.”
Christian said the AMP and surrounding neighborhood have been very supportive of her business, and she benefits from the pinball effect of customers visiting other AMP businesses also stopping by her shop for a beverage.
“It was an opportunity we may not have gotten anywhere else,” she said of locating her business at AMP, adding that a lot of the businesses there “have built this sort of community with each other. We’re always trying to get people to patronize other businesses here, too.”
Keeping pizza in the family
Butler’s Pizza has served the community at various westside locations for more than three decades.
Dionne Butler said he decided to help carry on his parents’ legacy after they closed their restaurant in 2017. So he opened a Butler’s Pizza at the AMP, which he says is ideally situated between two of the family business’ earlier locations. His restaurant’s pizzas, strombolis, hoagies and stuffed breadsticks now draw many of those same customers from the Riverside and Haughville neighborhoods, as well as new customers visiting the AMP.
Butler remembers helping out his parents in their restaurants when he was growing up in Indianapolis — including “folding lots of pizza boxes” — and said he learned lessons about hard work and entrepreneurship from them. His business now employs about 12 people, many of them family members, including his mother and father.
“They’re working,” he said. “It’s still a family affair.”
He said he has dreams of expanding to new locations in Indianapolis, and maybe elsewhere, and someday would like to operate a Butler’s pizza restaurant in a major sports stadium, where he could look up and see his business advertised on the jumbotron screen.
Butler said opening his restaurant at the AMP was a smart decision, adding that the businesses there are very encouraging to each other.
“The support has been tremendous,” he said. “The way they set this up is really, really nice. It gives people a chance.”
A mother-daughter partnership
Family is also important to Monique and Kara Hawkins’ restaurant.
They use the skills of many relatives at Taste of Innova Wings + Greens, including Monique Hawkins’ husband, Gerard, who helps create their unique wing sauces and cocktails using Uncle Nearest bourbon-style whiskey from Tennessee.
Another benefit of running a family business, she said, is that she and her daughter get to “teach the next generation how to generate wealth.”
“It’s definitely been a team effort, 100%,” said Kara Hawkins, who provided seed money to help fund the business. She started another business in 2019, a design and marketing company called Innova Artis, that she moved to 16 Tech before launching the latest venture.
They now have four locations of their restaurant business: at the AMP, Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Lucas Oil Stadium and the Indiana Convention Center. They also provide catering services for corporate and private customers and often set up a booth at area food festivals.
Monique Hawkins said the AMP’s vision and location has been a “great opportunity for startup businesses like ourselves,” adding “any time someone is that supportive of you, all you can do is follow their lead, and that’s what we’ve done.”
Dwight Adams is a contributor for Mirror Indy. Contact him at hdadams0621@gmail.com.
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