Meet Nikoa Evans-Hendricks, the chief producer behind culinary to cultural dwell occasions throughout the nation and co-owner of Horny Taco.
Evans-Hendricks lends her experience to tradition and cuisine-focused occasions like Harlem Restaurant Week and the upcoming Harlem Cultural Pageant impressed by the Oscar and Grammy Award-winning documentary Summer time of Soul. As an Govt Producer of television, movie and experiential programming, Nikoa goals to assist tasks that remember the cultural legacies and experiences of numerous communities.
Talking completely with BLACK ENTERPRISE, Nikoa shared her skilled background and the way it helped form her present work in culinary occasions.
“I studied Economics at Stanford College undergrad and acquired my MBA in Advertising and Entrepreneurship at Northwestern/Kellogg Enterprise Faculty,” she stated. “These research offered a basis for how one can create strategic advertising campaigns/activations that combine financial improvement methods to drive development and sustainability for Harlem small companies.”
“Harlem Restaurant Week was created in 2010 in response to the shortage of inclusion of eating places above 96th Road in NYC Restaurant Week.”
“By not prioritizing the inclusion of the hospitality neighborhood in Harlem and Higher Manhattan, the ensuing exclusion not directly steered that eating places and cooks in these communities weren’t comparable in high quality to eating places downtown.”
“We acknowledged that the one method we may illustrate to the culinary world that Harlem/Uptown’s eating scene supplied world-class meals, cooks and experiences was to create a marketing campaign particularly to showcase our neighborhood. I government produced the primary Harlem Restaurant Week in Spring 2010 through the financial recession and featured solely 10-12 eating places in Central Harlem and included a cross-promotion with Harlem retail companies.”
“Over time, participation in this system grew as Higher Manhattan’s hospitality trade developed. I’m proud to say that Harlem Restaurant Week is now produced twice a yr within the Spring and Fall and options over 80 eating places all through Higher Manhattan as the one neighborhood-specific restaurant week program produced in NYC.”
Via the Harlem Pageant of Tradition (HFC), Nikoa and her co-founders Musa Jackson and Yvonne McNair will get an opportunity to reimagine the notorious 1969 Summer time of Soul pageant.
The brand new occasion is devoted to “presenting world-class programming that celebrates and preserves the cultural contributions of the black Diaspora in music, media, artwork, vogue and leisure,” Nikoa shared.
“HFC seeks to reclaim Harlem’s legacy as a premier vacation spot for Dwell Cultural and Music leisure; whereas creating an ecosystem to foster well being and financial prosperity for Harlem’s numerous communities, artists and entrepreneurs.”
The reimagined pageant will ship a sequence of dwell leisure, social affect and financial improvement programming through the first annual celebration which launched in Spring 2022. A multi-day outside music pageant will observe in Summer time 2023.
Programming all year long will embody influencer dinners, moderated discussions and movie screenings and indoor and outside music live shows that includes performances by legacy and up to date nationwide and native artists from Soul, Gospel, Rhythm and Blues, Hip Hop, Jazz, Reggae, Latin music genres, all celebrating the varied music and cultural contributions of the Diaspora.
HFC Market will accompany the live performance sequence with curated meals and an artisanal honest that includes Harlem-based companies.
