COMMUNITY

The majority of our staff live in Oak Cliff.  While there has been extensive development in our neighborhood, Chef Michelle opened Zen Sushi in 2007, when the Bishop Arts consisted of only two streets on the same block:  7th and Bishop, and the closest sushi bar was across the Trinity River.  It was one of the first Asian concepts in Oak Cliff.

At both Zen and Beatrice, we train, employ, and work directly with people from our community.  Oak Cliff is a neighborhood undergoing rapid development and gentrification, with large pockets that have been historically underdeveloped, under-resourced, and chronically underemployed.  Job creation is a powerful form of equity.

We model a different experience and operation, in terms of our menu, in terms of creating spaces that are more inclusive and less exclusive, in terms of how we source and treat our food and people.  Restaurant Beatrice pioneers pathways demonstrating culinary excellence and integrity from this community, by its own residents.  We are not transplants.  We believe that businesses can contribute to social infrastructure, instead of extracting resources dedicated solely to profit. 

Your patronage of Beatrice gives back to communities that need the most support.  Our chefs work closely with a variety of different local farmers, and these appear on our menu, which changes often.  

We are especially pleased to work closely with Black-woman owned and led Joppy Momma’s Farm, which is located in Joppa, one of the last Freedmen’s towns in Texas and a federally-designated food desert.  The farm provides organic, high-quality, affordable produce to the community while also creating jobs for neighborhood residents by outfitting them with skills and experience.  We adopt a circular economy, farm-to-table-to-farm, because nearly all of our food waste is collected and turned into nutrient-rich compost by Joppy Momma’s Farm for their farm.  We also know our ranchers, as Restaurant Beatrice has been raising our own pigs and we are beginning to raise our own cows, in an effort to provide healthier, more humane alternatives to industrial livestock production. 

We are vested and investing in our immediate community, its people, and protecting and this nurturing infrastructure. Our concept is meant to reflect these connections.