August 31, 2025
Angel Gregorio, owner of The Spice Suite, conceived the open-air marketplace after buying the property that became Black and Forth.
As reports circulate about Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Trump-friendly response to the federal government’s presence in the city, a nearby strip mall continues to serve as a hub for Black businesses and local residents.
According to D.C. News Now, a farmer’s market blooms on the second and fourth Sunday of each month at the city’s Black and Forth strip mall, serving as a host to vendors, Mid-Atlantic farmers and food artisans.
Angel Gregorio, who also owns The Spice Suite, told the outlet that she came up with the idea for the open-air marketplace after her experience buying the commercial property that she turned into Black and Forth.
“I noticed the lack of representation of Black farmers at the markets locally, so I decided to create a free space for Black farmers to show up and sell their produce, invest in their community and kind of have a bi-weekly block party,” Gregorio said.
She continued, “It’s so many things that we do well and that we do for the community. So many things that we do is free that it’s also difficult for the community not to show up for us because we are pouring so much into the community.”
As BLACK ENTERPRISE previously reported, Gregorio purchased a 7,500-square-foot lot in 2023, which she christened Black and Forth, and houses her aforementioned business as well as multiple other shops.
The name, as Gregorio told Dcist, is derived from her own term for dealing with various Black-owned businesses in the city.
“It was just this catchy, cool name that I created for how I describe my process of going back-and-forth with Black business owners,” Gregorio told the outlet. “And now it is the name of a shopping center—a strip mall —that I own in D.C. So I feel good about that and I’m grateful to be in the space.”
She continued, “We have a lot of conversation about affordable housing, but we don’t talk enough about making commercial space affordable for Black women. And so since no one is talking about it, I’m just going to do it and let people talk about it.”
Her purchase of the lot, which was facilitated at least in part by a program instituted by Mayor Bowser which was aimed at increasing the amount of Black women business owners in the city, came about following reports from several Black farmers that in 2020, one of Washington D.C.’s largest farmers markets and its parent company, Freshfarm denied Black farmers and food artisans spots at Dupont Circle, its most profitable farmer’s market.
Instead of resigning to dealing with the microaggressions of Freshfarm, a year after this scandal rocked the city’s Black farm-to-table community, Gregorio reportedly became the initial recipient of a $750,000 grant from D.C.’s Commercial Property Acquisition Fund, the brainchild of City Councilman Kenyan McDuffie.
According to McDuffie, that grant was intended to be the first building block for equity and inclusion in the city’s financial system as it relates to Black entrepreneurs.
“We’re going to keep making these sorts of investments, so we can do the sorts of transformational things that allow our Black and brown entrepreneurs not only to be great business people [but] to build wealth that they can pass on for generations to come,” he said at the ribbon cutting for Gregorio’s strip mall in 2023.
Gregorio agreed, noting at the ceremony that she wanted Black and Forth to serve as a model for what is possible in D.C.
“The goal of this space is to build community. I want this to become the model. I want to be able to consult for free and talk to other people on how to do this in your city, in your quadrant, so this becomes the standard of how we care for each other and how we show up for community.”
RELATED CONTENT: ‘Spice Girl’, Popular Owner of D.C.’s Spice Suite Buys the Block — Owns $1M Strip Mall for Black-owned Businesses
