Business and Financial News

Entrepreneur: Judy Wicks, 62

Background: In 1970, Wicks co-founded the Free People’s Store, which is now Urban Outfitters (URBN). She founded the White Dog Café as a take-out coffee shop on the first floor of her house in Philadelphia in 1983. It evolved into a popular restaurant and hub of progressive activism. Wicks sold it in 2009 to devote her time to helping run the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, a nonprofit network she co-founded in 2001.

Company: At its peak in 2006, the 200-seat restaurant employed about 100 employees, occupied four row houses (including one house for its gift shop, the Black Cat), and had around $5 million in revenue. Profits funded Wicks’ nonprofit White Dog Community Enterprises.

Her journal: The global financial crisis awakened people to the importance of investing locally, in businesses where they know what their money is doing. I believe in decentralizing business ownership and therefore economic and political power. When we localize our economy, we have more control over our basic needs. The more business owners there are, the more freedom we have.

This philosophy has become my life’s work. It grew out of the White Dog. And having more time to spread this worldview is really one of the reasons I sold the White Dog. When I first started the restaurant, I had never heard of socially responsible business, or fair trade, or environmental sustainability, or “green” business practices. Like most people then, I separated my social concerns from my business, thinking that I would tend to them in my off hours. But in the restaurant industry, there was no time for volunteer activities, so I began to incorporate my progressive take on social issues into the business itself.

It was always very important for me to be a model of a business, to show that the purpose of business should be to serve, and that money should be a tool that we use but not the ultimate goal. This is often called social entrepreneurship, or a triple-bottom-line business of people, planet, and profit. I was always proud to be good at handling money and running a profitable business, making enough money to be able to give some away, but more important, conducting my business in ways that did good through the economic transactions. I was proving something by being a for-profit that expressed my deepest values while also supporting my nonprofit work. Politically, I also got the attention and respect of a wider and more diverse group of people, including Republicans and conservatives because I was a business person; I wasn’t just a flaky liberal.

The Pressure to Grow Big

As I became more successful, I was often asked how many restaurants I had, how many units. Because in the business world we are judged by how big we grow, I questioned whether I should try to expand. But I realized that if I were to have multiple restaurants, I would lose what was most valuable to me—the authentic relationships I had with my customers, suppliers, and employees.

After more than 25 years marrying business with activism, I realized that my attention and energy had started shifting away from my own business. I got to the point where I was delegating so much to various people that when it came time to make important decisions, I didn’t feel I had the information I needed. You ask one employee what’s going on, and they’ll tell you one thing; someone else will tell you another thing. I no longer had my own opinion from actually being there and knowing what was going on.

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