Chef Rene Johnson built a million-dollar soul food empire catering to Bay Area power players.<\/p>\n
Using her grandmother’s recipes, Blackberry Soul has fed big names like Sergey Brin and Steph Curry.<\/p>\n
Now, Johnson coaches entrepreneurs on how to scale their businesses as she did.<\/p>\n
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Chef Rene Johnson, the founder of Blackberry Soul Fine Catering and entrepreneur behind Link and Thrive, a mentorship program for business owners. It has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
I didn’t even like food as a kid.<\/p>\n
What I loved was being with my grandmother, who always made everything from scratch<\/a>, and the way our family gathered around her food. That’s where it started for me \u2014 not with cooking, but with connection.<\/p>\n I was her first granddaughter, and I always say she channeled me the most. I cook like her, think like her, have a business mindset like her. Everything I make \u2014 the peach cobbler, the red beans and rice, the biscuits \u2014 all come from her.<\/p>\n Before I rebuilt my career around her food, I was in the mortgage industry.<\/p>\n I had gotten a job in telephone sales and took to it naturally. When my clients closed on a home, I would gift them a homemade dessert: peach cobbler, pound cake, or banana pudding. That was my way of celebrating them.<\/p>\n When the mortgage industry crashed, I had to figure out what to do with my life. That’s when I turned to cooking.<\/p>\n Nobody would have thought that I \u2014 a teenage mom without a college degree or formal culinary training<\/a> \u2014 would build a business like this.<\/p>\n My kids were the ones who told me, “Mom, do something with your food.” I lived in Georgia for a while and started dropping off meals at barber shops and around the neighborhood, but I couldn’t quite get my footing there.<\/p>\n When I came back home to the Bay Area, everything changed. That’s when I learned that it’s not only about what you do, but also about who you do it with. I tapped into my community, and Blackberry Soul took off.<\/p>\n A broader mindset was key to my growth<\/p>\n At first, I thought I was building a small business<\/a>, but I knew I had to shift that idea in my head.<\/p>\n I started telling people, “This is not a small business. This is my company.” That changed everything: how I showed up, how I hired, how I thought about growing.<\/p>\n A wedding was my first big event. After that, I did a fundraiser for a political event with almost no budget, but everyone important was in the room. They tasted my soul food<\/a>, and I became the preferred caterer for their events.<\/p>\n At first, I did everything myself, but I was holding on too tightly, trying to control everything. One of my biggest lessons, something I should have done sooner, was learning to let go.<\/p>\n When I finally did build a real crew, that’s when the business blew up. As I let other people take over tasks like answering phones or doing the shopping, we grew so much faster than I could have ever imagined.<\/p>\n These days, if I show up to help with an event, sometimes my team will say, “You’re not on the schedule. You can go home.”<\/p>\n That’s when you know you’ve built something real\u00a0\u2014\u00a0when the business can run itself.<\/p>\n Now, Blackberry Soul feeds everyone from our community to major political and business leaders.<\/p>\n We’ve served thousands of people at once. I’ve fed 2,500 people at Google, including its cofounder Sergey Brin<\/a>. I’ve cooked for Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, and so many others, but it’s important to me that we treat every client the same.<\/p>\n Whether we’re catering for executives<\/a> or people in my community, I want them to have the same experience \u2014 that same “pop” when they take the first bite. So we cook everything from scratch and don’t cut corners.<\/p>\n From solo operator to mentor<\/p>\n These days, my passion has grown bigger than food. I still love cooking, but helping other entrepreneurs is my real focus.<\/p>\n I learned everything the hard way. Nobody taught me how to run a business, how to scale<\/a>, or build a team. I didn’t even know I needed PR in the early days.<\/p>\n After I started really growing, people began coming up to me all the time asking for mentorship.<\/p>\n That’s why I created Link and Thrive, my coaching program to teach people how to build their own businesses. Rather than being in the kitchen, I now spend most of my days paying it forward.<\/p>\n I always say: You might know how to make a great hamburger, but do you know how to run a hamburger stand?<\/p>\n That’s what we focus on \u2014 the day-to-day reality of being an entrepreneur<\/a>. Building your team, creating customer experiences, and navigating the peaks and valleys.<\/p>\n My goal is to pass along the lessons I learned and show people that success is not just about the work. It’s about how you show up, connect, and grow.<\/p>\n