Courtesy of Tara Kitchen
By Susan Elise Campbell
Aneesa Waheed has come a long way since she and her husband began selling Moroccan-Indian fusion dishes at a farmer’s market in 2008. Now the owner of six Tara Kitchen restaurants, Waheed is the recipient of the New York Small Business Person of the Year Award for 2024.
This year’s award winner runs a woman-owned, minority-owned string of eateries that extend from Schenectady to India. There are more than two million small businesses and potential candidates in New York, but the honor goes to the Capital Region entrepreneur.
“It’s great to be nominated and shocking to have won,” she said. “I feel honored and humbled.”
Waheed was nominated by Keri Pratico, who is currently senior business development officer for Pursuit and who was approached by Waheed 15 years ago seeking a small business loan for her New York City restaurant.
“Back then, the Tara Kitchen empire of today felt like a distant dream,” said Pratico. “Anyone who knows Aneesa isn’t surprised that her tenacity and dedication have led her to this award.”
“I’m thrilled to see her recognized on the national stage,” Pratico said.
According to Waheed, her family, including her mother, sisters, and children, have been extremely supportive. So have the community of small businesses, resources that the state offers, and peers like Pratico who have followed Waheed’s entrepreneurial career in their roles at different government agencies.
“You survive in a family of locals,” she said. “We are all very dependent on people within a few miles of our business.”
“It was a reflective moment for me to think about the amount of people and energies and doors and walkways you have to pass though to get to this point,” Waheed said. “It’s a massive, massive effort of thousands of people.”
She has had a SCORE mentor and over the years mentored others. Waheed launched an incubator during the COVID that she still maintains. She works closely with the New York City and Upstate chapters of the Small Business Development Center, now part of Pursuit, and with Empire State Development, which has helped her extensively with her launch in India, she said.
She is part of the leadership board for the James Beard Foundation for 2023-2024 and has a mentee getting his restaurant up and running in Philadelphia and another is starting up her sideline cheesecake bakery. She is helping an individual negotiate a real estate deal, and there are others, she said.
“I don’t see this as mentoring someone,” said Waheed. “It’s part of business. People are constantly reaching out to me and I make myself knowingly and willingly very accessible to people.”
“It is a duty to educate and to give back this way,” she said. “My advice to anyone starting up is, if you are offered, take the help.”
Waheed graduated high school in Schenectady, earned a college degree from Russell Sage, and had a high tech career in New York City until 2009.
“My husband had recently moved from Morocco and I was wanting to get out of corporate America,” she said. “We felt it was a good time to try our hand at business.”
With the American couple’s Indian and Moroccan backgrounds, their food blended the ingredients of all three cultures, Waheed said. The food was unique and set Tara Kitchen apart, and they were getting excellent feedback from their customers.
Not only are the warm spices and flavors of their dishes distinctive, but also very good for people with allergies, she said.
“Our customers like that we serve dairy free and soy free dishes,” she said. “We use light, fresh ingredients like lentils and spices cooked together.”
It didn’t take long to open a restaurant in Waheed’s home town of Schenectady. Today there is one Tara Kitchen in New York City, three upstate, one in Wildwood, NJ, and Waheed is currently traveling back and forth to India launching the sixth.
“India has one of the fastest growing and most robust economies, and 30 percent is in the food and beverage sector,” she said. “We are trying to see if we have a shot at building a brand there.”
The U.S. Small Business Administration is the “only go-to resource and voice for small businesses backed by the strength of the federal government [and which] empowers entrepreneurs and small business owners with the resources and support they need to start, grow, or expand their businesses,” according to www.sba.gov.
The Waheeds will be present at the National Small Business Week award ceremonies held April 28th and 29th at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Washington, D.C., where SBA administrator Isabel Guzman will announce the top honor of National Small Business Person of the Year.
Learn more at www.tarakitchen.com.