Blooming Beyond The Yard: Angel Gregorio Is Building Black Business on Her Own Terms

Angel Gregorio didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming an entrepreneur. She didn’t go to business school, come from a family of entrepreneurs or spend years meticulously drafting a business plan. In fact, the Washington, D.C., native’s path to becoming the founder of The Spice Suite began with little more than curiosity.

In 2015, Gregorio walked through a neighborhood a few blocks from where she grew up when she spotted a lease sign in an empty storefront. Curious about commercial real estate prices in the area, she called the landlord and asked about the rent. He wouldn’t give her a number without first knowing what she planned to do with the space.

So Gregorio made something up.

“I decided to tell him I would turn it into a spice shop, just randomly, just to see what he would say,” she recalls. “He told me the rent, and I decided that it wasn’t a bad idea.”

That spontaneous answer would eventually become The Spice Suite, the specialty spice shop that transformed Gregorio from educator to entrepreneur and, later, commercial property owner. Eleven years later, she has traveled to more than 40 countries in search of spices and inspiration, welcomed thousands of Black-owned businesses to sell their products in her spaces without paying vendor fees and expanded her vision with Black and Forth, a retail community built around Black-owned businesses. Yet long before Gregorio was building spaces for other entrepreneurs, she was learning what it meant to find (and create) community at Howard University.

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