A Minneapolis Restaurant Owner Protects His Community
Rashad West, whose business is across the street from the spot where George Floyd was killed, talks about healing, supporting each other and moving forward.
Dragon Wok, at E. 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis’s Powderhorn neighborhood.
COURTESY DRAGON WOK/ RASHAD WESTRashad West got the restaurateur bug more than a decade ago, while moving up from washing dishes to manning the woks at a Chinese restaurant. After college, where he quarterbacked for a Division Two football team, he sold his sneaker collection—for $18,000—to help fund his first restaurant. Today, West and his wife own eight-employee Asian restaurant Dragon Wok, in the Powderhorn neighborhood of Minneapolis. Their business is across the street from the spot where George Floyd was killed in police custody on May 25. West, 30, provided footage of the incident from his video security system to the media. On June 2, he spoke with Bloomberg Businessweek about navigating life as a black business owner in a city with a deadly policing problem. This interview has been edited.