Best Black-Owned Businesses

The BBR Guide

The founders, brands and builders Black Business Review has featured, interviewed and verified — organized by category, each one linked to the full story behind it.

By Black Business Review · November 2026

Every business in this guide earned its place the same way: it was featured in Black Business Review first. Our editors reported the story, interviewed the people behind the business and verified the facts before a single name made this list — so what you are reading is not a roundup of press releases, but a guide built on published BBR coverage.

The guide is organized by category, from tech platforms and finance to farms, fashion and home improvement, and it grows as our coverage grows. Each entry carries a short write-up drawn from the original BBR feature and a link to the full story, so you can read the reporting behind the recommendation before you spend a dollar or make an introduction.

Best Black-Owned Businesses At A Glance

• Tech & Platforms: TapBlk
• Food & Drink: Muhammad Family Farm
• Beauty & Wellness: Black Girl Healing Project
• Fashion & Retail: The Famly Bizness
• Home & Living: D&J Builders Surplus
• Finance & Business Services: Finvy

Best Black-Owned Businesses: Tech & Platforms

TapBlk

One App For The Full Business Relationship, Not Just The Attention

Most social platforms are built to farm attention. TapBlk, the relaunched app from Kyle D. Amaker’s Go Black Own, LLC, is built for what happens after it. The all-in-one networking app carries the full relationship journey in one place — discovery, introduction, contact exchange, relationship management and follow-up — connecting Black professionals, entrepreneurs and creators with the supporters who want to discover, hire and recommend them. There are no public follower, view or reaction counts; members “Show Love” without a tally attached. The toolkit runs deep: 60-second TapIn videos, Unity groups by state and industry, instant TapBlk Connect exchanges, digital business cards, a built-in CRM and Onyx, an AI assistant. Self-funded from day one, TapBlk is available now on the App Store and Google Play.

Best Black-Owned Businesses: Food & Drink

Muhammad Family Farm

A Black-Owned Farm In Nat Turner Country, Fighting To Stay In Black Hands

In 2010, Shelton Muhammad — then an assistant principal pursuing a doctorate in Educational Leadership — and his wife, a nurse, bought a farm in Southampton County, Virginia, the ground where Nat Turner was born and where his 1831 insurrection shook the nation. The family that sold it to them wanted the land to remain in Black hands, as it had been for generations, and its commercial contracted poultry operation promised revenue to sustain it. The Muhammads say that promise has been under pressure ever since: for 16 years, they say, the annual operating loan commercial farmers rely on was concealed and never provided to them. Now the family is asking for public support — to qualify for that essential loan, and to build “The Farm Store Market,” an agribusiness model designed to help Black farmers sustain their farms, create jobs and bring better food to their communities.

Best Black-Owned Businesses: Beauty & Wellness

Black Girl Healing Project

Therapy Is A Flex: Free Healing For Black Girls And Their Caregivers

Healing, not fighting, is the flex. The Black Girl Healing Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by Nijiama Smalls, recently completed its five-city “Therapy Is a Flex” tour, bringing free therapy, mental health education and interactive experiences to Black girls and their caregivers in Philadelphia, Woodbridge/Manassas, Richmond, Baltimore and Washington, DC. Each stop centered on the Therapy Is a Flex Healing Zone — a welcoming pop-up of affirmations, guided activities and room to talk — and the tour distributed more than 600 guided journals, affirmation cards and coping-skills magnets. Caregivers were cared for, too: more than 45 enrolled in the Free Therapy for Black Women program, and the project covered the cost of essential mental health prescriptions for five underinsured mothers. The work grew out of Smalls’s best-selling book, The Black Girl’s Guide to Healing Emotional Wounds.

Best Black-Owned Businesses: Fashion & Retail

The Famly Bizness

West Coast Style And Family Enterprise, Without The Sticker Shock

Three Southern California women — Bonita Sutton, Celecia Tymeka Johnson and LaShell Sanders — are turning a family business into a statement about style, culture and ownership. Their Carson-based brand sells fashionable clothing, hats, handbags and accessories rooted in West Coast culture, and BBR caught up with them at the 21st Annual Taste of Soul Family Festival along historic Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles. The creative roots run deep: Sutton founded Hats by Bonita in 2008 and brings decades of traditional millinery craftsmanship; Sanders, a close friend of the late Tupac Shakur, can be heard singing in the background of one of Dr. Dre’s earliest songs; Johnson is a classically trained lyric soprano. Their shared mission is straightforward — fashionable, quality pieces at prices everyday shoppers can afford. As Sanders puts it: “When one of us wins, the famly wins.”

Best Black-Owned Businesses: Home & Living

D&J Builders Surplus

America’s First And Only Black-Owned Iron Door Store

Johnny Gray III spent nearly a decade working to secure supplier relationships and inventory before he could open the doors — literally. His Lancaster, Texas company, D&J Builders Surplus, is America’s first and only Black-owned iron door store, serving customers nationwide seven days a week with luxury iron doors, pivot doors, interior doors, garage doors, windows, iron security screens, privacy glass systems and more. Gray’s road started in 2000 with an air conditioning and heating company and ran through construction, remodeling, fire restoration, roofing and foundation repair before the first shipment of iron doors arrived on April 5, 2023. “Opening the doors wasn’t the finish line,” he says. “It was the starting line.” His long-term vision is a complete home improvement destination that creates jobs and serves communities — affordable luxury, built one challenge at a time.

Best Black-Owned Businesses: Finance & Business Services

Finvy

A Debt-Payoff App Built By A Founder Who Paid Off $112K Himself

Finvy starts with a number its founder earned the hard way: $112,000. Ronald Buchanan Jr. paid off $112K in debt himself — and then built an app to help other people do the same. Finvy turns that personal turnaround into a tool for users working to pay off debt of their own, built by someone who has actually finished the journey they are starting. For BBR readers, that is the credential that matters: no theory and no shortcuts, just a founder who cleared six figures of debt and packaged what he learned into an app. Finvy’s feature story is published in Black Business Review now.

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