5 Things We Learned at the AEO State of Small Business Summit and Why They Matter for Culinary Entrepreneurs
This week, Feed the Soul Foundation traveled to Washington, DC for the Association for Enterprise Opportunity’s 2026 State of Small Business Summit. The theme was The Next Frontier: Powering Small Business Through Innovation and Opportunity. The energy in that room matched every word of it.
AEO was celebrating its 35th anniversary. Entrepreneurs, CDFIs, community lenders, fintech companies, policymakers, researchers, and ecosystem builders from across the country came together during National Small Business Month with a shared sense of purpose: to take stock of where small businesses are and to chart a course for where this field must go next.
Being in those conversations matters deeply to us. The insights, relationships, and resources that come from engaging at the highest levels of small business policy and innovation are exactly what we bring back to our network of culinary business owners, who too often are left out of these spaces until it is too late. That is the opportunity in front of us right now. Not just to celebrate innovation, but to make sure it reaches the businesses doing the most essential, community-rooted work in our cities. The restaurants. The food trucks. The catering operations. The culinary entrepreneurs who feed neighborhoods, employ families, and keep culture alive one plate at a time.
One line from the Summit has stayed with me: “You don’t realize the value of government until the services you use from them are gone.”
With growing attacks on SBA funding and DEI programs, it is more important than ever that we become focused and strategic in how we organize and mobilize the small business community. Access to resources, capital, and support is not something to take for granted. It is something to fight for, build toward, and extend to every business owner who has not yet had a seat at the table.
The State of Small Businesses
Before I get to what we learned, let me set the stage with the State of Small Business Opening Address delivered by Natalie Madeira Cofield, President and CEO of AEO.
There are 36 million small businesses in the United States. Together, they account for nearly half of all employment in this country. That is not a niche. That is the backbone of the American economy.
And yet: 96.5% of all small businesses have fewer than 10 employees. 83.7% are solo operators, one person, one business, doing everything themselves.
When we talk about innovation in small business, we have to ask: are we building for the 96.5%, or are we building for the top tier and calling it a field? Are we creating tools that work for a solo operator running a food truck in Houston, or are we building platforms that require a dedicated finance team to navigate?
That distinction matters. And the Summit, to its credit, kept returning to it.
5 Things We Learned at the AEO Summit
1. Innovation Must Expand Opportunity, Not Concentrate It.
This was the heartbeat of every conversation at the Summit. AI and fintech are genuinely transforming the small business landscape. Digital tools are changing how businesses sell, how they access capital, and how they reach customers.
But data shared at the Summit put a sharp point on something we have witnessed: only 4% of small businesses raise funds through venture capital. Two-thirds of small businesses seeking capital are looking for less than $100,000. They are not chasing Series A rounds. They are trying to make payroll, upgrade equipment, expand their operations, or survive a natural disaster.
When the innovation conversation focuses primarily on high-growth startups and venture-backed platforms, the 96.5% do not disappear. They just get left further behind. The mandate for our field, and for every funder, lender, and technologist in that room, is to ensure that innovation expands access rather than concentrating it in the hands of those who already had it. That is the standard we should all be reaching for.
2. CDFIs and Community Lenders Create Real Pathways to Capital for Small Businesses.
CDFI banks, fintech partners, and community lenders determine who benefits from the expanded financial ecosystem. That came through clearly at the Summit, and it is worth celebrating.
With emerging opportunities like Sports as an Economic Engine, which explored ownership, investment, and small business opportunity, there are exciting new avenues for small businesses to access capital and generate new income streams. CDFIs and community lenders exist precisely to serve the businesses that traditional banking excludes. They are mission-driven institutions doing essential work, and their reach and cultural competence directly determine whether small culinary businesses, especially minority-owned and immigrant-owned ones, can access the capital they need to grow.
For Feed the Soul Foundation, this is personal. Our 60% Pledge Program exists because we watched too many business owners walk into a CDFI relationship without the financial infrastructure to qualify. Getting lender-ready is not just paperwork. It is the difference between accessing capital and being turned away. We pair financial literacy training with a $2,500 bookkeeping grant paid directly to a vetted bookkeeper, taking restaurant owners from zero financial infrastructure to lender-ready in six weeks. Because you cannot benefit from a great lending ecosystem if you don’t have 2 years of clean financial statements.
3. Going Digital Has Changed How Businesses Sell, But Support Has to Come With It.
One of the most practical insights from the Summit was how digital adoption has reshaped the competitive landscape for small businesses. Platforms like Intuit have created tools that genuinely help businesses operate more efficiently, track revenue, and reach new customers. AI is opening up opportunities for small businesses to work smarter, speed up operations, and bring new products and services to market faster than ever before.
But access to those tools is not uniform. A solo operator working 60-hour weeks does not always have the time or bandwidth to learn a new platform, even a genuinely helpful one. In our own business development programming, we have seen this firsthand. Business owners often feel overwhelmed trying to adopt new technology into their daily operations, and cost is a difficult barrier as well.
What the Summit reinforced is that technology adoption requires support infrastructure. Not just the tool, but the training, the coaching, and the trust-based relationship that helps a business owner actually use it. That is exactly the kind of work community organizations and small business networks do every day. The digital revolution in small business will only reach its full potential when it is paired with human-centered support.
4. Friends and Family Funding Is Still Capital, and It Comes With Compliance Considerations.
This one opened up an important conversation. The SEC has resources, glossaries, and roadmaps specifically for small businesses, including guidance on what happens when you raise money from friends and family. Here is what many business owners do not know: the moment you accept an investment, even from someone you know, you may be dealing with a securities transaction. Those are regulated.
The SEC has resources available online to help small businesses navigate this, and more people in our communities need to understand the process of becoming an accredited investor. Building that knowledge base means small businesses do not always have to rely solely on banks and lenders for financial capital. Raising money through personal networks is not inherently problematic. Not knowing the rules is where things can go sideways.
For culinary entrepreneurs especially, many of whom launch with community support, crowdfunding, or informal investment from family members, this is critical information. Understanding the regulatory landscape is not just about compliance. It is about protecting yourself, your investors, and the business you have worked so hard to build.
5. We Cannot Ask Business Owners to Come to Us. We Have to Meet Them Where They Are.
This was the most important insight of the entire Summit, and it did not come from a keynote. It came from a conversation about civic engagement and regional organizing.
The point was straightforward: we cannot ask small business owners working 50 to 60 hours a week to seek out their elected officials, attend city council meetings, or navigate bureaucratic systems on their own time. If we want them to benefit from policy, capital, and innovation, we have to go to them. Regional networks, regional advisors, and organizations embedded in the communities they serve are not optional. They are essential.
Our own 2024 State of Small Culinary Businesses Industry Report puts hard numbers behind this reality. Fifty-one percent of culinary business owners reported having limited contact with their city council members or elected officials, and 13% reported no contact at all. That is not indifference. That is a gap in access. A business owner running a restaurant six days a week does not have time to chase down a city council member. But that disconnection has real consequences, in which businesses get included in economic development conversations, which neighborhoods receive investment, and which owners ever learn about the programs and policies that were designed to help them.
This is the architecture Feed the Soul Foundation is built on. One of the most direct ways we are closing this civic gap is through our Coffee and Conversations events, intimate gatherings where small culinary business owners sit down with community leaders and elected officials to talk through real challenges and identify programs and solutions that already exist. Policy changes happen locally first before they ever need to be elevated to the state or federal level. Building those relationships over a cup of coffee is exactly where it should start.
What Is Next
The conversations in Washington were important. But they are only valuable if we take what we learned back to our communities and put it to work.
The challenge is not a lack of innovation. The challenge is distribution. Who benefits when the ecosystem gets smarter, faster, and better funded? If the answer is mostly the businesses that were already positioned to benefit, then we have not solved anything. We have simply made the gap wider and given it a new name.
Feed the Soul Foundation is committed to building the bridge through programs that meet business owners where they are, with tools they can actually use, and with relationships that extend well beyond a single event or a single season.
Our 60% Pledge Program is helping culinary business owners prepare their financials to build relationships with CDFIs and pitch to investors. Our industry research and Coffee and Conversations events are creating opportunities for small culinary businesses to build relationships with local leaders. And our Culinary Business Network continues to deliver practical, community-rooted programming that connects owners to the resources they need to grow.
The AEO Small Business Summit reminded us how much the work we do matters in connecting small culinary businesses to the broader small business ecosystem. And it reminded us that we have more work to do.
Innovation must expand opportunity. Not concentrate it. That is not just a tagline. That is the standard we should be holding every program, every platform, and every policy to, until the businesses that feed our communities are no longer outside the room.
Falayn Ferrell is Executive Director of Feed the Soul Foundation and Managing Partner of Black Restaurant Week. The State of Small Culinary Businesses Industry Report is available to view in full on our website. To learn more about partnership opportunities for the 60% Pledge Program, reach out directly to our Programs Director, Karina Fernandez.
