During Thursday night’s game featuring the Bears and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, fans will get to know a local eatery well-known to South Side Chicagoans.
Through Bud Light’s NFL campaign, “Bud Light Thursday Night Shoutout,” Pearl’s Place Restaurant (3901 S. Michigan Ave. in Bronzeville) will be featured in a vignette as a part of a seasonlong attempt to showcase Black-owned establishments.
Pearl’s, which specializes in “Down-Home Southern Cooking,” has been feeding South Siders — and other foodies — for the past 30 years, serving delicacies such as shrimp and cheesy grits, chicken and dumplings, smoked hamhocks, and catfish, along with a “Southern-Style Soul Food Buffet.”
While businesses across the country have taken a financial hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Black businesses in particular have suffered as they are twice as likely to shut down compared to their white counterparts, according to “Double Jeopardy: COVID-19’s Concentrated Health and Wealth Effects in Black Communities,” a August 2020 study authored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
In addition to the ad, Bud Light has partnered up with “EatOkra,” an app that directs foodies seeking to support Black-owned restaurants in their own communities.
The video was shot by filmmaker and documentarian Jason Harper, whose work includes “A Kid from Coney Island” and “Down a Dark Stairwell.”
“Making films about members of the Black community during these historic times gives me pride and a profound sense of responsibility,” said Harper in a statement. “I’m encouraged that Bud Light decided to use their national visibility to spotlight these stories that humble us as storytellers.”
