Now THIS is the type of ish we like to hear.  But it's going to take many, many consistent years of this to close the wealth gap. Yelp released information that revealed people have been searching out black-owned businesses on the app a ton more since this time last year. More inside…

After the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd, the nation was set on fire with raging protests that demanded justice for his death. Not only that, folks were in the streets protesting against police brutality and racism.

Businesses were already suffering due to the Coronavirus pandemic, so there was a big push to show support for black-owned businesses. According to The National Bureau of Economic Research’s June report, black-owned small businesses were hit harder by the pandemic than others.

The Black Lives Matter movement helped push black-owned businesses to the forefront and the numbers back up their efforts.

YELP says support for black businesses spiked over 7,000% on their app.

Forbes reports:

From May 25 to July 10, there have been more than 2,500,000 searches for Black-owned businesses on Yelp, compared to approximately 35,000 over the same time period last year — a 7,043% increase.

While searches for Black-owned restaurants have remained popular, up 2,508%, the company noticed that people have been searching for more specific Black-owned businesses.

Searches for Black-owned boutiques have increased by 331% compared to the same time last year; searches for Black-owned bakeries and ice cream shops has increased by 56%; searches for Black doctors has increased by 183%; and searches for Black-owned coffee shops has increased by 161%.

Most notably, searches for Black-owned bookstores increased by 1,437% year-over-year, a trend that coincided with anti-Racism books soaring to the top of best-seller lists.

While searching for black-owned businesses is good, we want to know how many of these searches turned into actual profits. A University of Georgia report found that Black buying power is expected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2021. We definitely need to come together and use our buying power in our favor. THIS is how you begin to dismantle racism – hit those pockets to help black business!

Below is a thread where people dropped their black-owned businesses if you want to do some shopping this weekend...

i’m seeing less and less blm stuff on my timeline so it’s time for another BLACK OWNED BUSINESS THREAD

promote yourself below!!

— taylor (@rocknwrappinLLC) July 21, 2020

Photo: GaudiLab/Shutterstock.com