Chef Trey Lamonts restaurant Jerk Shack has been serving up Caribbean food in the Belltown area since 2018.

Lamont grew up in Seattle and graduated from Garfield High School. Hes always knownwhat he wanted to do: go to culinary school.

But if I had wanted to go to Harvard, that wasnt an option. My dad couldnt afford that, Lamont says.

Lamont knows there are other high schoolers in the Black community who have dreams they cannot afford, and he wants to change that.

Lamont wants to expand his business to better serve the Black community, and to do so, hes enlisted the communitys help in the form of a GoFundMe campaign that he started on June 3. The end goal is to raise enough money to purchase land in an area of Seattle where more Black people live, he says, and build a new restaurant called Jerk Shack Express. Lamont is eyeing places like Renton, Rainier Beach and parts of South Seattle, the Central District or Skyway for his new restaurant.

But his master plan involves much more than purchasing land to build a restaurant which Lamont says will be created from a shipping container its about building a legacy and creating opportunities. Ultimately, Lamont wants to use a model similar to that employed by Dicks to build his restaurant into an enterprise that can give back to the Black community and the community its situated in.

My vision would be copying Dicks version of helping people pay for college, having child care, having full benefits of medical and dental, he says.

Dicks Drive-In, which was founded in part by Dick Spady in 1954, offers any employee working 20 hours per week for at least six months access to a $25,000 scholarship over four years to use for any college, vocational or self-improvement program as long as they continue to work at least 20 hours per week. Additionally, the company offers child care assistance up to $9,000 per year and free health insurance for employees.

The health insurance part is essential for Lamonts vision.

I know that my community definitely needs dental. Its an education in resources and compounded with everything that we call systemic racism, he says.

Lamonts GoFundMe has a goal of $700,000. Like his sit-down restaurant, Jerk Shack Express will serve Caribbean food, but in a fast-casual atmosphere. Lamont has already been testing out the menu since dining rooms closed on March 17.

Lamont has no plans to close the original Jerk Shack.

Im not trying to move out of Belltown, Im trying to expand and create more opportunity for the Black community, Lamont says.

His GoFundMe description reads, Everyone says the system is broken, but I think it works perfectly for the ones who it was created for. I would like to create a new system and do my part the best way I know how, by creating one of inclusion for everyone in our neighborhoods.

Lamont believes that showing the younger generation a person that looks like them and comes from the same place as them can create stronger communities.

Lamont has been thinking about this plan since he began cooking in his food truck, Papa Bois, in 2012, but hes been slowly refining it. Now he has a business plan and a menu; hes got realtors scouting property in South Seattle, the Central District, Renton and Skyway areas; and he has friends who have building plans for shipping containers.

And while he thinks there are some restaurants in his community that couldve done this already, Lamont says hes ready and he can no longer wait for someone else to do it.

Lamont expressed frustration with the perpetual cycle where an unjust killing leads to protests and marches, only for things to die down and six months or a year later it happens again and were doing the same thing.

With everything thats going on, I think underserved communities need to feel like we aresupportive of each other. This is the best way that I can serve my community. Im not that guy thats going to go lets organize this, Im the guy whos like Im going to make a bunch of food and lets come to the table, he says.

As of Monday, June 15, Lamonts GoFundMe campaign has raised almost $15,000, with nearly all the donations in small increments.

At $500 each, Hunter Samuels and Louis Arruela are the campaigns largest donors.

Arruela is a Portuguese commercial fisherman in the Bering Sea who supplies Lamont with fish on occasion.Arruela says he doesnt consider himself to be a social activist, but when he heard about Lamonts campaign he was so impressed.

Not only is it a good thing socially, but from a business standpoint hes doing it right, from the ground up and for all the right reasons, Arruela said.

Samuels first met Lamont as a teenager when they were training at the same taekwondo studio.

To see Trey speak up today and historically, Ive been proud of that and proud to be his friend and to do what I could, Samuels says, calling Lamont someone who is all in.

More than 200 other small donationshave come in. Lamont says hes not pinning his hopes on getting lots of large donations, and instead hopes that its a community effort built by many.

I want the people from the community to donate because this is for them. I want them to go, This is for me. If I dont invest in myself, no one else is going to, he said.

There is no deadline for the project; Lamont says hed be pleased if in a year or so hes got enough for even a down payment on land to keep things moving. But if that doesnt happen, hes not quitting.

It has to work because Im not giving up. I dont care if I dont get the funding for 10 years, Im still going to do it, he says.

Jackie Varriano covers the food scene in the neighborhoods around Seattle. She loves digging into stories that discuss why we eat the things we do and when in our region and beyond. Her very first article was a gossip column for her YMCA summer camp in 1990. Reach her at jvarriano@seattletimes.com.

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Owner of Belltowns Jerk Shack is asking the community to help him expand so that he can better serve the Black community - Seattle Times