Faye Smith knows all about ethnic diversity when it comes to food. On Jan. 16 this year, Smith opened her second convenience store at 1200 W. 69th Street. Sunshine Foods is also a grocery, meat market and deli, specializing in products for the local community.
“I’m just waiting for the lottery machine,” said Smith, “That’s a very important thing to have.”
Well, who doesn’t want to be a millionaire?
Smith grew up in the South Shore area of Chicago. “It was very nice in the ’70s, a lot of middle-class people. I went to school down there, then to DePaul where I studied accounting and messed around and dropped out, but I had my first business when I was 21. It was a gay bar called the 7313 on South Halsted. That was in ’91, ’92. It was lesbians and gay men, open every night, with drag shows … we had Sylvia Ross, and Lady Labelle performing there. Mostly a Black bar, and that closed in ’93.”
Then in 1998, Smith opened her first grocery store at 3001 W. Diversey. “My grandparents have always had grocery stores,” explained Smith. “So that made me go into the same thing. The store on Diversey is in a Polish and Hispanic neighborhood, and we also sell some Asian products. The food is completely different over there, you have to keep up with all the Goya products and over here on the South Side you have to keep up with all the Black products.”
“I wouldn’t sell a do-rag over there. Do you know what a do-rag is? A do-rag is a scarf that the boys over here wear on their head, to tie their hair down to make waves, but over on Diversey I wouldn’t sell that, because the Hispanic kids don’t use them. So you have to know where you are. There’s food items we wouldn’t sell over there, like ham hocks, and chicken wings sell real fast over here, but on the North Side they don’t buy it.
“Also, over on Diversey we sell a lot of prepared items for the tacos, different meats and the cracklings that we make fresh over there, but I wouldn’t do that over here because we wouldn’t sell it.”
Sunshine Foods is an old mom-and-pop-style neighborhood corner store with an excellent deli counter, where Faye, Faye’s partner Lisa, her mom and nephew all help out, and the local community is everything.