About

Jyackl (pronounced like Jackal) is an online directory of Black-owned food businesses/services in Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. It was started by Shi Johnson-Bey and Liz Beal of The Blacklist DMV to help people find nearby Black-owned restaurants.

Jyackl is a wiki-like site that allows users to add/update business listings. We have a team of moderators who verify business entries and ensure content integrity. Business owners may also claim their listings to obtain complete control over their information. Our goal is to cultivate a community of folks passionate about sharing their favorite Black-owned food spots. We are inspired by the fantastic work that HappyCow does, and we want to do for Black-owned restaurants what they have done for vegan restaurants.

We hope that you enjoy using Jyackl and that you share it with your friends.

We are not available as an app in the app store, but you can download this website to your phone to treat it as an app.

If you would like to get in touch with the Jyackl team, please reach out to us via email at contact@theblacklistdmv.com

The Team

Headshot of Liz
Liz Beal
Co-Founder, Social Media Coordinator
Liz is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, where she studied Developmental Psychology and Elementary Education. She is currently a Fifth Grade teacher in the DC area.
Favorite Food(s): Pad Thai, Mac 'n' Cheese
Headshot of Shi
Shi Johnson-Bey
Co-founder, Software Developer
Shi is a graduate of the University of Delaware and Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering, respectively. He is currently a Ph.D. student researching autonomous character AI tools at UC Santa Cruz.
Favorite Food(s): French Fries, Fish Tacos, and Mangos

Want to join the Jyackl Team?

We are not currently accepting volunteers

We are working on cleaning things up for volunteers. We would love to have people who are passionate about graphic design, user experience, web development/design, and accessibility.

If you're interested to contributing, please reach out to us by email at contact@theblacklistdmv.com.

Please note that we do not make any revenue from this application. So, none of our positions are paid. This is a volunteer effort and a great opportunity for someone looking to get experience on a collaborative project aimed at helping people.

We recommend that people interested in contributing to development tasks should have some experience with Angular or another front-end JavaScript framework.

This web app is under constant development. We are working hard to ensure that we provide our users with the best mobile and desktop experiences. We appreciate your help with this process.