From left to right: Elizabeth Almeida, Jen Ziskin, Nancy Cushman, Nancy Batista-Caswell, Alexia Hatziiliades, Allison Goldberg, Rachel Scott, Kristin Canty

Photos by Adam DeTour

When Covid dealt a significant and unanticipated blow to the restaurant industry—forcing owners to rethink their way of doing business in order to survive—women restaurateurs in the historically male-dominated industry needed all the help they could get. Rohini Dey, PhD, owner of Vermilion, an Indian-Chinese restaurant in Chicago, responded by reaching out to local women restaurateurs in solidarity and creating a platform for them to learn from and support one another while rising to the challenges of the pandemic.

Dey launched Let’s Talk Womxn, a collaboration of women in the food and beverage industry whose goal is to boost each other up and build combined economic power. (The “x” is meant to be inclusive, embracing anyone who identifies as a woman.) The action-led movement is still thriving and growing today, and has evolved to include women entrepreneurs along with restaurateurs; the only criterion is one must be an owner of a food and/or beverage business.

Let’s Talk Womxn (LTW) features more than 850 dynamic and influential women owners across 15 cities in the United States and Canada, including Boston, with more U.S. and international cities on the horizon. LTW relies on “co-hosts” to lead the individual city cohorts, each of which features “Deep Dives,” monthly virtual conversations and annual in-person events open to the public. All financial support generated from the in-person events is funneled to the women entrepreneurs to help build their businesses. The Boston cohort’s next event is scheduled for March 6 at Garage B at the Speedway in Brighton.

Boston co-host Jen Ziskin, co-owner of La Morra and Punch Bowl in Brookline with her husband Josh, jumped at the chance to join the Boston-based LTW movement, which now boasts 50 owners.

“Rohini is a trailblazer,” she says of Dey. “She created this real partnership opportunity for us that shines a light on women restaurateurs and women owners. It really helped us, a marginalized group, come more into the focus.”

According to the National Restaurant Association’s latest data based on the 2017 U.S. Census, 26% of restaurants in Massachusetts were majority owned by women and 39% at least 50% owned by women, compared to 34% and 47% nationally, respectively.

When she joined LTW in January 2021, Ziskin, a sommelier and wine director, was in the process of preparing to open Punch Bowl and formulating its wine list. The restaurant, which opened in April 2021, is an homage to the Punch Bowl Tavern that operated in Brookline in the 18th century, and Ziskin’s research revealed that being an innkeeper or barkeep in the 1700s was a respectable job for a woman.

“It was because of Let’s Talk Womxn that I really grasped onto that and decided to do an all-female wine list at Punch Bowl, featuring women owners, producers and vineyard managers,” she says, noting the restaurant also features women distillers on the menu as well. “I would not have even thought of this if it weren’t for Let’s Talk Womxn. It all happened at the same time.”

Elizabeth Almeida, owner of Westford-based Fat Moon Mushrooms, joined LTW after the pandemic, but still at a much-needed time.

“Even if you survived the pandemic, things are so much harder. There’s a feeling that we’re not out of the woods yet,” she says, pointing to the costs of goods and labor and the dichotomy of wanting to employ good people and pay fair wages while worrying about what is affordable.

“In this group, you can hold multiple difficult truths at once and discuss them and learn how other businesses are moving forward.… These women have been incredible and it was like a sigh of relief when I met them.”

Kristin Canty, owner of Woods Hill Pier 4 in Boston and Woods Hill Table and Adelita in Concord, appreciates the opportunity to share resources and best practices as well as discuss industry news, from the best plumbers to bookkeepers to a forthcoming law that will affect fellow owners and proprietors.

“We’ve really been able to support each other in a lot of ways,” she says. “We share a lot of information; it’s just women talking to women.”

LTW co-host Nancy Matheson-Burns, president and CEO of Dole and Bailey, a 156-year-old fourth-generation independent certified women-owned butcher and purveyor of meats and seafood based in Woburn, has found the group incredibly supportive.

“I find women in business, especially the food business, tend to work closely together and share their blessings,” she says. “They’re also more vulnerable and up front about what their needs are, and more predisposed to support and help each other when someone is in need.”

Matheson-Burns walks that walk. Upon receiving frequent inquiries from people in the industry, asking for recommendations, “this group floats to the top of my list [when I respond].”

Indeed, LTW is not a competitive space, but one that props up its peers.

“Historically, the mind-set has been that women should be competing with women,” says Canty. “But it’s nice to be supportive instead of competitive.”

“It’s such a dog-eat-dog world,” says Ziskin. “I think we have a group whose sole purpose is to boost each other up, and it’s so needed.”

What started as a support network to combine resources and power to help women-led businesses survive, “has evolved into figuring out not only how we can survive, but thrive,” says co-host Nancy Cushman, co-owner with her husband, Tim, of Boston’s o ya and Hojoko, Bianca Woodfire Kitchen and Bar in Chestnut Hill, and Ms. Clucks Deluxe and gogo ya, featured at Time Out Market Boston.

Cushman says she’s personally applied best practices she’s learned from the group to everything from general compensation and bonus program structures to marketing ideas to contemplating different service model ideas.

Ziskin cites speaking and moderating on panels as an outgrowth of her LTW association.

“It’s really opened a lot of networking doors for me, and created this whole identity for me,” she says. “We’re always trying to think of innovative ways to help each other stay relevant.”

“Let’s Talk Womxn is such a collaboration of women owners, sharing information and resources. Such a group didn’t exist to this extent previously,” says Cushman.

And it didn’t come a moment too soon, according to Rhonda Kallman, founder and owner of Boston Harbor Distillery, where last year’s annual LTW event was held.

“I think Let’s Talk Womxn filled a need for everybody. You hear about the good old boys’ club; we really didn’t have that for women—a club for women in hospitality— and it’s high time we did. It provides support for like-minded people doing like-minded things. We can share ideas, learn from each other, grow with each other, help each other,” she says.

Continues Kallman, who has been in the craft alcohol space for more than 40 years: “I’ve been at this for a long time and I just didn’t have a group of women leaders in this space that I could connect with. Now I know so many amazing female entrepreneurs that have some of the same challenges as me. It was kind of like a lifeline for me.”

And the women agree, the support extends beyond the businesses themselves.

“We care about one another and what’s going on in each other’s lives; it’s not always just about business,” says Kallman.

Cushman attributes the woman factor to engendering a deeper level of bonding and collaboration in which family dynamics and life circumstances play a role.

“Business and life are intertwined because they intersect intersect for women,” she says. “Business is life and life is our business. It’s a holistic view beyond just the walls of the restaurant.”

Matheson-Burns also sees how LTW feeds bigger-picture priorities for the industry itself.

“This is a group of independently owned businesses,” she says. “In food, that is super important. I’m so passionate about independent food systems, and about how critical it is to strengthen and feed that. Continuing to strengthen ourselves strengthens that system. It’s so important to have a group like this to feed that independence.”

Poised for more growth locally, nationally and internationally, the Boston LTW cohort is excited for what lies ahead. The group is working on a “heat map” of LTW’s network to make it easy for guests looking to support women-owned businesses, and it hopes to create a mentorship program to support and guide future generations of restaurant operators.

“We are stronger together and so appreciative of the village we have created, which has made our small world even smaller,” says Ziskin. “We are always looking for ways we can partner together and build each other up in Let’s Talk Womxn locally and nationally.”

letstalkwomxn.com/city-page/boston

This story appeared in the Winter 2025 issue.