After Challenges of Pandemic, Small Business Owners Chosen to Throw First Pitches at World Series
courtesy MasterCard Wes Avila, Jae'da Turner and Jeannette Katz
In the basement of Atlanta's Truist Park last Friday, Jae'da Turner, Wes Avila and Jeannette Katz all gathered around an iPhone to watch a YouTube compilation of the worst-ever ceremonial first pitches. The viewing goal? To not end up in any future versions of that video.
Turner, Avila and Jeannette were all just minutes away from throwing out their own first pitches at Game 3 of the 2021 World Series.
"It doesn't feel real yet," Avila told PEOPLE, practicing his throwing-arm position. "You can hear like the fans and the crowd and just like the smell of the stadium. I can't wait."
The big moment came after a year of unimagined challenges and unwavering drive for small business owners from across the country. Avila, Katz and Turner were all selected as winners of Mastercard's Home Team Advantage, which gifted small businesses a $10,000 grant, a business consultation with Mastercard experts, a Mastercard Digital Doors™ toolkit, local marketing support, and the trip to the World Series to enjoy the game and throw out those first pitches.
Jeannette and her husband Ken Katz, Atlanta locals, own restaurant La Bodega in the city; Avila and his wife Tanya Mueller run Los Angeles restaurant Angry Egret Dinette; and Turner founded business services and consulting agency Black Owned Bos. in Boston.
courtesy MasterCard The winning small business owners
All the winners, Mastercard's Cheryl Guerin tells PEOPLE, have shown impressive "resilience" over the past year as they've navigated difficulties brought on by the pandemic — from adapting and changing safety regulations to staffing difficulties.
"Small business owners are the backbone of their communities and continue to demonstrate exceptional resilience while contending with the extreme challenges brought by the pandemic," explained Guerin, the EVP of North America Marketing & Communications. "Mastercard is proud to honor America's small businesses on baseball's biggest stage and provide the digital tools and resources to help them grow and thrive."
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The Katzs have been members of their Atlanta community since 2006 — Jeannette hailing originally from El Salvador and Ken from New York. The city has been "really, really good" to the couple, even as the pandemic led to the closure of their Georgia State University restaurant location.
"Because we were on a campus we had peak times, and then we would squirrel money away for the times when school was out of session," explains Ken. "May was our worst month, not the traditional restaurant months that were slow. So for [the pandemic] to hit in March [2020] and then May came right after, we knew we were going to be in big trouble."
But the couple pivoted, opening up La Bodega in Atlanta's Adair Park in June 2019, first as a pop-up before going full-time a year ago to serve pupusas, which are healthy Salvadoran corn-based flatbreads, filled with things like cheese and beans.
"It's actually been kind of exciting because it's given us new challenges," Ken says, noting that the area they're located in is actually an FDA-designated food desert, where low-income residents have little access to healthy and affordable food.
courtesy MasterCard Jeannette and Ken Katz with hosts from the MLB Network
Among those new challenges, lately, has been staffing. With 11 people on the team, Jeanette and Ken note they're a little below the crew size they typically operate with — emblematic of what some have called a labor shortage in the U.S.
Dealing with these issues will be made easier with the support from Mastercard, the couple — whose daughter learned about the contest in a commercial — said.
"It's really easy for companies, like Mastercard, to just write a check, but to really think about how you can make businesses grow, really showed that they took more thought into it," Ken says.
That support and those funds have already been put to good use by Avila and Mueller, whose Angry Egret Dinette opened in Los Angeles' Chinatown amid the pandemic just over a year ago. The timing of the opening, Avila says, made them ineligible for a lot of the government assistance that's been made available for small business owners.
In addition to assistance in streamlining their online ordering, Angry Egret — which serves what Avila, a Los Angeles native, calls "Angeleno cuisine" — was able to purchase indoor furniture and lighting, and finish some renovations on the space.
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"We've done literally everything," Mueller admits. "We painted ourselves. ... Wes did the tile in the bathroom. Our brother-in-law sanded the concrete down. I don't think it could be any more mom and pop. We don't have any investors. So having the grant, we're just able to do so much that we weren't able to do ourselves."
Mastercard and their partners — including baseball icon Nomar Garciaparra, who helped break the news to Avila and Mueller that they'd been selected as winners — noticed the couple's hands-on work to provide to their community.
"Talking to Wes Avila, he grew up not too far from where I grew up as well in the L.A.-area and talking about his restaurant, his food looks outstanding," Garciaparra tells PEOPLE.
He adds that local restaurants and shops are "the heartbeat of their community. ... They're serving the community and making their community unique and special to individuals that live there and embrace it."
Turner, like Avila, has been doing everything herself for years. She opened Black Owned Bos. first as a digital platform in 2019 to highlight Black-owned businesses in the greater Boston area.
courtesy MasterCard Jae'da Turner
It's since expanded to a physical space where those businesses can connect with new customers. She explains, "We've done that through one-on-one retail incubation model, and general marketplaces, where we'll have any number of businesses from pet goods, to visions, to building accessories, all one place for folks to come in, shop, support different businesses and to connect new customers and neighborhoods."
Turner, born and raised around Boston and currently living in Roxbury, just hired two part-time employees to handle marketing and communications, as well as market activities and operations, one month ago. Until then, it was a one-person operation.
She's had the success she's had so far, thanks to her community, who she calls the "biggest part of the business."
"It's supporting one another picking up the things that other people are doing, sharing the different opportunities that we're all having," explains Turner. "And even with this Mastercard opportunity, it's been just exciting to see how other people are excited for Black Owned Bos. to just be recognized with these opportunities."
courtesy MasterCard Wes Avila, Jae'da Turner and Jeannette Katz
All three businesses shared their pride for their communities while enjoying their prize trip to watch the Atlanta Braves beat the Houston Astros in Game 3. From the ride from the hotel to meeting with MLB Network personalities at the stadium, the group traded stories about their struggles and triumphs.
And when the big moment came on the pitcher's mound, Jeannette, Avila and Turner had even more to celebrate: successful pitches that certainly won't land them on any sort of "worst ever" list.
