From One Food Cart to Six Storefronts: An Immigrant Entrepreneur's Philadelphia Story

Fatima Haidari arrived in Philadelphia with her family a little over a decade ago and started selling food from a single cart near a West Philadelphia transit stop. That cart has grown into six storefronts across the neighborhood, each opened using profits from the previous location rather than outside financing.

"I never took a loan for the first four locations," Haidari said. "I didn't trust that I understood the terms well enough, so I just waited until I had saved enough myself."

The approach meant slower growth than competitors who used financing to expand quickly, but Haidari says it also meant she never faced a debt payment she couldn't make, even during the business's leanest early years. Her sixth location, opened last year, was the first funded partly through a small-business loan, a decision she made only after years of relationships with a local community bank.

Haidari now employs 45 people across her locations, many of them other immigrants from her original neighborhood. She mentors several newer food-cart vendors informally, though she says she is careful not to present her own path as a template others should follow exactly.