When was the last time a vacation and a search for learning different cultures inspired you to start a business? For Vanessa Byrd and her son, Bryant Shaw, their lifetime interest in travel led them to create a Tallahassee Afro-fusion café and boutique that has received national recognition.
Called Halisi Africa, the business is housed in the Railroad Square Art District. “My mom and I are super close,” says Shaw. “We've been doing this type of stuff, I feel, like an entrepreneurial spirit, all our lives. Even my grandfather was an entrepreneur.” Over the years, travel led mother and son to create businesses such as study abroad programs and travel experience trips. But it was Shaw’s time studying in Tanzania that launched the name and the theme for their Tallahassee store.
“They use Swahili as the first language,” says Shaw about Tanzania. When he sent photos of his trip back home to his mom there were several signs and buildings that showed the words “Halisi” and “Halisi Africa” on them. Byrd asked him what the words meant in English. “Halisi itself means real, authentic or original,” Shaw says. “When you combine it with Africa, that means made in Africa or authentic to Africa, originating from Africa.”
Byrd says the phrase matched her vision for what she hoped to sell at the boutique. “At the time a lot of our products were from the continent, directly from Africa,” she says. “Now we've branched out a little bit more, a lot more. And we have products from Africa, from the diaspora, everywhere from Haiti to Puerto Rico to Jamaica, to, you know, just all over the diaspora.”
Mother and son started the store with a small space in the Square’s Breezeway shop area. Within a few years, the business had expanded to a larger building, added the café, and in 2025 they were featured on the Guy Fieri’s program “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.”
Food wasn’t initially part of the business plan for Halisi Africa. When the Coronavirus pandemic forced other businesses to shut down, Shaw says they pivoted to open the café. “Retail outlets weren’t considered essential, but restaurants were,” he explained.
“We already had a kitchen. We had already been doing spices and tastings and things like that and so we just decided ‘You know what? Let’s stay open based off of that.’”
And so their Afro-fusion Café was born. “What it means is its everything African that we’re fusing with other cultures where people of African descent were brought to and that’s not just America” Byrd says. “It’s why I say other cultures. It’s because Jamaica, Haiti, and other places that people of African descent were brought to.” Byrd says just like the items in their boutique, the food they serve (like their popular Egusi Stew) mixes ingredients and flavors from one part of the world with the palate from another. “It’s because we understand we are between two worlds. We’re of African ancestry, but we’re also of American ancestry by way of being brought here.”