KJ Kearney

KJ Kearney is the founder of Black Food Fridays, James Beard Award nominated social media advocacy initiative which encourages everyone to purchase food and drinks from Black owned restaurants each and every Friday. Since starting in April of 2020, Black Food Fridays has organically grown from to over 124K+ followers on Instagram and over 150K+ followers on TikTok. Through this initiative, he has been able to work with organizations like Target, Pepsi, the Charleston Visitors Bureau, and the Charleston Wine and Food Festival. 

He has been featured or quoted by publications like the Washington Post, Forbes, New York Food Policy Center, Condé Nast Traveller, the BBC, Viceland, MTV News, Insider, and Today.com. He was also a featured guest on Season 5 of the hit Food Network show “Delicious Miss Brown”, where he discussed both the Black Food Fridays platform and Gullah Geechee cuisine. 

KJ has been a featured speaker, moderator, host, or panelist for many organizations and events including Creative Mornings Charleston, SXSW (South by SouthWest), the Columbia Museum of Art, the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, the Myrtle Beach Downtown Alliance, the BayHaven Wine & Food Festival and Wine + Culture Festival, the Black Kitchen Initiative presenting by Heinz.

KJ has also produced events for both the City of Charleston and the City of North Charleston, was a guest columnist for the Charleston City Paper, and wrote the proclamation for Red Rice Day, which received a formal resolution from the Honorable John Tecklenburg of Charleston in 2018. KJ is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha–the first Greek letter fraternity for African Americans, a proud graduate of this historically Black college South Carolina State University, a brother, son, uncle of the year candidate, reformed sneakerhead, and trap music apologist.