‘It’s very humbling’: Kansas City Restaurant Association names its 1st Black leader

At 16, Alan Kneeland started at the very bottom of the restaurant industry.

Washing dishes, busing tables, taking orders and working the grill, it would be years until he made his way into management. After a decade and a half of dedication to the industry, next month Kneeland will become the first Black president of the Grater Kansas City Restaurant Association.

“It’s very humbling,” says Kneeland, co-owner of The Combine, 2999 Troost Ave. “It is something that I didn’t necessarily see myself doing, and if you would have asked me 15 years ago, I would have said that’s impossible. But when you have a passion for something and you really put your heart into it, anything is possible.”

The association is the governing body of restaurants in the Kansas City area and helps them form ties with one another and operate more effectively.

Kneeland says that since the pandemic, many restaurants are still struggling. Many older establishments failed to embrace innovations like Door Dash or to-go options, costing them money and customers.

Kneeland, who opened his restaurant in 2020 as COVID-19 arose, saw then that restaurants that did not adapt would not survive.

“A lot of restaurants have had to change their concepts and change the way they do business to switch things up because the things that people were doing 10 years ago in the restaurant industry are definitely not what they’re doing now,” he says.

Kneeland has been a part of the restaurant association for eight years, serving the past year as its vice president. He sees many ways they could broaden their impact.

Kneeland, who has served as education chair for the association, hopes to expand its youth outreach and change perceptions.

“I think a lot of younger kids kind of look down at working in the food industry now,” says Kneeland. “I didn’t realize that I wanted to be a restaurant owner until after being in the industry for at least eight years, but now I don’t think many kids think there is a point trying to work your way up.”

Kneeland wants to start programs in Kansas City Public Schools to l partner students with restaurants and mentors so they can learn the industry and see that a career in food service is not a dead-end job or something to be ashamed of.

With locations like Soiree Steak and Oyster House and Boho Sway along with his own restaurant, the 33-year-old KC native thinks with the emergence of new Black-owned restaurants, this is the best time to target the youth in the urban core.

“I think it is wild that Black-owned restaurants are looked at as something new in the metro,” says Kneeland. “For some reason we don’t look at Gates or Arthur Bryant’s, which are some of the oldest eating places in the city and started by Black people in a time where Black people weren’t allowed to do very much.”

With more minority-owned restaurants opening in a three-year period than Kneeland remembers in his entire life, he feels the landscape is changing and hopes his appointment shows that.

“I think the restaurant industry is one of the hardest industries to survive in,” says Kneeland. “There are so many different moving parts and so many things that have to go right to be successful, and I think the association can help to alleviate those pains and let owners know you are not in this alone.”