About us

Understory is an award-winning worker-owned and community-built restaurant rooted in collective action where we use food, culture, and collaboration as tools for resistance. We are queer and POC owned, offering a vibrant and inclusive space where people can enjoy themselves, connect, and build community resilience.

Understory was founded in 2020 by Lily Fahsi-Haskell, Jenabi Pareja, Nino Serrano, and Florencio Esquivel to address the impact the COVID-19 pandemic was having on workers of color within the restaurant industry. With diverse backgrounds as chefs, artists, and movement organizers, we dared to create a collaborative restaurant model that centers worker agency, access, inclusion, and radical community care. Our governance model ensures decisions are made collectively, cultivating trust, accountability, and empowerment.

Understory is organized around a guiding set of political principles:

• Empowering and Uplifting Communities of Color

• Supporting Environmentally and Racially Just Food Systems

• Affirming and Upholding Disability Justice

• Acknowledging Our Role in Resisting Gentrification

• Practicing Radical Honesty and Critical Self-Reflection

• Building Economic Stability for Workers of Color

• Disrupting State Violence

The word “Understory” comes from the natural world, referring to the layer of forest that grows beneath the canopy, where diverse plants and life forms grow in harmony while supporting and nourishing the ecosystem as a whole. This term reflects the power of worker-ownership, where strength lies in relying on one another and growing together.