March 15, 2022
Baltimore, MD
2021
Overall Score
4.25
Policy Score
4.00
Socioeconomic Score
4.50
Baltimore posts an excellent score of 4.25. Charm City excels in the Economic Prosperity and Legal Support categories, among others. The city still stands to gain from a boost in Civic Participation and Community.
In 2011, Chesapeake Bay Candle hit a unique milestone. That was the year the company, which manufactures high-end decorative candles, moved a significant portion of its production operations out of Vietnam and began manufacturing its products in a factory near Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Photo: Sherri Cunningham / CC BY-SA 2.0
Chesapeake Bay Candle’s co-founder Mei Xu, an immigrant from China, says she decided to move the operations after calculating the rising costs of manufacturing in Asia. “Basically, there was no longer a cost savings due to rising labor and shipping costs overseas,” she says. “I also hoped the factory would provide badly needed blue-collar jobs in Baltimore.”
I believe we stand to gain from people like me coming here from other countries. We are here because we want to get things done, and we want to make a difference by working hard.
The factory, located just outside of Glen Burnie, Md., now employs 80 people. The company’s headquarters, located in Rockville, Md., has another 50 employees working in design, fragrance development, accounting, and other business divisions. Chesapeake Bay Candle employees enjoy good benefits, including retirement plans and healthcare coverage. Working hours at the factory are set up in a way that lets parents pick up their kids from school at 3:30 p.m. “We have low turnover in the factory. The morale is high,” says Xu proudly.
These jobs, she says, help stimulate the local economy, as Chesapeake Bay Candle’s workers can afford a life that is solidly middle-class. “They have a television in every room and a computer for every child. They’re supporting a lot of businesses,” says Xu, who sold the brand for $75 million in 2017 but continues to run the company as its CEO.
As an immigrant who came to the United States and created a successful business, Xu is in good company. In 2016, 40.2 percent of Fortune 500 firms had at least one founder who was either an immigrant or the child of immigrants. These companies make enormous contributions to the United States and the global economy writ large, generating jobs and revenue long after their visionaries retire or move on.
Xu came to United States in the early 1990s to study journalism at the University of Maryland and later got a job at a New York City medical-device exporter. Her then husband and Chesapeake Bay Candle co-founder, David Wang, came with a J-2 visa and worked for a geophysics government contractor.
The inspiration for Chesapeake Bay Candle came one afternoon during Xu’s lunch-break. She was window shopping when she noticed that the clothing in stores like Bloomingdale’s had clean, sophisticated designs but the home furnishings seemed ornate and old-fashioned. “My question was, if someone dressed in a modern way, why would she want to go home to a very traditional grandma apartment? I had been to England and Denmark, and I knew there could be a more contemporary look for the home, but it just wasn’t in the U.S. market yet,” Xu says.
After experimenting with different home-furnishing imports at a wholesale show, Xu realized there was a market for upscale candles with sophisticated color palettes, striking textures and innovate scent blends, like Prosecco Pear and Basil Mint. In 1995, Xu and Wang launched Chesapeake Bay Candle, and the products quickly sold to retailers including Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, and Bed, Bath & Beyond.
These days, however, Xu worries about the effect that America’s immigration policy could have on her business. When she and her then husband immigrated here in the 1990s, the process was relatively straightforward. Today, she says that anti-immigration rhetoric as well as bureaucratic hurdles could prevent her from maintaining the workforce she needs; many applicants at the factory near Glen Burnie are immigrants. “Without an influx of immigration, I don’t know if we would be able to fill our factory,” she says. She also recently lost a highly skilled worker who was unable to secure an H1-B visa after a long wait. “It is very disruptive when you train someone and then they have to go back to their home country. You have to start all over again,” Xu says.
Xu would like to see the U.S. immigration system return to a more open and straightforward process. “I believe we stand to gain from people like me coming here from other countries. We are here because we want to get things done, and we want to make a difference by working hard,” she says.
She notes that many other countries do not offer innovators the same level of opportunity. “I’m not sure if I could have made myself a success in China. There are a lot regulatory gray areas there. I’m a very black-and-white person, so it would have been hard. So I’m glad that I took this journey. If you are passionate about something and want to get things done, this is the country for you.”
In 2015, when Irena Stein opened Alma Cocina Latina in Baltimore’s Canton neighborhood, the food world took notice. “The best restaurant to open for years in the Southeast Baltimore neighborhood,” said The Baltimore Sun. The Washington Post told readers they should “prepare to be dazzled” by both the Venezuelan cuisine and the service. And in 2017, Alma was a runner-up for Baltimore Magazine’s Best Overall Restaurant.
“It has been so well-received. People are discovering another region of the world,” says Stein, who is delighted to share the food of her native Venezuela in her adopted city. But like many immigrant entrepreneurs, Stein is contributing more than just her culture. Her three Maryland restaurants generate about $2.4 million in annual revenue and employ 37 people, about half of whom are U.S.-born.
Stein didn’t set out to be a restaurateur when she arrived in the United States as a Fulbright scholar in 1980. She came to study cultural anthropology at Stanford University, in California. But life takes unexpected turns, and for Stein that meant falling in love, getting married and having her first child.
Her scholar visa required that she return to South America after her two-year fellowship ended, regardless of her marital status. Stein tried to return the fellowship money, but it was refused. So she found a way to remain with her family and “return to Venezuela,” taking an unpaid position in the Venezuelan consulate in San Francisco. “I created a job. It gave me a way to be in Venezuela and not be in Venezuela,” she says.
After Stein got her green card, a process that took nine years, she became a jewelry designer and, in 1998, moved to Baltimore to enjoy the city’s affordability and thriving arts scene. But after 9/11, the art market tanked and she realized she would have to reinvent herself once again. She started catering out of her home and, in 2004, took over the Alma Cocina Latina café at the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University. It’s the kind of entrepreneurial risk-taking that comes naturally to immigrants in Maryland’s Third Congressional District — where the foreign-born are 38.1 percent more likely to be entrepreneurs than are the U.S.-born.
At the café, Stein has designed menus with interesting, healthy, and seasonal meals for astrophysicists, professors, and staffers. “I wanted it to be a community place where people no longer would have to eat out of a plastic container in front of their computers, but could really sit down and talk over lunch,” she says. “It has become an amazing center for dialogue, where people discuss concepts, theories, ideas, and share interdisciplinary knowledge.”
Would you boycott the Orioles for hiring Venezuelan players?
At Alma Cocina Latina, the staff is made of immigrants and native-born Americans, though Stein says immigrants dominate the kitchen. “We need people in the kitchen who are familiar with certain flavors, spices and herbs, and are able to understand their combinations,” she says. “In Latin America, you get that training at home when you’re a kid, so it becomes completely natural. That is a very important issue for restaurants like mine that are full flavor and incorporate a lot of foreign ingredients.”
Stein would like to see an immigration policy that does a better job of aligning the economic needs of the country with the skills of newcomers to ensure that restaurants like hers can get the talent they need, at all levels.
Alma’s executive chef, Enrique Limardo, came to the United States on a visa for people with exceptional talent, due to his extraordinary career in gastronomy. However, Stein notes that many people still believe that “exceptional talent” cannot possibly apply to the world of kitchens. “We get threats from people, ‘You are hiring immigrants. We should boycott your establishment!’ ” she says. “And I say, ‘Would you boycott the Orioles for hiring Venezuelan players?”
Stein also invites these critics to come and experience the restaurant for themselves, though none have taken her up on it. That’s too bad, she says, because if they experienced the food and the ambiance they might understand that excellence exists outside the world of sports. “We need to recognize that immigrants have a diversity of talents and a lot to contribute,” she says.
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