Meet Ian Burris

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ian Burris a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ian, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I get my resilience from faith. When things seem uncertain I lean into my faith. It keeps me going, keeps my eye on that little light at the end of the tunnel. I’d say blind faith has fueled me through my entire journey. Not knowing how things will work out, just trusting that they will.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

My name is Ian Burris and i’m from Durham NC. In 2017 I started my restaurants The Dankery in my mom’s garage. I came home from college, cleaned out my moms garage, put our old family fridge in the garage, put a new fridge in her kitchen, set up two deep fryers from bed bath and beyond and began taking orders on instagram and snapchat. I would deliver orders based on location throughout durham and chapel hill, and do pick ups at the mall.

It was truly a special time, my entrepreneurial spirit in its rawest form. I had no idea what I was doing, I just knew that I was going to do it. There was many set backs like not having adequate power sources to the garage causing the electricity to trip often. Receiving funds from customers was difficult. To this day i’m still blocked on cashapp and venmo for doing business transactions.

After a year of making deliveries out of the garage I saved up enough money for a food truck which opened in 2018. A huge step forward but also a brand new beginning. This phase of my story would teach me about hiring employees, filing taxes, in person customer service, crowd management, insurance and anything else you can imagine when making the transition to legitimate business.

The food truck was an era, you had to be there. Parked on Main st in between Skewers and Social, adjacent to Shooters, it was a beautiful clash of cultures of raw durham and Duke/NCCU/UNC students discovering Durham for the first time. On a typical night you’d hear our music bumping out of the truck, might get chatted up by an unhoused person, or might run into Duke Basketballs Zion Williamson or UNC Basketball’s Nassir Little. I’ll always cherish this era of The Dank.

Next we transitioned to our second home at the Brewery. This was in 2019, no one had any idea what the next 2 years would look like. Covid hits, restaurants close, but food trucks could remain open. Our business tripled over night. We went from making everything to order to just cooking as much food as we could to keep up with the demand. Every night there was a line around the block. Labor issues kicked in quickly when emergency unemployment was available, it was tough keeping help. We were overworked on a daily basis. I didn’t mind this because we weren’t just selling plates, we gave our community something to do, some place to be, a sense of normalcy when everything normal came to a quick halt. Going to The Dank became more than going out to eat, it was an experience.

This brings us to the next era on Fayetteville St at the Hayti Collective. Where my new age entrepreneurial spirit met years of culture and history of Black Wall Street. It was special to be in the area doing business here. I felt like I was contributing to economic progress in the community. Trying to
pick up where the John Merricks and Charles Spauldings of the world left off. This era was a huge step for The Dankery as we transitioned from a food truck to a brick and mortar location. Uncharted territory that was scary but also exciting. Scary because a new overhead, all of a sudden i went from paying 500$/ month to park in a lot to 4000$ a month in rent. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but through blind faith, trial and error, we found a way to make it work.

In 2023 I was ready for my next journey. The biggest step forward, opening up a brick and mortar location in Raleigh on the infamous Hillsborough St across from NC States campus. Renovations, hiring new staff, moving old staff from durham, and embracing a new community. After about 5 months of renovations and getting the place ready, we opened up softly in january 2023. The soft opening quickly turned into a grand opening, we hit the ground running and haven’t slowed down since. It’s been a dream come true doing business on Hillsborough St.

11 months later we tap into a new Raleigh market, Southeast Raleigh. Suburban area, next to Southeast Highschool, It was different from any other location we had. This one took time, It wasn’t overnight success. We had to be very intentional about earning the trust of this community. After about a year we started to solidify ourselves as a reliable option. We hope to become a staple in the community as the years go on.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Three qualities that were most impactful in my journey were patience, resilience, and the willingness to always find a solution to problems.

My advice to folks who are early in their journey is to have a 10 year approach. Don’t expect to kill it on the first day, give yourself grace while holding yourself accountable. Find comfort in knowing that you did everything you could in the 24 hours of the day and what’s out of your control is out of your control. Let your faith take control of the moment. We lean on hard work and relax with faith that everything will work out how it’s supposed to.

What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?

My biggest area of improvement over the last 12 months has been work life balance. I’m a worker. I love working hard. But I found myself doing more work than the things that I love to do. I love playing soccer, I love doing monday family dinners with my family, I love visiting my friends in their respective cities. I made it a point to not wait for the right time to do what I want to do. With my personality this isn’t easy but i’m proud of myself for the time I’ve made for my personal life.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: thedankery919
• Linkedin: Ian Burris

Image Credits

iamdavontee Davonte Anthony