When some people lose a job, they start scrolling the classifieds. Tutu started cooking—hard. In fourteen frantic days she turned “nothing” into $30,000 of sales, proof that the gift she’d used to stretch a few dollars into a healthy meal for at-risk kids could also stretch into a six-figure company:

“It actually started with a police officer, 35 at-risk preteens, and a program called the Hail Mary Project. My children were a part of this program. The goal was to offer sports, life skills, and a good meal nightly, except the “good meal” was pizza every single night! I offered to provide the kids with a home-cooked meal as a volunteer.

I would go take attendance at the program site, go grocery, head home, and cook a full-course meal all within 2 1/2 hours. This kicked my idea into full gear! I can cook large amounts of food and make sure every dish is prepared with Love.”

Tu Wayy Catering now feeds festivals, universities, and anyone craving brisket or mac-and-cheese, seasoned “like I’m just cooking for my kids.”

“Even in a rush, I still take my time to cook. Brisket, wings, and jerk chicken, mac ‘n cheese, are all top sellers at any event. I make some homemade sauces, so, yeah, I stay pretty busy, but I absolutely love, love what I do!”

This is “Tutu” Moné’s Moment of Truth.

1 | What moment changed everything for you?

Tutu has always been a food entrepreneur, cooking on the side. She highlights two distinct events that catapulted her venture forward:

First, there was the entrepreneurial workshop discussion during the height of COVID. The conversation turned to future plans. And a cohort mate running a downtown lounge surprised her with an announcement:

ShawnQuez, Ketton said, he was “going to partner with Tu Wayy Catering.” That was the first I had heard of that. On that Zoom call! It had no idea it was ‘in the works’, and that really opened the door. After that, I cooked at ShawnQuez’ establishment on Fridays and Saturdays. Anytime I had a meal available, they would allow me to go set up and sell there, and from there, I started doing events.

But ultimately, it was also a door closing that opened her full next-level potential: “The moment that I lost my job… God made it so that I literally could not find another job. My back was kind of against the wall.”

Fired and blocked from new employment, she stopped treating catering as a side hustle. Faith and necessity fused into resolve: tap the gift, go all-in, trust that the customers would come.

2 | What system or obstacle were you up against?

Tutu faced a stack of hurdles—structural, financial, and even electrical—before the brisket ever hit the smoker:

First, despite Tutu’s enigmatic personality, local festivals and institutional buyers already had “favorite” vendors; newcomers—especially start-ups—are often told there’s no room:

“There’s a lot of food here, and Waterloo is sometimes a difficult place to get your foot off the ground… it tends to be kind of clicky.”

Second, no income, no savings, no credit line, and two kids to feed meant every reinvested dollar had to flip fast. “I’m a single mom, so I have to grind! My credit score was terrible. I had no savings, but I knew what I wanted! My boys were and still are always watching.”

And third, Pop-up catering demands reliable power and refrigeration; one blown circuit can sink a day’s revenue. “I almost quit the first time I went to an event, and my electricity didn’t work. I had no clue what all the working pieces were to ensure an event was a success.”

But ultimately, believing she belonged in a crowded arena was the doorway to every later contract.“It takes a lot of faith… to go from one customer a month to double and even triple booked some days.”

Once she named each barrier—gatekeepers, cash flow, logistics, mindset—she could start hacking gaps instead of bumping into them.

3 | What did you try, even if it wasn’t perfect?

“When I was in the [24/7 Black Business Entrepreneurial] program, my business wasn’t really centered around catering. It was centered around making chocolate-covered strawberries. In my mind, I was going to be like a millionaire billionaire on chocolate-covered strawberries.”

She launched with chocolate-covered strawberries—beautiful, but too seasonal and not shelf-stable enough to scale. So she pivoted:

• Chicken-and-waffles pop-ups at the farmers’ market

• Weekend plates inside a friend’s bar

• Cold-calling Hy-Vee with photo-ready displays

• Hustling brisket and seafood boils priced “so competitively nobody could walk away.”

But her real breakthrough happened when she found her route into corporate and government contracts, vaulting Two Wayy Catering from $300 a month to six figures in under two years.

Her secret?

She showed up as one of the first-mover local food entrepreneurs on authorized University caterer lists, then, when the University Dining Services scaled back their own workforce during COVID, she also established herself as a favorite during annual University Dining Hall takeover challenges. But ultimately her stunning breakout moment came when she made the top of a shortlist of vendors trusted to be a vendor for Women’s Basketball game-of-the-year: Caitlin Clark in her final season at the University of Iowa @ University of Northern Iowa. It was a standing-room-only event, and Chick-fil-A pulled out because it happened to fall on a Sunday afternoon. And hacking that gap streamlined opportunities from there: “I went from my phone ringing maybe once a month to BOOM – contracts!”

4 | What helped you keep going?

“When I realized that ‘Two Way Catering’ is actually a thing… people would stop me: ‘You’re the Two Wayy lady.’ That kept me moving. My son told me one day “monna I’m so proud of you. I remember days we had nothing and look at you now! You just never stopped Ma! That’s the definition of a real boss! I knew I couldn’t stop! God has given me this gift and I believed it was going to create the life I needed!”

Support flowed from faith—“put some prayer behind it”—and from giving others second chances. She recruits employees with records “because somebody gave me an opportunity.” Each event became proof to her kids and community that hustling with integrity pays.

5 | What truth do you want people to remember from this story?

The first year I lost my job and filed my taxes, I’ve been following taxes since I was 18, I’ve never in my life made as much money as I did that that that first year, that was that was the most that I had ever seen in my life, and I just could not believe that that is what I had been able to do. I worked at Tyson, I worked for the school system, and I was not able to provide for myself like I was once I started doing this for myself, and then there’s a lot of flexibility.

Her electricity did resurge and is now doing more than ever. She is a job creator who recruits employees with tough backgrounds because it all started with her “Hail Mary babies.” She now also encourages her sons to explore if entrepreneurship might be right for them.

Her dream now stretches beyond profit, and she is working with other local food entrepreneurs as well as pastors to see what the next stage of serving the community with care, dignity, and self-employment opportunities might look like.

“I am the proof! I am the proof that the grind pays off! You never know who is watching, and you never know how your hustle will inspire the next person. I didn’t have the credit score. I didn’t have the savings or the investors. I honestly didn’t even have the resources or the client base. But I had a dream, some prayer, determination, and two boys that truly believed I could turn our lives around!”

“If you put some prayer behind it, God can turn any situation around. I would have been so upset with myself if I would have quit somewhere on this journey. God fixed my posture, my attitude, and my grind!

© 2025 Institute for Quantum Innovation & Impact (The Qii). Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Originally catalyzed by philanthropic seed funding and now stewarded by the innovators whose stories appear here, with support from a growing network of researchers, educators, system architects, and community investors.