Girl With the Grill Expands to Camden, Bringing Community, Opportunity and Purpose
Photo courtesy of Lashaun Crawford Facebook
BY MADISON JOLLEY | For AC JosepH Media
CAMDEN — When Lashaun Crawford opens the doors to Girl With the Grill’s second location on July 18, the occasion will mark far more than a business expansion. It will be a celebration of resilience, family, and purpose.
The new restaurant, located at 200 North Broadway on the Camden County College campus, represents years of hard work and a continued investment in a city Crawford has long served. But the opening date carries an even deeper meaning. It marks one year since the passing of her daughter.
Rather than allowing the anniversary to be defined by grief, Crawford chose to transform it into a day of new beginnings.
“We’re going to celebrate life,” Crawford said. “We’re going to continue to keep her light lit, keep the flame burning, and we’re going to do it on that day. Every year we continue to celebrate and live life.”
For Crawford, opening in Camden is a natural extension of the community work that has always been central to Girl With the Grill.
“We are more than just food,” she said. “We truly are about our community.”
The new restaurant will transform part of the former conference center on Camden County College’s campus into a full-service dining space with seating for 75 guests. Conveniently located just minutes from the Ben Franklin Bridge, the restaurant will serve residents throughout Camden while remaining easily accessible to visitors from Philadelphia.
Crawford envisions the location as more than a place to eat. Along with serving its signature menu, the space will host spoken word performances, comedy nights, private events, birthday parties, community classes, and workforce training programs designed to help residents grow personally and professionally.
The vision behind Girl With the Grill is rooted in Crawford’s own journey.
At 19, she was attending college on a full scholarship when she became pregnant with her son. Faced with the challenge of balancing motherhood and school, she made the difficult decision to leave college.
Many people believed that the decision would define the rest of her life. Instead, it became the beginning of a new path.
Working as a waitress introduced Crawford to the restaurant industry, allowing her lifelong love of cooking to flourish. Influenced by both her West Indian father and Spanish mother, she discovered that food could become both a career and a calling.
The restaurant’s name reflects that philosophy.
“It’s just a girl with a grill,” Crawford said. “Sometimes people think we have to have a whole lot to do some amazing things, and you don’t.”
For Crawford, success has never been about having expensive equipment or perfect circumstances. It comes from having vision, working hard, and putting love into what you create.
That same mindset has shaped the culture of her business, where family has always been at the center.
The son she left college to raise eventually became her business partner. The pair opened the Voorhees location on his 21st birthday, and he has remained her “right hand” ever since.
Through divorce, remarriage, and the devastating loss of a child, Crawford says family has remained her greatest source of strength. Inside both restaurants, photographs line the walls featuring not only relatives but also lifelong friends, mentors, and community members who have become family along the way.
“Family isn’t just born,” Crawford said. “Sometimes it’s beautifully created together.”
That philosophy extends beyond her relatives to every employee she hires.
“If you don’t have the ability to want to take care of other people that can’t do anything for you, then you can’t work for me,” she said.
Serving others is also the mission behind Crawford’s Staying the Course Foundation.
Inspired by her own life’s obstacles, the foundation’s logo features a winding road with a pothole, speed bump, and hurdle, symbolizing the setbacks people encounter before reaching their destination.
“You’ve got to stay on the course,” Crawford said. “Life has the ability to go one way, but that doesn’t mean it can’t go another way.”
The organization supports individuals on the autism spectrum, formerly incarcerated individuals and people overcoming trauma. It also awards the #Forever20 Scholarship, created in honor of Crawford’s daughter, Zaniya Drew, to students pursuing careers in technology, hospitality and veterinary studies.
The foundation has also served more than 30,000 hot meals throughout communities experiencing food insecurity. Rather than simply distributing food, Crawford and her team prepare meals on-site and serve every person with the same care and dignity they would offer customers inside their restaurants.
“Just because you can’t afford it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it,” she said.
As she reflects on the journey that brought her to this moment, Crawford hopes aspiring entrepreneurs understand they do not have to wait until everything is perfect before pursuing their dreams.
“Perfection does not exist,” she said.
She encourages entrepreneurs, especially Black entrepreneurs, to lead with faith, embrace hard work, and refuse to let others define what is possible.
“Being a Black entrepreneur, being a woman, sometimes you’ve got to do two or three times the work just to get half the credit,” Crawford said.
Each morning, she and her husband begin their day in prayer. Although she is Baptist and he is Muslim, Crawford says their shared belief in God reminds them that their work is bigger than themselves.
She also believes success depends on surrounding yourself with people who genuinely want to see you succeed.
“If you have people around you that don’t invest in you,” she said, “those are not your people.”
As Girl With the Grill prepares to welcome its first guests in Camden, Crawford hopes the restaurant will become more than another place to dine. She hopes it will serve as a reminder that purpose can emerge from hardship, communities are strengthened when people pour into one another, and that, with enough vision and determination, even life’s greatest obstacles can become the foundation for something extraordinary.
A native of Voorhees, Madison Jolley is a journalism student at Rutgers University. She served as an intern in 2025 for Front Runner New Jersey.com through the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium. She can be reached at mejolly10@gmail.com.
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