A Father’s Blueprint, a Son’s Legacy: Carolina Kitchen CEO Lance London Builds Empire Based on Vision, Family and Community

The lessons that shape Dr. Lance London were not learned from textbooks or boardrooms. 

For the founder of Carolina Kitchen, the tenets of success were learned from his father, Otis L. London. Raised in a life of poverty, his father dropped out of high school to work and support his siblings as his grandmother tried to eke out a living scrubbing floors.

“My father’s greatest fear was that I wouldn’t be better than him,” remembered London.  “Early in childhood, he told me, ‘No one in our family has ever been to college; you are going to be the first.’”  

London vividly remembers pivotal moments from his childhood.  Lying flat on the floor of his family’s D.C. apartment, listening to ricocheting bullets of anger after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  He also recounts enduring five armed robberies, all before the age of adolescence.

Above the crime and poverty of those early years is another memory, one where his father took him to an empty lot, pointed to the dirt on the ground, and explained how one day, a house would be built for their family where nothing yet existed.

“I was taught early,” London said, “that almost anything in life can be accomplished, you envision it, you create it, then you outwork everyone else to achieve it.”

Character Before Currency

London’s father grew up in deep poverty. As a teenager, his work ethic quickly catapulted him to become the top newspaper boy for the Washington Daily News.  At around age 15, barely old enough to drive, his sales skills won him a car, which he quickly sold in order to continue the financial support of his mother and siblings.

From his earliest memories, London remembers his father’s valuable advice about life, hard work, dressing for success, and how to treat people.

“My father would tell me and later my little brother stories of how hard he struggled, and of the men he would teach us to become,” said London.

The Carolina Kitchen CEO recalls a lesson of even greater value taught by his father: success is intrinsically tied to how you treat people.

That principle, character before currency, would quietly shape everything London built.

Entrepreneur Melvante Williams first encountered London in 1994 while attending Howard University. What began as a summer job selling life insurance quickly became a master class in leadership, discipline, and character development.

“The reason why most people aren’t millionaires is that they are not million-dollar people,” Williams recalled as one of the first lessons learned from London.  “The money doesn’t come first; the money is attracted to a certain type of person and can only be sustained through forging a high level of character.”

Williams watched London teach his team how to dress, how to speak, how to keep their word, and how to follow through. More than sales tactics, they were lessons about identity. 

London’s business vision, Williams said, is never average and never theoretical. 

“Lance London has a vision that is far beyond average goals.  But the difference is that he undoubtedly believes it,” Williams explained.  “In his mind, he is already figuring out the steps to make it happen.”

And, just as the restaurateur watched his father’s journey, Williams witnessed London envision, speak, and work the impossible into reality.

“I remember him telling me, ‘I am going to build a house.’ [At] 11 o’clock at night, we are out in the middle of dirt fields in undeveloped subdivisions with flashlights as he tells me my bathroom will be there, the bedrooms here, my terrace is going to be on this side,”  Williams recounted. “There was nothing there, yet he could already see it.”

By the time London opened his first restaurant, he wasn’t just the owner; he had designed the building specifications and interior himself. The discipline he learned watching his father build from scratch had become his own blueprint.

“You have to envision things way before you make them a reality.  Your life is a mirror of your constant thoughts and beliefs,” said London.  

The Carolina Kitchen CEO continued, “I envision what it is that I want and what it takes to achieve it.  I picture and even draw what I want it to be.  As I’ve gotten more experienced, I now, like my father before me, have learned to envision it, even at the inception stage, as already being done.”

Losing Everything, and Building Again

By early adulthood, London had founded L. London and Associates, training hundreds of Black professionals in sales and leadership. The office was a vision few had seen before.

“Everybody in suits and ties,” recounted Dr. Dawn N. Moss, vice president of Big City Foods. “Eighty Black agents. His goal was to teach everyone how to make at least $10,000 a month, and many were on track to do so.”

But such huge successes did not make him immune to collapse.

When unethical actions by some of his sales agents led to the loss of a major government contract, London found himself legally and financially responsible for millions of dollars in repayment.

“I lost everything,” London said plainly.

The loss wasn’t just financial. Years of progress disappeared almost overnight, forcing the entrepreneur to confront a level of challenge that very few people would be able to overcome.

Mentee Andre Brown, founder of Vision 2911, said the key to London’s long-term success is rooted in sacrifice.

“People don’t see the days without sleep, the constant teaching and talking until he loses his voice,” Brown said. “They don’t see what it takes to put everything you have on the line for something only you may believe in. And when it doesn’t work, what it takes to be brave enough to pivot and start again, even after losing millions, with hundreds of people still depending on you.”

London rebuilt methodically, applying the same principles his father had taught him decades earlier: discipline, hard work, and an unshakable belief that setbacks do not define a person.

Moss, who for 32 years has witnessed London’s evolution firsthand, credits a higher source. 

“He taught me, ‘When you go into business with God, you never go out of business,’” she recalled. “With that level of faith, there was no way he would fail.”

That rebuilding would eventually lead to a second act few could have imagined.

Today, London owns seven restaurants, none of which have ever gone out of business. 

London’s impact extends beyond food. In 2025, he made history as the first Black man in Prince George’s County to be awarded two liquor licenses and to open a spirits store.

“Breaking barriers in a space where access has long been limited is undoubtedly historic,” said Brown.  “It also demonstrates the very essence of who Dr. London is.” 

For London, the journey has never been about wealth alone. It’s about proving that character survives collapse, and that legacy is built not by avoiding failure, but by how you rise after it.

“The lessons my father taught me still hold,” London said. “You don’t become successful because of what you gain. You become successful because of who you become when everything is taken away.”