Indigenous-owned Blak Tapas Bush Food Café will open its doors in Kununurra in early June with the support of Job Pathways.

The new business will provide job seekers with hospitality training while being in paid employment, along with career development and mentoring to build skills in teamwork, communication, service, resilience and more.

Not-for-profit Job Pathways is funded through the Federal Government National Indigenous Australians Association (NIAA), engaged to deliver job pathway programs in the Kimberley in northern Western Australia.

Job Pathways chief executive Laura Little said the organisation is led by its "mission to provide pathways to employment through engagement and training, promoting economic development and delivering services that enable participation".

"Through proactive consultation with our community, we are supporting the expansion of Blak Tapas to help grow Aboriginal enterprise in the Kimberley," she said.

"Through hands-on, on-the-job work experience, jobseekers will have the opportunity to develop skills that lead to local employment opportunities."

Owned and operated by Temali Howard, Blak Tapas is expanding its catering business and pop up lunches with a bricks-and-mortar café.

"My passion is to develop personal goals with program participants so it's more than just teaching participants how to be a barista, use a knife, food safety and the like," Ms Howard told National Indigenous Times.

"I want Blak Tapas Bush Food Café to be a safe place for Aboriginal people to come and work, we don't have many Aboriginal owned businesses in town, especially ones that offer a pathway.

"We'll be working on goal setting to identify what career objectives might look like, develop the importance of working, how to be valued in a team and how to work in a team."

An overall objective of Job Pathways is to develop the participants' self-confidence so they can go out and gain employment in other places.

In April 2023, Ms Howard resigned from her full-time government job to focus on Blak Tapas. Prior to that, she held various roles in youth justice, legal education, advocacy, family violence and child protection.

"With my advocacy and justice experience, I'll be delivering similar information to program participants but rather than in a workshop setting, it'll be in the kitchen," Ms Howard said.

"Even once participants move on from Blak Tapas, the mentoring will continue and we'll provide ongoing support for a successful future."

Blak Tapas Café will also employ hospitality staff to work alongside and help train Job Pathway participants.

"I'm really proud that the business has organically evolved and grown – this has been a dream of mine for a few years and I'm excited that it'll soon be realised."

Blak Tapas Bush Food Café will continue its focus of creating dishes with native ingredients. The plan is to be open for coffee and food during the day as well as continue on with Friday night tapas and corporate catering and events.