Haitian-owned businesses in metropolitan Miami have followed their customers. Audebert maps their locations between 2001 and 2009 and finds two districts rather than one: the older concentration in Little Haiti, where three storefronts in five are Haitian-owned and shoppers arrive from across South Florida, and a newer suburban corridor in North Miami organized along West Dixie Highway and served by Haitian-run mini-bus routes.

The second district represents duplication rather than growth — the same restaurants, grocers, botanicas and repair shops, moved north with the residents. This disappoints Audebert's own earlier prediction that the ethnic economy would diversify. Most firms are undercapitalized, dependent on Haitian custom, and poorly connected to one another or to local banks, which limits what they could contribute to reconstruction after 2010. Their real asset is fluency in two commercial cultures, and he suggests building supply links back to small producers in Haiti.