Making a Difference, One Slutty Vegan at a Time

vegan are not even vegan. If I can get you to at least consider replacing one meal a day, then I know I've done my job, and I know I've done something right. Hey, I'm Tom Collikio and you're with Sneak to Citizen Chef. Say we're talking to Pinky Call. Pinky is recognized locally and by her fans and celebrities trying to figure out how to deliver a sloppy toppy across the country. You know, she's not a chef, but

she really is an amazing restaurantur. I first met Pinky when I was asked to mentor a few restaurant tours through a program that Forbes was doing, and I was absolutely blown away. Just the the handle that she has had on the restaurant industry and the question that she was asking you was much much deeper than what I expected a freshman restaurant tour to ask. She went from her share kitchen to two food trucks to now multiple locations a spinoff concept. I'm sure there's going to be

a movie about her life one day. While we saw many of my peers shutter the restaurants during the pandemic, she has just grown. So it's just my my absolute pleasure to introduce Pinky Cole to the Citizenship Podcast. Yes, I'm excited, so let's just jump right in. People have said it was overnight success, but but nothing happens overnight, and you had a long career. You were kind of hustling as a kid. Yeah, I want to ask you first,

where where does the entrepreneurial drive come from? That entrepreneuri drive? So the day that I was born, my father was being sentenced to life in prison. Right. He was a businessman. He wasn't a legal businessman, but he was a businessman and the US right. So I grew up watching my mother, who fifty percent of her time was spent at a company which she's been at the same company now for

over thirty years. Right when she loves and appreciates, and then the other fifty percent of her time she spent as an entrepreneur, lead singer of a reggae band, radio personality, just still getting her hands wet and really trying to fulfill her dreams as much as possible as a single mother while my father was in prison. So what I learned from my father being in prison and my mother being a part time entrepreneur is that the hustle never stops. Right.

So I've seen two examples of individuals who really just wanted a better life. Even my father, from behind bars, he would send me rich Dad, Poor Dad. He would teach me about stocks, he would tell me about business. So I got all of the business acumen from him, but I did it the legal way. So growing up, I used to throw parties and I used to make four thousand dollars every every week. Read about that. I read about this. You used to throw parties for kids

and charge them. Yeah, like high school parties are in Baltimore and I was just doing a thing. You know, people knew my family. We were Jamaican. We were well known in the community. And I'm a talker. As you can see, I like to wear my mouth. So I started throwing these events. How how did you know these kids would pay to come to a party. I mean I thre parties when I was a kid, and I thought I could charge people. I just became a salesman at an early age, like I have mastered the art

of bringing people together, and now it's coming full circle. Um. In high school, I was selling the chickens um and reselling them for two dollars, selling candy for anything you can think of. I was just a natural born hustler, and I know that I got it from my parents. And when you asked me where that entrepreneur edge come from, that grit and that grind and that hustle, it really came from my mom and my dad. And I'm so

grateful for for the humble beginnings. I think we see that with so many immigrant families that come to this country, absolutely that that hustle is uh. You know it runs deep because you're right, you know, immigrants come to this because they want to make a better life for their things. Right. I just know what hard work is, Tom, You know, like nothing ever came easy for my family. I tell people all the time Christmas is I didn't get like Barbie and Ken. I didn't get dolls growing up. I

didn't get toys. I didn't watch cartoons growing up. I was watching Lifetime with my grandmother, right like, I really saw examples of people that got up every single day, didn't ask for any handouts, went and worked. The lights were never cut off. We always had exactly what we needed. And I'm so grateful for those life lessons early on. Now, Sunny Vegan, wasn't your first restaurant. You opened up a Jamaican restaurant in Yeah, and it was successful. It was successful,

but it started way before the restaurant. You know, my background is TV, Tom. Just like how you said you weren't prepared for that call, I wasn't prepared to work at TV like I was never prepared to either. In fact, I said no three times before I finally said yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me about that. You moved out to l A to act really yeah, I wanted to be an actress. And again another full circle moment. I just paid my SAG fee, so now I'm in the union, thank god.

But I went out there and this is the piece of the story that I really never tell people. I moved to l A with two hundred fifty dollars a Duffel bag in a suitcase in the Bible. I was in a three bedroom house, but in one of those bedrooms there was four of us living in one of the bedrooms right and splitting the rent of the bedroom. So we were each paying three hundred dollars every single month.

And during that time and humbled me number one. Number two, I got an opportunity to work in TV as a production assistant, and then I got a call from The Maury Show. And during my time at Maury, I saved up a lot of my money, got a loan from a family friend. And one of my friends said, you know what, there's a building that is looking to put a restaurant there. If you wanted the rent is only mind you. I didn't know anything about the restaurant industry nothing.

I'm not a chef, yes, explain, explaining, So this is crazy right now, where so many chefs want to be and yet you open a restaurant with out the first restaurant zero experience, just because someone called you and said the rents cheap. Now, actually you got that you got that piece right, because that that is is probably one of the most important things you can do when you're a shepherd or anyone trying to run the business, to get a good rent deal. And so, I mean, my

first restaurant was was Grammarcy Tyrant. I gotta say for the for that space in the Union Square area, the grammar Cy Park area, that was well well figured out. It was ten square feet in Union Square. Yeah it was. It was actually a great rent you actually, you know, had that going for you. But what makes you think you can open a restaurant never having experience. Um, there's so so many things that I thought about in the past. I thought that I wanted to be in the music

industry and that was a fail. But I needed to do that. And you know, I wanted to do the TV thing on my own and that didn't work. But it wasn't supposed to work. I was supposed to get in a restaurant industry. And sometimes the universe puts things in your face that you least expect um, and that is when you're in alignment. When it when it works out.

And it worked out for me because I didn't have experience and I opened this concept up and I had a line down the block and I was selling jerk chicken, not even eating jerk chicken. I haven't eaten meat since two thousand seven. And I opened up my restaurant in two thousand and fourteen, and and it was successful. How did you know how to put the pieces together? So I hired ad you make in chef. Some of the recipes were mine and and again, you know you had

a restaurant before. I actually lived in my restaurants, like every day, all day. I sacrificed my early twenties to be in that restaurant. But when I look back at it, like I needed that training. I needed to go through what I went through, good, bad, and indifferent, because it really taught me how to be a better entrepreneur. I didn't know what I was doing so much so that I didn't even get fire insurance for my business. And you know me having a fire at my establishment. Right,

So so let's talk about that. You you opened the restaurant, big success. I think you opened up a second juice bar, and so you're just you know, knocking out of the park. You got two restaurants. You get a phone call, there's a fire, go back to that that day. You know, your dreams come crashing down. It was hard, you know. Um, I gotta be honest. I put my whole life savings, everything that I had, I did it by myself, and to work in a restaurant fourteen fifteen hours a day.

And I can remember closing up my doors. It was the night that I closed myself, Um, and I closed the doors, and the fire department called me and they told me that the restaurant was on fire. So I live right down the street and I saw the restaurants smoky at this time that they put out the fire, but everything was smoky, everything was black, And I was just in disbelief because I'm like, every single thing that

I built is in shambles. And when I tell you, that was actually the best thing that could have ever happened to me, because I probably would still be in that restaurant, clocking in every single day, physically being present and not being able to scale a grow, right, But I didn't understand it at the moment. That's why life is just so beautiful, right, Like life really teaches you about patients and resilience and just understanding that there's a

reason for everything. How do you pick yourself up? And I don't know. When fire put out of fire they care to part. Yeah, do you find the fire and pull the water on it? They rip, rip the place apart. They do the job, and so how do you pick yourself up? The following day you go there and try to pick up the pieces. Already just kind of walking down. I was in disabilte. I didn't know what to do. To be honest, I didn't have fire insurance, so I wasn't protected. I thought that I could try to salvage

what was left. I couldn't. Everything was damaged. Um so I fell into a little depression. Well what I felt was a depression, right, I've never felt like that before, and I can remember. It happened so fast. I went from like, Okay, this fire happened, to my car getting repolled, to me getting evicted, to me losing everything, to me going flat broke, and I'm like, what is going on? Like it felt like a failure, and now that I look at it, it was never really a failure at all.

So you have to back in Atlanta, put my stuff in storage that was in I came to Atlanta and it felt right and at the time when I moved to Atlanta, I was running five miles a day. People people thought I was crazy, five miles a day. I was reading every day, I was researching on YouTube, I was doing everything. Were running from her. I was running on the treadmill, running the house off. Yeah. I was conditioning my mind. Yeah, my mindset was shifting. I didn't

want to go out. I didn't want to hang with people. I just wanted to like research. I was just in research mode. And I can remember I was in my bedroom one day and it hit me like a light ball, slutty Vegan out of nowhere. Literally, I'm just sitting there like slutty Vegan. And I didn't know what it meant. I didn't. I'm like, I'm like, what is slutty Vegan.

Slutty Vegan is a restaurant. Slutty Vegan is And because I was hungry, I was in Atlanta and on a late night, everything was closed and I'm just like, wow, slutty Vegan. And when it hit me, I called my best friend. I'm like, what do you think about this now? She was like, I love it. Do something with it. And then I just got to work. Well, so you were you're work vegan at this point? Oh I was vegan. Yeah, absolutely, So there's no place to go late night for vegan

food in Atlanta. Now, um, and you had this epiphany, this slutty vegan. How long from that moment to getting the doors open? Take So I came up with the idea first week of July. I started August six. Everything this this was from the moment of conceptualizing the idea, to getting my permits and my paperwork, finding a shared kitchen, doing the research, creating a menu. So I moved really,

really fast. I learned that in l A there were so many ghost kitchens where people could order food and deliver, so that's where I got the idea from. So when I got to Atlanta and did it, nobody else in Atlanta was doing it. And I found the shared kitchen and I said, listen, I got this crazy idea. Let me try it. And like, okay, we've never heard of it,

but you could try it. And I did it, and the first week it was like four people there, and then a week after that it was like fifty, and then it just kept growing, growing so much that they kicked me out because they said I had too many people coming. Stick with us because when we come back, Pekicle will tell us about her plans for the future and how Slightly Vegan will one day be your household name. Welcome back. I'm Tom Collichio, and I'm speaking with Pinky Cole,

owner of a Slutty Vegan. Right before the break, she told us about how she got kicked out of her shared kitchen. So you can get out, and so we came first. Was it the brick and water or future? It was the food truck. So you know, it's funny. I need to call him and say thank you because the owners were like, listen, I know you you got a good business, but the other tenants are complaining. You gotta figure something out. Maybe should go get a food truck.

And that's what I did. Never ate from a food truck, never been on the food truck. Nothing. I just put ten thousand dollars on a food truck. I got it wrapped and I parked it in the parking lot of the shared kitchen that I was at, and I just resumed business and it worked. And the next thing I know, Tom, I was on the east side. I was on the

west side. And it grew from like a hundred people to like almost five hundred people standing outside every single day for me for my burgers, And I'm like, wait a minute, what is going on? So what is going on? So that's a great question, right. So obviously you know the majority of my consumers are African American. Right, So my mission is to have all people see veganism in a whole new way. Right, whether you're black, white, blue,

I don't care who you are. All people are beginning to get a little more conscious when it comes to the food that they consume, especially Black people. Traditional soul food was accustomed. So to be able to put a vegan restaurant in the heart of the South and create an experience around it, and to have Black people be interested in it, that was something that you've never really seen before, especially because veganism, once upon a time was

considered a rich white lifestyle. Right if you think, if you think about the communities in which a lot of black people lived in, we didn't have the access to resources, to access to food, food insecurities. We can go on and on and on about that. Right, once upon a time, veganism was like, oh, that's the Beverly Hills lifestyle, right, that that yoga. Yeah, in the early nineties and the

early eighties. So now when you think about Beyonce advocating for veganism, when you think about the biggest artists advocating for veganis they've made it cool. And we are cool.

I mean all people are cool. But you know what, like if you really want to give you an honest answer, right, So, so I've been able to create an experience for people where they come for that experience, but they leave with the food, all the while learning how to be more conscious about the food they consume, even if it starts with a burger and the fry. And the beautiful thing about study vegan is that it has translated from from being a black thing, right because I don't see color

when it comes to food. And this is a form of silent protests. We're bringing people together in the name of food and love. It doesn't get more beautiful than that, right it doesn't. So do you come at a veganism from health carepoint? Are from not wanting sea animals killed or eagan animals? What are you see that we're working together? I am vegan for my health and I love animals all at the same time. Right. Um. I think so often people have put labels on veganism, which is why

so many people shied away from it. So at this point, I don't care why you want to be. You want to go vegan because you want to least some weight. Great, you want to go vegan because you love the animals. Great, you want to go vegan because you want to lower your calesso or even better. But whatever the reason is, if you want to save the plan, whatever your reason is. What has made the business so successful is we don't put labels on it. We're not pushing the agenda my audience.

Percent of the people who come to Slutty Vegan are not even vegan. These people are flexitarian vegetarian me eaters. Those are the people that I want because if I can get you to at least consider replacing one meal a day, then I know I've done my job and I know I've done something right. We are not going to judge you, and that is how we're changing and redefining the narrative of veganism because it's a safe space. You could be whoever you want to be. Coming in

Disburg and Fry and I got you. You could be whatever you want to be. It sounds like you're servicing two communities. You're servicing your community in your neighborhood and you're serving the greater vegan community at large. Uh. Ninety five per cent of my locations are in food and secure areas, areas that are in the heart of gentrification, areas that developers don't find too attractive, because I want to create that space where people can see themselves. Right,

it's a historic neighborhood. So if a black owned business can come into this neighborhood and help to revitalize the community, help to raise the property value, then we've done something right. Right. It will make more people want to move into that community. It will make more black people want to stay in that community. And I even just recently just bought the local daycare in the area, and I'm I'm making it a community center. So you're not looking at gentrification as

as as a negative thing. You're looking at this, This is a black owned business gentrifying my neighborhood, as opposed to people coming in pushing property values up and pushing people. And now we are bringing the essence of blackness back into the neighborhood, back into the neighborhood and welcoming people to come and live in this neighborhood so that it can be inclusive of all people and not just big developers just building up these high rises. No, we're not

doing that. And if I can buy, and what I do is I buy the land, so I buy the real estate in these places. So now there's ownership and I'm teaching the community about group economics. I'm just being to change that. I wish to say, you know what I mean, So like I get to do that, and it's beautiful because I'll give you an example my my Birmingham location that I'm working on right now. I paid a hundred seventy five dollars for that location for for

three thousand square feet. Right, it's not it's a historic neighborhood, but from the neked eyes, it doesn't look so desirable. But I did it because I know that when I put Slutty Vegan there, I'm giving an opportunity for the local business owners to make money. There's another opportunity for people to come and buy the real estate and the property value will go up. That's what happened at my

first location. And I'm going to continue to wash, rent and repeat, because I know that there is value and putting slutty vegan in these areas and raising up the value of these locations where that some people in the community weren't so crazy about the lines in the language, the playfulness of slutty vegan and taking a little too a little too, a little too serious where they where they were. They were complaining about the use of the word slot and that kids were hearing this and how

did you respond to that. I didn't get a very warm welcome um And it was stressful, I'll be honest, because here I am. I'm just a young girl just trying to do a thing right and just really trying to help my people out. But it really taught me about resilience. And when you think about the word slutty, people always ask me like, well, why would you name a slutty vegan? This has nothing to do with sex,

you know. I many thirteen and twelve year olds are on TikTok and mouthing the words to every single curse word there is. I'm actually teaching people something good. There's an underlying lesson here. So when I noticed there was a transition, it started to make me feel good because now I got Muslims, I got Christians, I got old people, young people saying a where it's slot And it's all about the tongue, the power of the tongue, what you

put meaning to. So we we created a word that that added power and value to people instead of taking away. So it's no longer considered a degrading word because it's a family fund place, even though it's ays slutty vegan. So now I don't have any problems with the community. I mean again, I told you I bought the community center because I wanted to show the people that I'm

invested in this community. I'm not just here to make money, right, I'm here to actually really build up the and revitalize the community and the very best way that I can. And I'm doing that. So they don't give me any problems, thank God. And hopefully I don't have any more problems with anybody else or any other locations. So I'm happy

about that. Let's let's keep talking about community here because I know you were very active in presidential election and got big wins, and uh that was watching the returns that night in Georgia. I was just just so thrilled. I was on a bunch of calls during the campaign with the Reverend Warnock, and Wow, what an inspiration. I was just just so thrilled. And I knew that. You know, Stacy Abras gets a ton of credit, and she should, and there's so many activists that are behind her doing

everything they can to change it. Now now we're looking at Georgia UM, that is just doing their damned its best to keep people from voting. So what's the next phase in that work. I don't get a sense that you'll ever stop. Part of those laws is you can no longer hand out food or drink if someone's waiting on something that we did a lot. I know you did. I know you did. Are you willing to get arrested to do it again? Damn right? You know, because I'll

be there with you. I get arrested, right, and I got and I got so many people that that back us and support us. You know, through my foundation, we did an initiative with Impossible Foods and Jamaine dupri Um to get people excited about the election before all of this stuff came up, right, Um, and I like to say that we had we played a role in turning Georgia blue. But you'd be surprised how many people actually want, you know, more about politics. They just don't know where

to get started, right. I was one of those people. I'm like, you know, I want seeing them, but like process and like all the information, I'm like, there's so much. I really just love helping people and and I don't feel that you need to have a political title to do that. And I've shown that through my foundation. When you think about all the political woes that are happening in Georgia, is it fair? Absolutely not? But am I

going to continue to do the work. Absolutely because my my foundation is my campaign from the murder of Rahard Brooks and providing for the family with scholarships, life insurance, UM and a brand new card to like donating food and fruits and and money to to entrepreneurs and paying local rents for businesses who who are affected by the pandemic UM and and right now I'm actually doing a life insurance initiative that we're launching on the twelve where

I'm getting every single black man in Atlanta life insurance that they don't have to pay for So I'm flitting the bill, so anybody who needs life insurance, they can sign up and I'm going to pay for it. Absolutely Clearly, you're trying to cheach people that there's importances absolutely. Um. Well, statistically, uh, the numbers show that that black people really don't get life insurance, um compared to their counterparts. Right. Um, there's so much police brutality and and and and crime that

happens in our community. It's a hard conversation to have, but it's the truth. Right. So, so you don't don't have black ince and you're dying it earlier exactly. So. So when myself and um my my foundation partner, we came up with the idea, it was a way to say, well, you know what, like they keep killing black people, right, so let's do something where black men are protected, right,

at least their families, their families are protected. Right. So not only are we teaching financial literacy, we'll be teaching about mental health. Um. And we're showing people that you don't have to go to a fish fry and raise money for a funeral. You don't have to do it go fund me and nothing against go fund means or fish fries, but we really want to show people that you can create generational wealth for your family, and all you have to do is this. So so this is

a step in the right direction. I'm doing a call to action all the big corporations that want to support small own, black owned, women owned businesses to to to to donate money to this cause. And we really just want to do a thing to be able to change the world, even if we do it one state at a time. So I'm excited about it. I'm excited about all the things that I get to do through my platform,

and this is the meaningful work for me. Right. I was telling somebody the other day time, like, you know, business is cool, I make money, right, Like, I love that part, but like the philanthropic efforts that is what really like makes my belly leave. I watched my mother give the clothes off her back to help every single person around her, whether she knew them or not. I didn't gain like thirty new cousins that we didn't share any blood, but they grew up in the household with me.

But I learned that from my mother. So growing up, I'm like, God, if you give me an opportunity to really bless other people, I'm gonna do that. And I'm not gonna stop. So this is me doing that and I'm never going to stop as long as I got breath in my body. Do you think that that the black community looking at these restrictions are going to come out in force just to push back. Absolutely, But let me tell you something about Atlanta. Okay, Atlanta is Wakanda

okay um and Atlanta. One thing I love about Atlanta is the people of Atlanta will band together, um for a good cause. Right. We are a lot more conscious in Atlanta, um. And that feels good because there's so many beautiful educated black people, brown people, minorities, white people. There's so many people that are more in tune with politics, especially because politics are affecting the people of Georgia. Right.

So now young people are getting more involved, um, Young educated people are getting more involved, and more more celebrities, more rappers are getting more involved, and they are leading the way of the efforts and like making Georgia the place where people want to live and people want to grow and people want to make money and have businesses. So do I believe that that people are going to band together and protest and do the right thing. Absolutely?

And I also think it's gonna happen in other states too. I mean, you see, you see what happened with you know, George Floyd, Rest in peace to him. Everybody came together, not just black people, everybody. You have white people, black people coming together for the first time publicly in a way where everybody was mad. Yeah, but you know, hopefully it doesn't take more black men and black boys getting killed to do this. And we have opportunities in St. Louis.

I mean, Missouri is just too too red. And yet you have St. Louis where you can do the same thing that happened in Atlanta. You have Cleveland that could that could you know, change O High And so I agree with you. There's a lot of opportunities in a lot of different cities to get people out and voting. You know, this is the real disenfranchisement when it really come down to it's going going back to Jim Crow. This is all about making sure black folks couldn't get

out of it. And it's so crazy. It's one the world that we live in. But I think that we have enough powerful voices to be able to combat that. And I'm actually looking forward to those efforts, know, and I'll be right out there too with those efforts. Like I said, if you want to feed people online waiting to vote, you, let me know what. I'll come down and we'll get risk. We'll get risk you. We'll be

back with more citizen Chef. We're back with Pinky Cole, who was just sharing her amazing efforts to grow and change the community around Slutty Vegan. Where do you go from here? You're a successful business person, you are a philanthropists, You're what's next? I mean, obviously you're you're growing your business. How quickly do you see yourself growing? And how are you going to go the franchising route? We talked about raising money? Are in the process of raising money? What's next?

I mean, do you dream of having five hundred Slutty Vegans across the country in Europe and Australia and anywhere else where? Do you go from Slutty Vegan will be a household name. I'm confident about that. I remember when I first started Slutty Vegan and I was sitting at the table with two billionaires and probably a millionaire thousand there, and I looked at them and I said, my company will be valued at a billion dollars in less than

five years. And they laughed at me, and it was it had nothing to do with the money, but the value of the business and the impact that the business made. And they laughed. And and now I'm laughing because I know that I'm on my way. I'm opening some additional locations this year. Already have three that I'm working on right now, and that's Birmingham, New York and gownd that's in Georgia. I got some airport opportunities that are happening.

I will be doing an injection of capital, a large raise to be able to scale in a way that I want to scale. But right now, I'm really focused on making sure that my operations continue to get better, uh, making sure that I bring in the right people to help me grow the company. You know, I started this company by myself and then I grew it with about five people and now here I am, I have a hundred twenty five people helping me to grow the company.

And now it's time to really level up. We went from my mom and pop to now this is a corporation, am I am. I'm looking for more people who have the expertise, who have proven the scale businesses to to really help continue to grow the company, because, to be honest, the company is out growing me. Right, So I'm I'm I'm keeping up as the CEO of the company. Again. Remember this is the girl from East Baltimore who has a background of TV, who just had an idea to

do a restaurant. And now here we are. I have three locations to food trucks, about to open up three more this year, and I'm like, how did we get here? And I did it all in the pandemic. No, actually, it accelerated everything. I opened up a fourth location tom too. I opened up a bar. It's called Bar vegan Um in Atlanta, Georgia. It does extremely well. But the beauty of it all is I get to to basically do

all the things that I think about every day. I see Sledty Vegan making an impact through the community, vegan or not. I want people to be able to see themselves when they come into my business, right. I want a white person to be able to see another white person like, hey, I see you. You know what I'm saying, Like I want a black person to be able to

see themselves. And at the end of today, I want everybody to be able to feel like they're included and they see a part of themselves and they can come and work together as a family. It's all about family today. And I am looking for more diversity in my company and I'm excited about that, right. I'm excited about the diversity and inclusion and just making people feel welcome and

wanted in my business. And that is why Slutty Vegan is going to change the game when it comes to being a silent pillar of bringing people all people together in the name of food and non food. I want to get back to the pandemic question. Do you think you had an advantage? Because there was clearly and still is a disruption in meat. Prices are going through the roof right now, and uh, you don't have to deal with that. So what is the barrier growth in terms

of who we're seeing inflation everywhere? Are you seeing the cost of your goods going on? And how are you managing? Yeah, they're going up, but we just keep going. I think one of the advantages that I had, and I'm gonna be totally transparent with you and everything happened with COVID one. People got emotional, and when people are emotional, they want to eat right and We were a popular company before

the pandemic. We got even more popular because we turned on online deliveries and now everybody wants to order online. That's number one. Number two, we saw a influx of big corporations wanting to support small businesses, and that was an advantage for us because we had the biggest of companies wanting to support us in whatever way we wanted to get support, right, And I think that a lot of other small businesses could say the same thing, So

that gave us an advantage. And because we were already doing community work before the pandemic, so we continued the community where people like, Okay, this is a company that was doing this before even a pandemic existed, and now they continue to do the work. This is a business that we believe in it that we wanted to support. So I did a collab with shake Shack, I did a collab with Morning Star, Incognito foot Locker, so so many,

so many within the year. I'm doing a documentary that I'm dropping August six, on my third anniversary, and that documentary is about how Slutty the Again thrived in a pandemic. Literally all the things that I just said to you and what we've done and how we were able to do it and pivot and just really continue to grow this ecosystem that we know it's Sledty Vegan. I suspect that there will be a lot of people in the trenches with you, because you're really inspirational and uh and special.

And hopefully when you're when you're opening New York, I'll come and I'll see you. Well, you have no choice. You gotta be there. I'll be He'll be there for you. It's an honor for me to even be able to have this conversation with you and we get to candidly talk about like business and entrepreneurship, um and I admire you and all the things that you've done, So thank you for having me my pleasure. Really, I'm thrilled to to talk to you as a peer, not as a mentor,

because you certainly deserve that. Thank you so much. Thank you. The way the pandemic is impact your restaurants makes Pinky story of success something that industry should be proud of. I'd like to think that it's in part due to the incredible commitment to the community around her, especially during this time of crisis. You know, it goes to show it's very clear that restaurants are more than just a place to sit down and grab a meal. They actually

become anchors at the community and the community. If you support that community, the community will come out and support you. You know. Really, hearing restaurants expand during COVID was unheard of. It was amazing to hear that Pinky was able to expand. There were a few instances of restaurants opening up that we're about to open right before the pandemic and just plowed ahead with those plans. But uh, you know, Pinky really is thrived during this pandemic. And again, a very

hearty thanks again to Pinky Coal of Slutty Vegan. We're spending time with me this afternoon and it's always a special thanks to a place the table. Citizen Chef is executive produced by Christipher Haciotis, Our producer is Gabby Collins, and our researcher is Lillian Holman. Citizen Chef as a production of I Heart Media. For more a podcast, visit the iHeartMedia app or anywhere you subscribe to your favorite shows.