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Slutty Vegan: Unapologetically for the Culture

Source: The Washington Post / Getty

Pinky Cole of Slutty Vegan is on a mission. She’s on a five-city tour to support her new book, Eat Plants, B*tch: 91 Vegan Recipes That Will Blow Your Meat-Loving Mind, which came out on Tuesday.

“It’s going to be a vibe,” Cole told the New York Daily News, while in NYC on the tour’s first stop. “I’m doing everything for this. I got performances, DJ Trauma, and Black-owned businesses that are coming in to promote their stuff. I’ll talk about the book, entrepreneurship, and sharing my story.”

Cole, 34, became vegan in 2014. The former Maury Show casting director thought creating tasty vegan food would be a great side hustle. From one Atlanta-based food truck, she’s developed a cult following and now has six locations in Georgia and Alabama. In September, she opened Slutty Vegan in Brooklyn and will open a second New York store in Harlem by the end of the month.

“New York is a whole other breed. I love whatever way New York is. It’s so different from the other locations,” Cole told the Daily News. “What I like about this [Brooklyn] location is that you got everybody — you got white people, Black people, Asians, everybody from everywhere, that just pass through. So I get to reintroduce the brand to people every single day. And that is cool.”

Her cookbook includes more than 90 recipes for meals like Oyster Mushroom Parm, Avocado Egg Rolls, and a Black Pea Cauliflower Po’Boy. If her legions of celebrity fans that, including Shaquille O’Neal, Spike Lee, Snoop Dogg, and Jermaine Dupri, is any indication, she’s well on the way to becoming one of the most prominent female restauranters in the country.

“So I started my concept in my two-bedroom apartment while working full-time as a casting director, “ Cole told AP. ”The idea hit me out of nowhere. I didn’t know a side hustle would turn into a $100 million brand. I thought I was doing something personally for myself. But I was really doing something for people who want to reimagine food in a different way. The name was a catchy way to get people to pay attention. I knew ‘slutty’ and ‘vegan’ didn’t go together. They’re so oddly different that if you put them together, it would make people ask questions.”

Cole’s tour continues through November in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Baltimore.

Slutty Vegan Founder Pinky Cole Releases Cookbook, Opens 2 NYC Locations  was originally published on cassiuslife.com