Good morning,
There was a line around the block, and Pinky Cole was perplexed.
It was April, and the founder and owner of Atlanta's Slutty Vegan had just reopened her burger joint, following a two-week, state-mandated closure. There were more people waiting in line--socially distanced and masked, the lot of them--than she'd ever seen pre-Covid. "OK, this is a good problem to have," she remembers thinking. "But now, we have to make sure we're being totally responsible. Because now, we have lives at stake."
Slutty Vegan’s success in 2020 says a lot about the overall trends in Atlanta’s broader entrepreneurial ecosystem, which has gained a strong reputation for Black entrepreneurship in recent years. Nearly half of Atlanta’s Black-owned companies have permanently shuttered since March. The rest are benefitting, to varying degrees, by the nationwide call to support Black founders following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and ensuing Black Lives Matter protests.
Slutty Vegan fits that bill well. Cole is Black, and her restaurant's mission to make plant-based comfort food "cool" has gained surprising traction in Atlanta--even as only 25 percent of her customers are vegan themselves. While restaurants across the country are closing, Slutty Vegan is projecting sales of $5 million to $7 million in 2020, up 145 percent from last year, and has even opened two new locations during the pandemic.
Read our story to learn how the 33-year-old Cole managed to launch a cultural phenomenon, and garner the community support she needed to thrive in 2020. |
| |
[New post] Jump Rope Challenge will not be delisted from the Switch eShop & will be available “until further notice”
0 Comments:
Post a Comment