How Slutty Vegan owner Pinky Cole is paying it forward

While many plant-based foods brands have struggled recently, Pinky Cole’s fast food chain Slutty Vegan keeps growing, with new restaurants opening across the U.S. Pinky explains how she’s scaling the brand despite lawsuits, social media attacks and a flurry of vegan restaurant competitors closing. Pinky also shares the story behind her recent keynote at Savannah State University, where she gifted the HBCU grads almost $9 million in entrepreneurial tools and training. 

This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.

The winning strategy behind Slutty Vegan

You’ve been a vegan since 2014. I’ve had the CEOs of Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat on this show. And when I talk to them, they focus on climate change, the ethics of eating meat, and how the product tastes. You don’t generally tend to do any of that. You’ve even said that Slutty Vegan isn’t about the food. It’s about the experience. 

It is. I wanted to create something that could meet people where they are. Seventy percent of the people that come to Slutty Vegan are not vegan. They are true meat eaters. So if I can get them to shift their mindset and try this plant-based burger, and they like it, then they might say, “you know what? If it’s good at Slutty Vegan, it may be good at another restaurant that sells vegan options”. I really want people to try the food and say, “okay, this is the first step to the rest of my life”. And veganism can be fun. Veganism can be cool. It can be sexy. That’s how you get people walking through the doors. That’s how you grow a hundred million dollar brand. And that’s how you get to change the narrative of what people think about this whole vegan movement.  

So you’ve built this hundred million dollar brand. You have 14 locations, I think a couple more coming this year. But you’re not like Chipotle, like you’re not everywhere. Maybe a better analogy is Shake Shack, because Shake Shack’s founder Danny Meyer is one of your investors. Is a dozen or so outlets enough, or is the plan for Slutty Vegan to be everywhere? 

I feel like this is therapy and I like it. I don’t gotta pay my therapist this week. The vegan space is very hard. And it’s very hard because I am carving out a lane that virtually doesn’t exist. Like I am the blueprint. You understand what I’m saying? So when something goes wrong, I have to look at my own model because I’m setting the tone for the next class of vegan restaurants to come behind me, and that’s not always fun. 

So now as I grow and scale and open these locations, and now I’m a multimillion dollar brand with multimillion dollar bills, sometimes I’m getting sued, it depends on the day of the week, right? Now I have to make data driven decisions in order to scale this company so that we can continue to sustain. We’ve already got the brand down. The brand is bigger than the business. Now we need to make sure that the business can stand on its own, especially because it’s standing up against the Burger Kings and the McDonald’s and all the other great brands that have been in business for so long. 

Paying it forward

The New Yorker wrote a story about you a year ago. And there was this phrase in there that said, “she’s not ideological. She’s first and foremost, a saleswoman.” And it was almost damning with faint praise, like there’s not some higher mission, like almost that you’re just a saleswoman. Do you take offense at that? Do you lean into that? 

I put my money where my mouth is. I have a foundation called the Pinky Cole Foundation. I’ve paid the rent for local business owners. I’ve paid the tuition for 30 college students so that they can graduate. I’ve given out at least 800 LLCs to graduating class of seniors, opportunities like providing life insurance for black men if they make $30,000 or less.  So you can call me what you want, but I do the work. You see burgers and fries, that’s just a vessel. But the vessel leads you to the engagement, community, helping to bridge the wealth gap, the education, the edification, the knowledge, the wisdom. And if you want to call it what you want, who cares? But guess what? I get the job done. 

You recently gave the commencement address at Savannah State University, an HBCU, and you announced there that you were donating almost 9 million entrepreneurial services to graduates in partnership with Operation Hope. Where did that idea come from? 

When you have a platform, it is your responsibility to use that platform. So when the opportunity came to be the commencement speaker for Savannah State University, I’m like, ‘okay, what is it that I can do with my platform to leave these people better than I found them?’ I want them to really get what they need so that they can be great because I know what it feels like to go in a world and still trying to figure it out. That kind of opportunity is golden. And I’m not going to stop there. I want to be recognized as a beacon of hope. 

You’ve said that you’re a celebrity by accident. It can look from the outside like you’ve navigated all the challenges of being a black woman in business smoothly, but it can’t have been that easy? 

To get here was easy. To stay here is where the challenge comes. I made a million dollars in the first three months. But how about making another $20 million and another $20 million after that, and navigating getting sued. I flush the toilet wrong and I’m on the news, right? So like making sure that you operate in excellence and being first in class in everything that you do is not easy, but it’s so worth it because it forces you to make sure that you show up as the best version of yourself.

The toughest year of Pinky’s career

You said a few months ago that the past year has been among the most stressful of your career, which is a pretty high bar given that your first restaurant in Harlem burnt down and you lost everything, and you opened the first Slutty Vegan during the pandemic. So what happened during the last year? 

It’s funny because the business has consistently continued to grow. So this is not a matter of like, “Oh, business is not doing well.” Business is booming. New opportunities, new engagements, new accomplishments. I made the Time 100 Next list last year, still on the covers of magazines, still getting lists. I’m a finalist for Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year. So like I’m popping, right? But I’ve never scaled a multimillion dollar brand before. I stepped away and I had three kids. I had a baby in ‘21. I had a baby in ‘22. And I had a baby in ‘23. And then I got married all at the same time. 

Somebody said to me when I had to do some layoffs in the business last year. The person said, “if it were me, I would have never taken my hands off the wheel.” Right? And it hit me like a thorn in my spine, but I needed it because now that I’m back in it, back holding it and touching it, I’ll never take my hands off the wheel. And that was the greatest lesson that I’ve ever learned. So this is where we are. We’re opening locations. I’m working on my second cookbook. and it is the most beautiful, chaotic roller coaster ride that anybody could ever be on. 

So right now, what’s at stake? 

What’s at stake? I don’t want to be a Netflix documentary. Not for the wrong reasons, anyway. All of the vegan restaurants around us are closing. So can you imagine being at war and everybody else is dropping. You’re in the sea all by yourself and you’re like, okay, so like, “am I next?” So every day is uncertain. I will not lose. I will not lose. I will continue to grow. I will continue to thrive. I will continue to create opportunity for other people. And that’s a big responsibility, but they say “heavy is the head that wears the crown.” I’m up for the challenge. 

https://www.fastcompany.com/91146453/how-slutty-vegan-owner-pinky-cole-is-paying-it-forward?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss