At the plant-based burger chain Slutty Vegan, Pinky Cole is flipping the script on vegan food with bold style. In conversation with host of "TED Radio Hour" Manoush Zomorodi, she shares the highs and lows of her entrepreneurial journey, from her roots in Baltimore to the grease fire that took her first storefront in Harlem. Learn more about the authenticity, resilience and community that went into building a multimillion-dollar vegan food empire.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Every day, more and more people are talking about climate change. At the same time, it seems that every day, more and more people don't want to hear about climate change. I get it. It's overwhelming.
But restaurateur Pinky Cole, owner of Slutty Vegan in Atlanta, Georgia, might be serving up a solution. In a conversation with TED Radio Hour host Manoush Zomorodi, Pinky shares how great food and hospitality sets the table for the harder conversations we need to keep having. Her work with plant-based food challenges us to think about the future of the planet one dish at a time. Coming up.
Pinky, I want to start with you as a teenager. I mean, you've built this $100 million valued restaurant situation. But before we get there, veganism and entrepreneurialism were in your blood from an early age. Can you tell us about that?
Oh, how early? So I have been an entrepreneur for a very long time. So yesterday on my Instagram, I posted how my mother was and still is a lead singer of a reggae band. So as a kid, she used to work five jobs, literally. And she also used to rehearse in the basement and do her shows in the basement. And my father was spending 22 years in prison. for something illegal, right?
But he was behind bars, but teaching me about entrepreneurship at the same time. This was in Baltimore. This was in Baltimore, right? So I saw my mother work hard and be loyal to somebody else, but I also saw her be an entrepreneur, and then I also saw my father being a risk taker, right? So we put that... I promise you I'm not being funny.
When you put that in a pot and you stir, I have been able to create something for myself where I want to create opportunity for other people. And that's literally how entrepreneurship began for me. I would be selling candy, frozen cup, donuts, McChickens in high school just because I love the art of creating something and giving a product to somebody for something.
OK, but you also like making money. I heard that you would go and buy fast food and then as part of your delivery service to your fellow high school students would have a nice markup on there. Like you were you hustle, hustle, hustle, man. Yes. OK, but what about the veganism part? Because your dad was from Jamaica, right? So there was eat all food with part of your tell people about that.
So my mother and my father, guys, are Rastafarian. So that's Ethiopian Christianity. So I grew up eating like all I tell food, beans, food from the ground, like getting candy was a treat, right? Like eating fast food once a month was a treat. So I already had a different level of consciousness when I was growing up, right?
So when I got to college, shout out to Clark Atlanta University, I got to college and I said, you know what? I'm tired of eating anything that's connected to an animal, minus fish, right? So in 2007, I decided to stop eating everything. I was only eating fish. And then fast forward to 2014, I decided to go completely vegan. Don't ask me why. I'm like, I'm a master faster.
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