Pinky Cole | |
---|---|
Born | Aisha Cole December 8, 1987 Baltimore, Maryland |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Restaurateur |
Known for | Slutty Vegan restaurant |
Aisha "Pinky" Cole (born December 8, 1987) [1] is an American restaurateur. She is the owner and operator of Slutty Vegan, a plant-based burger restaurant chain in Atlanta, Georgia. [1] In 2023, she was added to the Time magazine 100 Next list, recognizing individuals with an outsized influence on American culture. [2] [3]
Cole was born and raised in Baltimore. [4] Her parents are Jamaican immigrants and Rastafarians; [5] her mother Ichelle Cole is a musician in the reggae group Strykers' Posse and follows the traditional Rastafarian vegetarian diet. Her mother is a wealth adviser at PNC Bank [1] [6] Her father served prison time for the first 20 years of her life and was then deported to Jamaica. [1] [7] Cole became a vegetarian in 2007, and a vegan in 2014. [1] [8]
Cole received her bachelor's degree from Clark Atlanta University. [9] [10] She was elected “Miss CAU” in 2008 and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. [11] After college, Cole moved first to Los Angeles to become an actress, and then to New York to work in television production. [1] [12]
In 2010, she moved to Los Angeles and worked as a producer on the reality show Judge Karen’s Court. [6] She left television briefly to launch a Harlem restaurant. In 2016, Cole moved back to Atlanta and worked as a casting director for programs such as Iyanla: Fix My Life . [1] [10]
Pinky’s Jamaican and American Restaurant opened in 2014. It was Cole's first restaurant. It operated in Harlem for two years, until she shuttered it in 2016 after a grease fire. [1] [4]
In July 2018, Cole sold her first vegan burgers through delivery apps [13] and opened the Slutty Vegan food truck in September of that year. [1] In January 2019, she opened the first Slutty Vegan brick-and-mortar restaurant in the Westview neighborhood of Atlanta. [1] In 2023, Slutty Vegan had 11 locations in Georgia, New York City, Birmingham, Ala., and Dallas. [6]
Cole was inspired to create the vegan restaurant Slutty Vegan due to her own cravings for vegan junk food. [10] All of Slutty Vegan's products are titled with some form of sexual connotation, including "One Night Stand," "Fussy Hussy," "Sloppy Toppy," and "Chick'N Head". [14]
In November 2022, Cole began a five-city tour to promote her new cookbook, Eat Plants, B*tch: 91 Vegan Recipes That Will Blow Your Meat-Loving Mind. [15] The book was published by Simon & Schuster. Oprah Daily published four recipes from the book in December 2022. [16] BET said the cookbook has "food combinations that will make you forget about meat altogether." [17] VegNews listed it as one of the "Top 100 Vegan Cookbooks of All Time" in 2024. [18]
Written based on her own experience turning failure into success, Cole's book I Hope You Fail was published in October of 2023 and is available in print and audiobook formats. [19] [20]
In 2023, when Time magazine named her to its 100 Next list, Danny Meyer wrote that "Her myriad fans adore her sassy, sexy attitude that has not only reinvented the way people think about a vegan restaurant, but also turned classic roadside burger fare into a rollicking party." [21] In 2024, VegNews listed Cole as one of the "17 Black Vegan Chefs Redefining Plant-Based Food and Community." [22]
Cole met entrepreneur Derrick Hayes in 2020. The couple became engaged on July 2, 2022, and married on June 10, 2023 at The St. Regis Hotel in Atlanta. The ceremony was covered by the New York Times . [6] Hayes is the owner of Big Dave's Cheesesteaks, a non-vegan cheesesteak restaurant based in Atlanta. [23] They have a daughter, D'Ella (born 2021), and son, Derrick Jr. (born 2022). Hayes has two daughters from a previous relationship, Dallas and Denver. At their 2023 wedding, the couple announced Cole was pregnant and they are expecting a third child, a boy, in December. [24]
Cole and fellow alumna Stacy Lee paid the tuition of 30 Clark Atlanta University seniors in September 2019. [25] [26]
In May 2022, Cole gifted an LLC to every graduating student at the Clark Atlanta University commencement ceremony. [27] [28]
Cole runs her own philanthropic organization, The Pinky Cole Foundation, which focuses on providing financial support and educational programs for children of color. [29]
A cheesesteak is a sandwich made from thinly sliced pieces of beefsteak and melted cheese in a long hoagie roll. A popular regional fast food, it has its roots in the United States city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Isa Chandra Moskowitz is an American vegan chef, cookbook author, former host of the vegan community access cooking show Post Punk Kitchen, and restaurateur.
Lauren Toyota is a vegan cookbook author and creator of the blog, Hot for Food. She is a former Canadian television personality.
Chloe Kay Coscarelli is a vegan chef and author.
Veggie Grill is a fast-casual vegan restaurant chain that operates in California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York. After first being opened in Irvine, California, it already had 29 restaurants across the United States in February 2018.
Derek Sarno is an American plant-based chef, cookbook writer and co-founder of the website Wicked Kitchen.
Veganuary is an annual challenge run by a UK nonprofit organisation that promotes and educates about the vegan lifestyle by encouraging people to follow a vegan diet for the month of January. Since the event began in 2014, participation has increased each year. 400,000 people signed up to the 2020 campaign. The campaign estimated this represented the carbon dioxide equivalent of 450,000 flights and the lives of more than a million animals. Veganuary can also refer to the event itself.
The Impossible Whopper is a veggie burger sold by Burger King. It is a variant of the Whopper, with a burger patty made from a meat alternative provided by Impossible Foods. First introduced in the United States in 2019, it was made available in Canada in 2021.
Ori Shavit is an Israeli writer, journalist, blogger, restaurateur, restaurant critic, and animal rights activist. She runs a popular vegan food blog, "Vegan Girls Have More Fun." Shavit has been noted for her workshops and lectures on vegan cooking and her advocacy for animal rights and veganism.
BOSH! is a duo of English vegan chefs from Sheffield consisting of Henry Firth and Ian Theasby. They rose to fame in 2016 with the launch of their YouTube channel, and have gone on to host the ITV1 television programme Living on the Veg and author a number of books. Their eponymous vegan cookbook ranked fifth in the Sunday Times Bestsellers chart in 2018, and is among the top 50 best-selling UK cookbooks of all time.
Miyoko Schinner is an American-Japanese vegan chef, cookbook author, activist, cooking show host and social entrepreneur. Since 2024, she has been a Faculty Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
Tabitha Bonita Brown is an American actress, Emmy winning host, social media personality, entrepreneur, & author. She creates online video content incorporating veganism, humor and motivational speaking. Brown has over 5 million followers on TikTok and over 4.2 million followers on Instagram as of March 2023. She has been described by HuffPost as "America's Mom" and her content has been characterized by critics as being "comforting" and "calming". She is the host of the Food Network’s first plant-based cooking competition It’s CompliPlated and host of the Emmy winning YouTube children’s show Tab Time.
Gaz Oakley, formerly known as the Avant-Garde Vegan, is a chef and cookbook author from Cardiff, Wales known for vegan food. He was described in the Daily Telegraph as "a star of the meat-free world", whose "recipes have gained the respect of herbivores and carnivores alike".
The McPlant is a vegetarian burger sold by the fast-food chain McDonald's in several European countries. In 2021, McDonald's partnered with Beyond Meat, a Los Angeles–based producer of plant-based meat substitutes, to create the McPlant platform. It features a plant-based meat alternative burger patty made from plant ingredients such as potatoes, peas and rice.
Slutty Vegan is a vegan hamburger restaurant chain, based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Earth Burger is a vegan fast-food restaurant chain store with headquarters in San Antonio.
Chef Charity Morgan is an American plant-based chef, cookbook author, and television host. She is the wife of former NFL Linebacker Derrick Morgan, appeared with him in the 2018 plant-based diet documentary, The Game Changers, and is the host of Unbelievably Vegan with Chef Charity on Max.
Richa Hingle is a Vegan/Plant-based cookbook author, and is known as the blogger, Vegan Richa.