I have to admit, KC showed us so much love, it felt really good to make money while doing what we believed in.
We tried to sustain the restaurant as a cooperative enterprise, to train community members in Vegan food preparation, turn over the facilities, and expand the business in the city and beyond. We worked like hell to do that in the months before moving. But people we served and worked with were more interested in buying the restaurant, owning it individually instead of cooperatively, and milking it for cash instead of holding to the larger mission of business; so if failed. It hurt turning over a very successful business to people so they could run it into the ground.
Anyway, that was then and this is now.
If you are Black, in KC and you are interested in reviving the effort, we should talk.
It’s a shame that KC’s first ever Vegan restaurant was founded and operated by Black people, and now there are several Vegan restaurants in KC, and not one of them is Black owned, or cooperative.