SAVE ROOM
FOR DESSERT
Above, employee
Julian Coats restocks
desserts. At left
is Soul Veg City’s
lemon cake. Lori
Seay says all of the
restaurant’s desserts
— including cakes,
pies, cookies and
cinnamon rolls —
are made in-house.
“Our customers
can’t get enough of
them,” she says.
named Original Soul Vegetarian
— was deeply in debt. “It
was overwhelming; customers
would come in and say, I know
Prince, he used to give me
this or that,” Seay says. “I’m so
grateful for the relationship my
brother and I have. We were
determined not to let it fold.”
“Growing up in Israel and
not understanding the seriousness
of him starting this, I
thought it was just a job,” Arel
says of his dad, recalling a pivotal
conversation he had with
his mom some six years ago.
“As I learned that this was his
way of giving back to society as
well as to the African American
community, I was all in.”
The siblings developed bookkeeping
systems and checklists
for everything from filing taxes
to applying for loans to janitorial
work. They created a human
resources department, standardized
recipes and schedules,
and gently reminded customers
that they’d have to accept smaller discounts to help
the business survive.
They also evolved the menu, adding vegan desserts
and pastries and a few iconic dishes of their
own, like Seay’s black-eyed pea burger with onion
rings. Responding to customers’ growing propensity
to grab and go, Arel developed a hot bar featuring
daily-changing proteins and raw and cooked vegetable
sides. “You don’t have to be vegan to love this
food,” Seay says. Indeed, 90% of the restaurant’s customers
aren’t vegan.
For years in the United States, veganism carried
the connotation of being a lifestyle choice of
white privilege, but Black veganism has a rich history
here. Vegetable-centric eating is foundational
to western and central African diets from which
Blacks came during the transatlantic slave trade.
Veganism has deep roots in America’s civil rights
movement; civil rights activist and comedian Dick
Gregory famously gave up meat in 1965 and later
became a vegan. Today, prominent Blacks such as
football player Colin Kaepernick and filmmaker
Ava DuVernay are vegan.
“It’s good to see so many people embracing plantbased
eating, but there’s a long way to go,” Emmanuel
says. He’s been vegan since 1981 when he joined
the Hebrew Israelite community, a choice that catalyzed
his relationship with Prince Asiel. Emmanuel
says he always intended to open a restaurant,
debuting Vegetarian Express Gourmet in 2001.
In 2017, he opened his first Majani location. The
restaurant follows a vegan soul food model similar
to Soul Vegetarian, with an emphasis on sourcing
locally from Black farmers.
Meanwhile, plant-focused restaurants have sprouted
across the South Side, including B’Gabs Goodies
and Can’t Believe It’s Not Meat in Hyde Park. “The
world has finally caught up with something we’ve
been doing for the public for 40 years, and as a people
and community for the last 53 years, since Dad first
changed his eating habits,” Arel says.
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