Vegans of Color
Justine Hernandez Is Supposed to Be Opening Her Vegan Bakery Right Now
The baker and entrepreneur has spent the last two years getting ready to open her first brick-and-mortar…. Now what?
Every restaurant in America was forced into a tenuous position this past month as the COVID-19 crisis accelerated and many cities issued Shelter in Place ordinances. Some owners of small vegan restaurants are moving forward with cautious optimism, balancing a concern for the health and income of their staff with thoughts on the bigger picture of what business will look like in a post-pandemic world.
But what would you do if you were about to open a restaurant when the crisis struck?
“I’ve been [working on opening] for two years plus a few months, and a lot of my friends who have restaurants are like ‘Oh, you must be so stressed,’ and I just can’t be. Because there’s nothing anyone could do,” says Justine Hernandez, owner of vegan baking company Just What I Kneaded. Hernandez, who had just completed the last push of crowdfunding for her first brick-and-mortar location at the end of 2019, spoke with Tenderly over the phone as she watched the gas installation in her new space. Read on for the LA native’s and service industry veteran’s…
