Vegan Business Owners Share Coronavirus Challenges and Hopes for the Future
Checking in with three small business owners about the biggest changes to their business and what they’re expecting from the future
Every restaurant in the U.S. has struggled in the last few weeks to figure out how to continue operations and keep employees housed, fed, and healthy during the Coronavirus pandemic without sufficient guidance or aid from governmental bodies. Vegan food businesses that have made workers a priority even in the best of times — and often struggled with the balance of thriving as a business, providing high wages and benefits, and not asking exuberant prices of customers — are asking questions about the sustainability of an industry that runs on paper-thin margins even when things are good. As Dirt Candy and Lekka Burger chef-owner Amanda Cohen asked in a New York Times op-ed, would going back to normal be good enough?
To understand better what these small vegan business owners are thinking, I asked Chris Kim of Monk’s Meats in Brooklyn, Shannon Roche of Crust Vegan Bakery in Philadelphia, and Lagusta Yearwood of Lagusta’s Luscious, Commissary, and Confectionery in New Paltz and New York City, New York, the same five questions about how they’re conceiving of their work today.
