A young Cape Breton couple has started a vegan food delivery service and is looking at opening Cape Breton Island's first all-vegan restaurant in Sydney.
It's an attempt to stir-things-up in a town where the menu has traditionally been dominated by meat and potatoes.
“We went with ‘Neat and Potatoes,’ because being from Cape Breton,” said James MacDonald. “I grew up on a lot of meat and potato foods. I made the switch to a plant-based lifestyle about a year-and-a half-ago, two years ago, and haven't looked back since.”
MacDonald and his girlfriend, Chloe Zinck, are in just their second week serving up vegan dishes they prepare in a rented kitchen.
They make vegan chili, burrito bowls, perogies, salads -- even a meatless ‘turkey’ burger and they deliver it to homes that are snapping it all up with gusto.
“A little over 24 hours after we launched, we were sold out, so that was great,” said MacDonald. “And we're actually not taking any more orders for the month. We have a wait list of about twenty-some people right now.”
The vegan entrepreneurs saw there was a demand for this kind of diet elsewhere and wondered if a menu like this would catch on in Cape Breton.
“You visit all these other major cities and there's plant-based places, there's vegan places, and we were just blown away by being able to go into a restaurant and order off of the menu whatever we wanted without having to substitute this or make it without that,” MacDonald said.
For the couple, it's a labour of love too.
“We have a lot of fun in here,” Zinck said. “There obviously are stressful moments, as there would be with any career, but it's really fun being in the kitchen together.”
And for James, it's a risky career move. He'll soon be leaving a full-time job in finance to try to make a dream come true in the place he grew up.
“I wasn't really in the greatest place a few months ago and I just started thinking about, 'what makes me happy?' and kind of wanting to make a change,” MacDonald said. “Obviously, life is short and you only really get one chance at this thing.”
James and Chloe didn't want to bite off more than they could chew, so they started out small. They hope to open the Sydney area's first vegan-only restaurant sometime in the not-too-distant future.
“It's gaining a lot of traction and it's just a really exciting thing to be a part of,” Zinck said.
Their message to anyone thinking about giving the vegan life a try?
“Just because you're cutting out the meat, or cutting out the dairy, or animal products, doesn't mean you're cutting out the taste or the flavor,” MacDonald said.
They’re providing plenty to chew on and hoping there's an appetite for something different.
