Pinky Cole Foundation An Important Part Of Slutty Vegan Plan To Give Back To Communities

ATLANTA, GA — The Slutty Vegan brand name carries a promise of tasty plant-based foods that are equal parts healthy lifestyle-inspiring and cultural movement.

But Slutty Vegan founder Aisha “Pinky” Cole has made a name for herself that transcends the meatless eateries whose popularity and burgeoning national spotlight forged a path to her outsized platform.

The Instagram tag for the charitable organization she leads says it all: @PinkyGivesBack. And as the new year arrives, Cole took time with Patch to reflect on all she did in 2021 with the Pinky Cole Foundation and what’s around the corner — and across the map — for 2022.

“We have an Atlanta footprint but we are a national brand, and a national organization because of the work that we've done and because of how popular the restaurant is,” Cole said.

She began the foundation in 2019 after answering the call several times over to help people in need, offering college scholarships or helping the homeless.

“That was really a way to just formalize all of her giving,” Keeyah Johnson, Cole’s assistant, said of the move to create the foundation.

What culminated was her paying off the balances for 30 students at her alma mater, Clark Atlanta University. Cole said she wanted her giving to bridge the generational wealth gap in a way that was more focused.

“I was just spending money — and not accounting for it — to help people,” she said.

The foundation drew out an overarching mission to close that gap of generational wealth by developing and leading entrepreneurship and financial literacy-focused education initiatives. Specifically, the foundation targets teens and young adults in the U.S. between the ages of 13 and 22 by applying an intentional equity lens in its program design, prioritizing grassroots and hyperlocal approaches to empowering young people of color, a segment of society too often facing disproportionate challenges and obstacles to success.

As a core value, the organization believes that Black economic progress is achieved by creatively leveraging economic opportunities, successful risk-taking, and innovation, Cole said.

“I like to see people around me winning, and I want people to be able to be better than their circumstances,” Cole said, crediting her spirit of giving to something she learned from her mother. “I grew up watching my mother help everybody. Literally everybody to the point where I'm like, ‘Alright, who else are we going to move in with us?’ I didn't realize I was learning how to be a steward and to be a giver like my mother.”

In 2021, Cole’s foundation made strident impacts in Atlanta. She partnered with Georgia Power and comedian Steve Harvey to pay off past-due electricity bills for 100 families. She teamed with PETA to donate 100 bags of fresh fruits and vegetables to residents living in one of Atlanta’s food deserts near Joseph A. Lowery Boulevard, and also gave away Slutty Vegan meals.

The foundation teamed with Big Dave’s Cheese Steaks and Clark Atlanta University to give life insurance, $600,000 in college scholarships and a new car to the family of Rayshard Brooks, who was shot and killed in June 2020 by Atlanta Police officers, and also to provide life insurance for men in Atlanta without.

She has been a major sponsor of the Black Lives Matter 5K, which culminated its virtual runs on Friday; and as part of her “December Days of Giving,” donated fresh fruit and vegetables to Atlanta Public School students, toys and baby supplies to mothers, and 1,000 bagged lunches.

This month, at the opening of the fourth Slutty Vegan location in Duluth, Cole announced a partnership with all-digital bank Varo to pay for business startup fees for 50 entrepreneurs, including state licensing and LLC setup expenses.

“But we are expanding the business and we're expanding our territory at the foundation,” Cole said, noting that after successful collaborations with national restaurants such as Shake Shack tours with the Slutty Vegan food truck, she said she sees a demand. “You'll definitely see that within that in the next 18 months. Because we have a strategic plan ongoing from city to city and expanding our footprint beyond just being an Atlanta staple.”

Projected pinpoints on the expansion map include New York City, Birmingham, Montgomery, Alabama, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, to name a few. The Pinky Cole Foundation constitutes a primary part of that growth strategy.

“Wherever Slutty Vegan goes, the foundation goes with it,” Cole said. “We are solving universal problems. So these aren't just Atlanta problems that we solve. These are universal issues that we use the foundation to be able to bridge that gap. So whatever city we go into, you will see a reflection of the organization there.”