00:01Hey, what's up?
00:02It's your girl Pinky Cole, founder and CEO of Slutty Vegan ATL,
00:06and you are tuned in to Shop Essence Powered by Target.
00:13I am the founder, CEO, janitor, all of the above for Slutty Vegan ATL,
00:19Bar Vegan ATL, and the Pinky Cole Foundation.
00:23I am from Baltimore, Maryland.
00:25I grew up in a household with a mother who is very, very Jamaican,
00:30who worked multiple jobs every single day to make sure that we had all the things that we needed.
00:35My father did 22 years in prison, so I'm literally what society says is a statistic.
00:42I started being an entrepreneur when I was a kid.
00:45I used to throw parties, and I used to sell candy and McChickens for McDonald's.
00:50Then when I graduated from college, I was doing hair.
00:54I did all these things because I knew that I liked to create.
00:58So when I came up with Slutty Vegan, this was after I had a restaurant before,
01:03after it was super successful and then fell apart and I lost everything,
01:07and Slutty Vegan was my second chance.
01:09But what I didn't realize is I was creating something that people around the world would appreciate,
01:14and that was me helping people to reimagine food.
01:17I started Slutty Vegan in 2018.
01:19I was sitting in my bedroom, and the name came out of nowhere.
01:23And I have a TV background.
01:25I know what people like.
01:26They like raunchy.
01:27They like racy.
01:28They like real.
01:29They like raw.
01:30So if I said Pinky's Vegan, there ain't nobody coming through the door.
01:33But if I created something that was going to evoke an emotion and require people to ask questions
01:39and require them to spark dialogue amongst themselves, I knew that I could get them to pay attention to what I was offering.
01:45In the beginning, a lot of people were upset and frustrated about the fact that I created something,
01:50and my kids can't go to that.
01:51How dare you create something like that?
01:53But now I got Muslims, Christians, kids, old people, young people, black people, white people,
02:00people from around the world, they come to patronize my business because it's more than just sex.
02:06It's more than a racy, provocative name.
02:08What I'm doing is I'm building community.
02:10You know what's funny?
02:12And this is a full circle moment for me.
02:14Right before I started Slutty Vegan, I was reading a book a day.
02:18I was running five miles a day.
02:20It was like I was getting ready for something.
02:22And I didn't know what I was getting ready for, seriously.
02:25And now that I think about it, I was getting ready for this multi-million dollar business.
02:31And the universe was just aligning all the stars for me.
02:34Myself and my now fiancé, we went to Afropunk.
02:37There was one of the executives at Target who was in our VIP section.
02:43And I'm like, I got a product. I got a couple of products.
02:46And I feel like my products need to be in Target because it's relevant for the culture.
02:50Everybody loves my business. It just makes sense.
02:53And he said, you know what? I like your energy. Let me make some phone calls.
02:57And do you know, because of Ron Brown at Target, my spinach artichoke dip and my hotlander chicken dip is in Target.
03:06I'm so grateful for people like him who saw my vision, who saw the confidence, who felt that confidence,
03:12and who tasted the food and said, this is what we need for the Target organization.
03:16And I'm so glad to now be in 288 Targets as a black girl from around the way who comes from humble beginnings to Jamaican parents with a father who did 22 years in prison.
03:30And now I'm in a store where my family and my friends can shop at and see something that I created in my bedroom.
03:37Like, do you know how big that is? That's big.
03:40Like, it gets me emotional just thinking about it as big.
03:44I had no idea that this was going to look like this.
03:47So if you asked me where I'm going to be in five years, I feel like I would just be limiting myself.
03:52But what I do know in five years is that slutty vegan will be the blueprint of what restaurants are supposed to look like and feel like.
04:00The pinky cold brand will be the blueprint of what entrepreneurship is supposed to look like.
04:06I am impressed by how Target sees us and values us and values the business.
04:12And do you know the first week that we put our dips in stores, they sold out?
04:17So it's funny you asked me how did I create a space for myself at the table.
04:21I didn't create a space for myself. I brought the table.
04:25I grew up in a household where I saw my mother give the shirt off her back to make sure the people had what they needed.
04:31So I turned into my mom.
04:33I did the commencement speech for Clark Atlanta University.
04:37I was the youngest commencement speaker 13 years after I graduated.
04:41And you know what I did?
04:42There were 824 graduates and I paid for the LLCs of every single graduate so that they can jumpstart their path to entrepreneurship.
04:51That's what I'm talking about, building a table and showing other people how to build their own table.
04:56And that felt so good to be able to do that.
04:58They say something where the sky is the limit.
05:00The sky ain't the limit.
05:01That's just a tipping point.
05:03And because I'm able to break through those glass ceilings and break through those barriers and disrupt all industries that I'm tapping in,
05:11people see that as shining and they feel like they can shine too.
05:14I'm relentless.
05:15And I mean like relentless.
05:18Relentless in my pursuit of achieving my dreams.
05:22I'm relentless in the fact that I know what my ancestors had to go through to get here.
05:28So I'm not going to let them down.
05:29I'm not going to let them down.
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