A little about myself.
My passion for food started young.
Twelve years old, to be exact. The year I became vegetarian.
After becoming vegetarian and then vegan a few years later, I fell in love with cooking and the challenge of creating plant-based meals. My parents gave me free rein in the kitchen and the experimenting began. Little did I know, the world would eventually begin to shift in that direction.
Cooking is my passion, but I’ve always eagerly pursued all my other interests. Entrepreneurship was one of them.
After years of exploring and honing my craft in cafes and restaurants, I saw shifts in how people wanted to eat. While operating my first business, The Hive Home and Gift, I often moaned about the lack of food options around me. It was this moment my entrepreneurial and chef brain collided, leading to my next venture, The Zephyr Cafe.
In 2008, I co-founded a new kind of restaurant. Modern whole foods where words like vegan, gluten free, local and organic were not strange words. Not only was it a huge success, but I learned about the intricacies of creating a business for the community while standing out in the crowd...
What we sold made us popular.
How we did it made us an institution.
Even so, entrepreneurship has been no easy feat.
It’s a rocky road filled with risk and uncertainty with many hard lessons learned and a handful of projects that have never seen the light of day. I’ve experienced setbacks, struggles, and continuous tests of character.
But I pulled through by seeing opportunities where others didn’t. And I love the process.
To this day, I have piles of notebooks full of scribbles dreaming up new ventures.