HIBT Lab! Slutty Vegan: Pinky Cole
How I Built This with Guy Raz
Guy Raz | Wondery
4.8 • 31.1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2023
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s hard to miss a Slutty Vegan when you’re driving past one.
No, we’re not talking about a person… We’re talking about a fast-casual burger chain — and a vegan one at that!
Since launching Slutty Vegan in 2017, Pinky has seen her plant-based brand through several iterations: a ghost kitchen, then a food truck, then eventually several brick and mortar locations that continue to pop up across the east coast. And with a valuation of $100 million and expansion into other sectors, Pinky is only getting started...
This week on How I Built This Lab, Pinky talks with Guy about her journey as a TV producer-turned-restaurateur, and how Slutty Vegan is a prime example of Seth Godin’s Purple Cow theory: companies must build things worth noticing into their products and services. Plus, Pinky reflects on her roots, sharing the valuable lessons about discipline and work ethic that she learned from her parents.
This episode was produced by Carla Esteves and edited by John Isabella, with music from Ramtin Arablouei. Our audio engineer was Neal Rauch.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:07.0 | Download the app today. |
| 0:09.0 | What if the greatest tragedy of your life was just covered up? |
| 0:12.0 | I have never seen anything like that before or after. |
| 0:15.0 | This is the story of the worst marine-on-marine friendly fire in modern history. |
| 0:20.0 | A story kept from the public. |
| 0:22.0 | It's like, what did y'all have to hide? |
| 0:24.0 | Listen to NPR's embedded podcast and its latest series, taking cover. |
| 0:31.0 | Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. |
| 0:34.0 | I'm Guy Ross. |
| 0:35.0 | So it's hard to know how many Americans are vegans. |
| 0:39.0 | Estimates range from 2 to 6% of the population. |
| 0:43.0 | And this means that if you're a vegan restaurant, you have to figure out a way to bring in non-vegans |
| 0:49.0 | if you want to build a sustainable business. |
| 0:51.0 | Now imagine you start a vegan restaurant and you call it, say, vegan delight or plant-based heaven. |
| 0:59.0 | It is not likely you're going to get a wide range of customers through the door. |
| 1:04.0 | So in 2018, Pinky Cole came up with a different idea. |
| 1:08.0 | She wanted to open a greasy fast food joint with all the hits. |
| 1:13.0 | Sloppy cheese steaks, double bacon cheeseburgers, smothered french fries, |
| 1:18.0 | except entirely vegan, totally plant-based. |
| 1:23.0 | But to get lots of people into the door, vegan vegetarians, carnivores, |
| 1:28.0 | lexeterians, etc., Pinky decided to start with a name that would attract swell. |
... |
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