Vego Bistro is CLOSING

We at Vego care about healthy living. That is one of the sole reasons we started this business. However, over the last three years, we have prioritized our business over our family’s physical, mental and financial health. This of course is not sustainable.

It is with mixed emotions that we say goodbye to our restaurant and food truck business. Sunday, February 24th, will be our last day at the restaurant and we are working on selling our food truck. We hope you’re able to come get your favorite meal before we close.

We had wanted so much more for our business and for our community. We obviously had hoped for a successful business that would fund our charity work, Full Tummies Full Hearts, and spread the message of health and well-being in the Austell and Atlanta area. We wanted to fill a niche OTP (Outside The Perimeter) of Atlanta and show people that plant-based eating could be delicious! But you can read all about that in our mission statement.

So what went wrong? It likely wasn’t just one thing. First, there is a reason that all of the vegan eateries are inside the perimeter. I think we were ahead of the curve and so we just didn’t get enough support to pay the bills. Second, we definitely made some mistakes that made success a little harder to reach. Most notably we did not go for “location, location, location!” We should have chosen a restaurant location that was more visible, easier to find, and had more foot traffic. And finally, I learned something about myself--I learned that as much passion as I have for sharing plant-based living and for sharing good food with my community that I am not an entrepreneur! We were warned that the restaurant biz is a hard one. I am not opposed to hard work, but I have learned that I am not cut out for the stress of handling all the moving parts of this business. The stress just sucked all the joy and passion out of what we were doing. Since there was no more joy in the work, we decided that we should get out before we were drowning in debt.

The Good News: We plan to redirect Vego’s business model. You will no longer get the convenience of having a delicious plant-based meal prepared for you, but we plan to transition to Wellness coaching and your Plant-Based online resource hub. So you will have access to our recipes and other helpful information that will support those in transition, as well as those seasoned plant-based eaters. So please continue to follow us on our social media accounts! The transition will take some time but we promise it will be well worth the wait.

We thank all of our customers that have shown us love over the past two years. We would like to especially thank all of our “regulars” for your support.

Stay healthy,

Lindsay and David Esterline