Speaking With Kelly Childs, of Kelly's Bake Shoppe

Today we sat down with Kelly Childs. Kelly is one half of the unstoppable mother-daughter team that founded Kelly’s Bake Shoppe, a vegan and gluten-free bake shoppe in Burlington, ON, CANADA. Together, with her daughter Erinn Weatherbie, these two passionate forces have created an empire of healthy living that reaches much farther than just the kitchen.

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to Vegan research, businesses, art, and society. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media.

 

TRANSCRIPTION

[00:00:10] Hi, I'm Patricia. And this is investigating Vegan life with Patricia Kathleen. This series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from food and fashion to tech and agriculture, from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas. Our inquiry is an effort to examine the variety of industries and lifestyle tenants in the world of Vegan life. To that end. We will cover topics that have revealed themselves as Kofman and integral when exploring veganism. The dialog captured here is part of our ongoing effort to host transparent and honest rhetoric. For those of you who, like myself, find great value in hearing the expertize and opinions of individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to their ideals. You can find information about myself and my podcast at Patricia Kathleen dot com. Welcome to Investigating Vegan Life. Now let's start the conversation. 

 

[00:01:14] Hi, everyone. Welcome back. I am your host, Patricia. And today I'm sitting down with Kelly Childs. Kelly is an entrepreneur, business owner and cookbook author. Welcome, Kelly. 

 

[00:01:24] Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

 

[00:01:27] Absolutely. For everyone listening, really quickly a Web site on Kelly is, w w w dot Kelly s x o dot com. 

 

[00:01:36] I'm going to read a quick bio on Kelly. But before I do that, a roadmap for today's podcast. We're going to look briefly at Kelly's academic background, her early professional life to kind of garner a sense of where she's coming from. And then we'll unpack a lot of the ventures that she's had with Kelly's bakeshop. She's had two former businesses now sold based around the Vegan industry. And she also has a cookbook called Made with Love Cookbook. And we'll kind of unpack all those endeavors and then we'll get some of Kelly's advice as to the current climate and some of the her Vegan lifestyle choices and any communication that she wants to have between those two. And we're up everything up with the advice that she has for those of you who are looking to get involved with her, as well as any goals that Kelly may have set for herself and or her businesses over the next little while, particularly given that goals are now rampantly changing across all industries. 

 

[00:02:31] A really quick bio on Kelly before I start peppering her with questions. Kelly, is an entrepreneur, healthy lifestyle innovator and visionary, visionary or for a kinder planet. Kelly Childs is one half of the unstoppable mother daughter team that founded Kellie's bakeshop, a vegan and gluten free bake shop in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. Together with her daughter, Erin Weatherbee, these two passionate forces have created an empire of healthy living that reaches much farther than just the kitchen with an extensive social media presence and celebrity like status. Kelly spreads her love of good health and happiness and hopes to help others do the same. A pioneer in the Vegan world, Kelly has created plant based brands. And recipes that have won many awards, including BuzzFeed, that ranked Kelly's bakeshop number three on the list of the top twenty five sweet shops in the world to visit before you die. I love that. With a successful mix of kindness, compassion and love. Kelly has created a positive and all inclusive environment, not just in her business, but also in her everyday connections with people. Kelly Childs is in more than just the cupcake business. She's in the business of creating a kinder planet and one that all sentient beings can be healthier and happier and be more compassionate about themselves and one another. 

 

[00:03:56] So, Kelly, I love that bio at. I think it's so it's one of the first ones I've read where people really get into the ethos of, you know, their philosophical structure of life and your humanitarianism and your empathy. 

 

[00:04:09] All those things really come out. 

 

[00:04:10] And to be ranked the third in the you know, this this BuzzFeed poll of the top twenty five sweet shops in the world to visit before you die. I think that's tombstone worthy. So I can't wait to get into it but before we go there. Well, you paint like a quick background of like your academic background or your health academic background or anything that kind of ties into your Vegan story and professional life that got you to kind of where you are today. 

 

[00:04:36] Gosh. So, I mean, I'm going to say that I'm kind of boring in that I didn't do post-secondary, so I went from high school, like, right into the workforce. And I found myself in the automotive industry and then worked my way up the ranks of doing finance for actually banks, for the automotive industry. So I have a very strong background in finance and really self-taught, if you want to say that. I kind of got thrown into it. And I think back in the day when I graduated from high school, though, it was like 1982. University wasn't a thing as big as, you know, what it is sort of in this day and age, you know. So I just I didn't see the value in going unless I was gonna be a doctor or lawyer. And I went. So let's just go. Street smarts is where it's at. So. So that's all I've done. But I've always lived a very healthy life. So to talk about my health background, my parents are very healthy people. We never had white flour, white sugar in the House. It was just everything was optimally nutritious. And but I never didn't have gluten items. I never had allergy problems. And but I ended up evolving, I guess, when I met my now husband. He was in the restaurant business and he said, I guess it was 2008 when I sort of decided, you know, that I wanted to get into it with him. And I jumped in the kitchen and jumped in with my recipes and jumped in with everything that I had learned from that day forward and got my first taste with it. Then as a family, so my husband, my daughter and her boyfriend at the time, the four of us went down to Farm Sanctuary down in Watkins Glen. And our lives were forever transformed, seeing how the animals had been rescued. It's a beautiful sanctuary. And Jim Bowers, the owner of that and and our lives were forever touched. And we decided at that moment when we left the farm sanctuary driving back to Toronto, we decided to go Vegan and that was it. It was like there was no gray area there. And then also to the farm sanctuary that they had advocated. It's called the China City, written by Colin Campbell. And then I studied with Cornell University. I actually plant based nutrition, one of their courses there, and got into plant based world like big time. And then I started reading about, you know, finding out about the truth of what dairy really does to us and, you know, what butter really does to what eggs really do to us. And I actually felt like I had been so fooled. So that had fueled me to go down that rabbit hole even more. 

 

[00:07:16] Absolutely. So was it. 

 

[00:07:17] I'm wondering, did you combine your knowledge of being in the restaurant business since 2008 and then the advent into, you know, a Vegan lifestyle that sounds like it was developed out of a humanitarian mission, first and foremost with animals and then grew? How did you make the decision to take the all of your Vegan information and then open Kellie's bakeshop in 2012? Was it a natural product like progression or was it a very concise choice? 

 

[00:07:46] Well, I'm going to say that there's probably a little bit of both. We sold the restaurant, canceled his restaurant. My husband did in 2009. We were then free and able to do wanted. We actually moved from Toronto. Out to the Burlington area. And that's where my daughter went to university. And so I thought, jeez, you know what? I've got all this time on my hands. You know, there's passion going through us right now. We're newly Vegan. We want to shout it out to the world. And this beautiful little location came available and it was just so serendipitous. And I just said, you know what, man? Like, we found it, found our place to go and open up this beautiful restaurant. It was just all the all the ducks were folding in a row very, very precisely from selling his restaurant to becoming Vegan to a new location, opening up and had all the time I had to create new recipes. And I was just being so fortified with such a positive energy of this new lifestyle. I really, truly want to share it with the world. And I want to share the truce with the world. These are the things that I was experiencing from reading the China study to Colin Campbell, Caldwell Esselstyn assistant. All these people that were coming to me now and it was just it was just information that I couldn't deny any longer. It was it was fantastic. 

 

[00:09:01] It's bakeries on their own. I have. So I have a history with them as a as a young college student. But they're a very different industry. 

 

[00:09:08] It's not like a lot of other, you know, cafes or other industries because the baked goods and things like that, they have a different kind of schedule, a different clientele usually, you know, more morning clientele rather than the evenings. I'm not sure how you're running yours, but it's a slightly different tone in the in the food industry. And I'm wondering, was it difficult for you to because you came from a previous food industry, but not necessarily a baking. Did you have any advisers or any help or did you just kind of jump full in and get your feet wet by baptism, by fire? 

 

[00:09:43] So you get some from the restaurant. Our initial restaurant that in 2010 that we opened that when the location came available and I said, that's it. It was the worst kind food came to me. So it was very special. And we opened that and it was a cafe. It was a grocery store. We sold produce. We did bakers. We did a little bit of everything to bar, smoothie bar. And just all the naysayers that were in downtown Burlington. Everyone said, like, good luck with that. This is 2010. So very much into the pioneers of Canada. That veganism and plant based greens, these and stuff were just really emerging in a way. But there was, you know, ninety five ninety percent of the population was still, you know, had not been touched it yet. But what I noticed was. The baked goods that I was creating and I first all started, it was spelt flowers. I actually had not even done gluten free. I did it as an optional sort of thing. And I saw all these people coming in and wanting, you know, I have 12 cupcakes at this. I need a cake for this. I need a couple dozen cookies for this. And before I knew it, I saw that there was this massive demand. I mean, as my show was, it was like a small scale compared to the world. But for us, in our little business, there was a massive demand for the baked goods as well as the cafe part of it. And it daisy, you know, baked goods filling higher, cafe higher. But predominantly there was this there was this incredible joy attached to baked goods. Yeah, and that's what I was told when I was honing in on the smiles and the energy and the emotion that was coming from what I was creating as far as the sweet stuff goes. So that was that was my drawing force. And so it was two years later. And I just actually but a year and a half later, two years later, when we actually found a location. But a year and a half into it, I just said, look at guys like I we can't be doing this any longer because we were using every horizontal spot in the in the restaurant part to make because in the morning, you know, getting in there at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and then then I was donning another apron for doing the garlic and the onions and the savory stuff, you know, at eight or nine in the morning. It was it was I was burning out. And also to I wasn't filling my soul with, you know, the savory part. And these recipes that I'd been creating were actually coming to me while I was sleeping at night. This is a whole other topic, but I was actually trying to perfect the perfect brownie. And I kept on screwing up and kept on screwing up, and I was asking for some divine guidance in it. And I got to download one night of what I was saying. And from that day forward, when I went into the business and I actually made it and I nailed it. Tears came, of course. I was very excited with what had happened and we won. All these awards are trying to Vegan bake off. We, um, we did year over year. We won best dessert in Toronto. And we we like that was like a magical moment to me and to me that was like a gift from God or universe, whatever you believe in. And and but it was a it was a necessary thing because it brought so much joy to people. Yeah. That's what I see now. 

 

[00:12:56] Absolutely. I want to. So this fortuitous brownie moment, was it. So from after that moment, things just started to come naturally. 

 

[00:13:03] It sounds like it helped you reshape what you were working on. And did you when you started off the endeavor? A lot of times when people become Vegan, they educate themselves and there's there's a pilgrimage, if you will, and to kind of their zone of veganism and where they feel most at peace. And there's I find frequently most guests have this lifelong learning, but it's always, you know, coming to different places along that pilgrimage. And I'm wondering with you, you have this spelt flour and things like this. There's not already this natural division from gluten and a lot of areas that, you know, the first pitstop or pitfall, however you look at it with a lot of early Vegan says this like carbohydrate or gluten overload, you know, words like pasta heaven or they just don't know that the first stop is kind of confusing. It sounds like you guys didn't really stop there. And I'm wondering if you can speak to it that you didn't have as it is child growing up. You said that, but spell flowers a little bit trickier. I've myself, you know, cooked with it and things of that nature. But I want to know how you came on to that. And was it a natural thing just to not have gluten in your in the bakery to begin with? I know that you had kind food and then the Let US Love Cafe. So is it by the time you got to Kelly's bakeshop that you were no longer using gluten, flour, or how did that kind of happen? 

 

[00:14:25] Well, I'll give you that timeline. So we opened kind food in May of 2010, and with six months time, I had decided that we couldn't do gluten any longer because I thought of the demand for it. And then I realized, too, that I couldn't do both because I wasn't honoring the people that were coming in that actually has celiac disease and true gluten intolerances that I didn't want to run the risk of of harming them. So that was a clear thing that we just switched off. And and it was actually really good because, you know, we changed the cafe part to the breads we brought in. All the breads were incredible KINMONT based breads that were, you know, gluten free Vegan and stuff. So that was like that was so easy. Then the location came available, which was bright, beautiful, big location. It was around twenty six hundred square feet for the bakeshop. And I remember being terrified thinking, how are you gonna ever fill up the space? And because it was so big compared to what our restaurant was, our restaurant, that we we like the sales that we had out of that place of a thousand square feet where light would just blow anybody's mind. There was a perpetual line up down down the road every single day. And and it was amazing to maximize that square footage. So when we did the bakeshop, then I thought, oh, my God, are we gonna cannibalize each other? You know, is it gonna be like, you know what? It's gonna rob the other business and stuff? And it's both businesses completely exploded again. Both businesses. The lineups stayed. Kelly Spig Shop on opening day. And that was December 2012. Line up down the street. And I should segway a bit, too, with what happened to kind food. We were served about one year into the business. We were served a cease and desist letter by kind bars and kind bars after us. And we had to do a rebrand and we actually put up a resistance to it for about a year, year and a half. And they just completely money to us because, you know, we just I mean, how does someone, you know, trademark the word kind? Right. And I thought it was a universal thing for all of us to be a part of. But anyways, there were honored because they were obviously threatened by us. And, you know, secondly, it was it was turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to us. And I could just tell you very quickly how this went down, that we hired a few branding, actually three different random companies to come up with a new name for us because that was a stickler was how do you get rid of the weird kind of food that you love so much and being as a new entrepreneur at your baby, you know, and you have to say goodbye to it. And it has a lot of emotion attached to it. Right. One of the first rules is don't get emotional in business. But anyway, so what I did was I locked myself into the second floor of the bake shop. And this isn't we were in business at the. But six months of 2013, when we finally gave up the name and I decided I had to forgive them. I had to forgive Kinder's. I had to forgive them. So I was sitting there and I was just let us love everybody, let us love, let us love. And I'm just praying to like, loving and giving. And then I went, oh, my God, let us love cafe. The plan where is the head of lettuce is love. And it was just perfect. Anyways, when we did the rebrand, our sales went up. It was this hour what I something like 78 percent, like it was just overnight. It was like we were holding ourselves back to the universe, was trying to give to us. And I so believe in this, the serendipitous this this way that we are being talked to as sometimes we don't want to trust our intuition and we block ourselves off. And I've learned how to use to listen to these words and these messages that are coming through us mail all the time. And it has served me so well, incredibly. 

 

[00:18:17] I love that. I love the story. So now drum dried out for me is let us love cafe now sold. 

 

[00:18:24] Is it part of Kelly's bakeshop? So what what happened with the sale of that? And then you opened Kellie's bakeshop in 2012. Was that before or after you sold. Let us. 

 

[00:18:35] OK. So yeah, it's kind of confusing everybody, I guess. But Kellie's bakeshop opened in December 2012 and kind food was still in existence. Then we did the rebrand for kinda food running into Let US Love Cafe in the fall of 2013 and we sold Most Love in June 2017. So we kept it still for four more years after we did the rebrand. Remarkable. So it's still an amazing it's a still busy place. 

 

[00:19:02] What made you what was the impetus for this sale? Is it an expansion of Kellie's bakeshop? Are you are you doing other things with your future? 

 

[00:19:10] Yes. So so this is exactly it is we realize that our focus was becoming too diluted between two brands. And I solely really wanted to honor where I know where my heart has been and wants to be is with Kellie's bakeshop. So right now, we're actually speaking to two different parties about doing a very big expansion of the big shop and it coming into potentially the US as well. And it would be like multiple locations. So we're we're excited about doing this. So I think, you know, the pandemic has not been an opportune time for many small businesses and even us to we're on hold. I had to lay off or myself or my daughter. We had to lay off thirty two staff. And so, you know, people do believe that we have that kind of staffing as it's quite large and we have approximately 12000 customers a week that come through the door. So we did close the doors on St. Patrick's Day. We're 17th. And so it's been a little over a month and it's been one of the hardest months of my life. And it's funny when you identify so much with your business. Right. And all of a sudden you identify as like your identity. You know, you're you're you're very much ingrained in your business when you have to surrender to a greater power over yourself. And while the doors to close it was very different, I sobbed. I saw it for quite a few days. And just in grief. You know, you're grieving the loss of your child in a way. And I just know, like I've come through on the other side and now there's this full acceptance. And I actually feel like I've needed this month to reorganize where I'm heading now, you know? So we we're very grateful as much as we've lost a whole bunch of money. We're very grateful for where we are right now. 

 

[00:21:09] Well, I think it's interesting, too. There has been a lot of I've not spoken to a small business owner in the past eight weeks that hasn't taken this opportunity to requestion and pivot if necessary. 

 

[00:21:21] And that's, you know, it's awesome. It's awesome to take a rough situation that no one asked for and and to do some really proactive things out of it. I'm wondering, I see now, even with more of the corporate environment doing this by small businesses from the get go used to do this. And I'm wondering if you're implementing it as well, which is this social conversation, because small businesses are such an intimate experience with their customers and clients of all sorts. And I'm wondering if you have thought about implementing in any kind of a marketing aspect or otherwise the conversation, you know, about the pandemic, about the future, about any of those aspects, uncertainty, health. I mean, you're you know, you're your shop is promoting, you know, what is is provably a healthier lifestyle while still enjoying that, you know, wonderful engagement of sweets and different things like that. And I'm wondering if you guys have thought about in your looking at what you're doing with your shop, if you engage with your customers or clients, even right now on social media. Do you address the pandemic covered 19 by name? Have you chosen to look at all those areas? 

 

[00:22:29] Well, yeah, we're we're very we're very transparent business and we're very open. I tend to be maybe sometimes too open and I wear my heart on my sleeve, but I also wear my truth on my sleeve, too. And very openly, like my social media channel, Aaron's got our own two. And then we've also got the bakeshop. So we look after the three of them. We also have a podcast, too. It's called Cupcake's and Consciousness. So there's these four channels that we're looking after all the time and very much an advocate of positivity and. And I have a pretty good fan base that they look to me almost every day, actually, for true guidance of how to navigate through this Koven 19 to come out on the other side of Gross to take this time right now for introspection and evolve. And then what I say more often than not get shared on the Kellie's Bakeshop Channel, which is at Kellie's sake if anybody is looking down. So we, we intertwine our personal life with the business and we just share always positivity on Keli's bakeshop. We haven't. My daughter's the expert now, too, on social media because we put all of our teams on hold right now. So she's been doing this social media for it. And we have every single day we have still a whole series of maybe five to 10 stories, Instagram stories we've been posting every day. Erin and I go live as well. We go live on Facebook and we go live on Instagram once or twice a week. So those are always out there. Like we're always bring our customers and our you know, our customers like, I don't know, like I want to call them our friends that are our family, you know, up with us. So because I'm just a firm believer that we, you know, we individually can't rise up, we have to be looking to our brothers and sisters, our family. Everyone has to come together. And this is this is our transformation right now that's happening on the planet. And then I think that this is where business has to be, because when we come out of this on the other side, what ever it's going to look like? No, if we're going to have an economic collapse, we don't know if we're going to go into a depression. We don't know if we're going to hit the ground running and go, wow, like, you know what? It wasn't that long. And we got, you know, all the, you know, the government injections that were necessary to keep our businesses fortified, to take us out on the other side. A lot of fear. And and for myself, I'm just trying to instill in people that that we either live in fear or we live in love and to live in fear. We're not making great decisions for ourself. And so how do we move through our life right now with such love and gratitude, such reverence for being able to be on the planet right now in this great awakening that we're going through? Because that's what that's what I'm calling it. To me, it is a great awakening of what we're experiencing. And it's like everything's happening at once. The economy, a pandemic, the planet is changed to. The sun is changing. All these frequencies are changing for us. And and and what an honor it is to be a part of this incredible show. 

 

[00:25:39] Yeah. And to reflect that, we've had a we've had a remarkable history as a species and as a continent, as you and I share the same continent of survival through, you know, through tough times. And it's good to remember that that's where that kind of grit comes from. I think that it's interesting as a Vegan business owner, because as you so eloquently kind of covered, there's this small business owner and community member responsibilities and all of these emotions happening. But then further, as a Vegan, you know, I've spoken with a lot of people. I call them unlikely vegans because these are the people that kind of chose a vegan lifestyle that you wouldn't have normally thought it was not a normal trajectory for them. These outliers that are now becoming vegans for a variety of reasons, health, things of that nature, age and disease, and they're seeking out the vegan lifestyle. But a lot of these people have said that they know the pandemic is a very interesting concept for them, aside from tragedy and life loss, because they feel as though it's it's kind of recalibrating how people are looking at health and not just the wet markets. And I don't want to get into the controversy of wherever one thought thinks the crunch of various started and all of that. Like, I'll leave that aside, but just re examining health and and what we take for granted and how we look at it and health care systems and even getting all the way back down to, you know, food, which is is is a medicine. It's our original fuel and it's the most powerful medicine and it's the most powerful cure. And people believe that this is it is kind of naturally filtering that concept through people that might not have thought about it until sickness or something like that came upon them. And I'm wondering if you've kind of had any thought with that about how it might burgeon. You know, the industry out there with you have you look towards a new horizon where more people are educated or likewise or consequently thought about educating people more who could be more curious about veganism. 

 

[00:27:36] Certainly. So I I couldn't agree more. I think that there's this there's this awakening of how we are nurturing the vehicle that gets us around. So the humanness, our humanness is human body that's housing our spirit. Right. And and and how are we going to live? Either we're going to live in pain and suffering or we're going to live in tremendous joy with an optimal life. And maybe, you know what? We're gonna get this gift that we could to live to 110 and we sort of play soccer till that age, you know. So for myself like this this week in particular, actually, I put up a really cool smoothie recipe on Kelly Chiles dot com. So that's my. Another website of mine. And and it's a heavy metal detox smoothie. And it was inspired to me from medium. I don't know if you've heard of Anthony Bloom or not, but he's a great guy. And I've I've been battling myself now with with a chronic virus in my body for about two years. So it's something that's like in my sinuses, I feel fatigued. And and I came down with it about two years ago. And then it was just so weird to me because I would feel good for a week and then I'd feel like crap again, like a week later. And and I would just constantly going these cycles. And, you know, I went to a doctor a couple times and they said, oh, yeah, you've got an allergy, you know, take this puffer steroids or something. And I just don't do pharmaceuticals. I just I just don't I don't I go to a natural path and everyone has sort of been sort of stumped with this thinking maybe it's a steam bar or something like that. Anyways, I discovered Anthony Williams medical medium in October, and he's a plant based. And so I've been doing celery juice and then had a mental detox smoothie with wild blueberries and all this beautiful stuff. And once I posted it, it kind of went viral as though people are. And this is just to add what you're asking about and people, you know, getting more introspective. They've got this time on their hands and they're home now and they realize that they can't live on potato chips and say Kraft dinner and, you know, McCain's deep chest freezer cakes or something like whatever it is. And and they're wanting to take their life and their health to another level. And I believe that our mind, body and soul are connected. And so, like we saying to us that there's multiple reasons why we go Vegan. And it could be for ethical reasons, of course, we don't want the animals to suffer. But a lot of people are blind to that. Some people just want it for their health. And they've been told maybe by their doctors or health reasons that, you know, they they've got coronary heart disease or, you know, there is diabetes in their family or their cancer or something. And someone told him that Vegan is going to be better for them and also for myself. I understand that we ingest the suffering of the animals. So when an animal is killed and it would not be to their choice. And if an animal is raised with suffering as well, too, and very disgusting, horrible, filthy, incomprehensible situations, they are S.A.M. and beings. Pigs have the intelligence of a six year old. I mean, we can go on and on with this kind of debate right now. And it's like there they are, real human stories. I should rephrase that. Rumor has it that there are you know, humans are incarnate sometimes through animals. So I don't want to jump to that. We don't have to talk about that. But animals there are there. They are soulful and and and who are we to to impose the pain on them? Who are we as these dominant species that we humans can be awful people where we're awful. Our species is awful. We're the only species that kills for the the joy of it. We're we're killing to eat the we'd let them live in barbaric situations. And it's just that that energy we ingest. You know, and so there's this there's this cleansing that's happening right now. There's this if we are wanting to ascend and to become all we need to be on planet Earth as as incredibly beautiful human sentient beings like, we can't keep killing the animals for us to eat. We can't keep on doing this. And I'm not that big an activist. I want to clear that up. I am not. And I've actually had an errand. I both have a daughter and I have both had Vegan activism pointed at us because, B, we have not decided to partake in that solidarity within Vegan activism movements because we've just been lovers. We have not been haters. We have not been judges. And we like that's just how we've rolled and how we've we've grown our business, I believe, to such a success. And I don't mean a success. That has to be monetary. I mean a success that we have so many people that come through our doors and they realize after the fact that we're Vegan they they realized after the fact there was no eggs and there is no dairies and it's right in the cupcakes or their their brownies or the, you know, the cookies and stuff in the food that they eat. And. And that was always my thing, was sharing the love first and the all inclusiveness first and let them get wowed with the love. And then oh by the way, you know, it's Vegan and. And that has what has worked for us tenfold. But it's bothered an awful lot of Vegan big and activists. And many times they've reached out to us too, to do in protest. And they've wanted to do protests in front of our business. And there there's a couple of times that I've had to actually ask them to leave our property because it was horrifying, the people that were in our business. And it was just it was just not how we roll. Yeah. 

 

[00:33:16] So, yeah, you're not gazetting if you're not upsetting somebody. I'm not sure you're doing it right. You know, as they say, someone's going to be a little unhappy. And I think everyone deserves their own path, you know, and Vegan should should get that ahead of everybody else. But again, you know, I think you're always going to get someone with a differing opinion. And I'm lucky enough and proud enough to be in a country that, you know, encourages diverse opinions. So I think that life begins judging, judging other vegans. Every religious political group in the world does it, too. So I do think it's a little ironic when you have something that's developed out of compassion and humanitarianism to kind of turn inwards and fight is is a bit rough. But I do I do see that happening a lot of times, especially when I talk to people about their Vegan journey. I want to end with talking about your cookbook. It's called Made with Love. It's 50 recipes of sweet and 50 of savory. It's written in collaboration with your daughter, Aaron. And it came out in 2016. And it's a bestselling cookbook. And I can't wait to get into. 

 

[00:34:23] How did you decide on your baby's the 50 and 50 that you were going to put in there? And given that the smoothie recipe that you've just posted is kind of taken over the world? 

 

[00:34:33] Which ones do you get a lot of feedback from your cookbook, like very favorite recipes that you've put in there. 

 

[00:34:40] So, yeah. So how did you decide it was it was kind of a we want to pick our best sellers that were from our beautiful kind through days that was like kind of just throwing it out there, too, and supporting the love and the the baby that we birthed from the beginning. So we chose basically all the recipes from there. I don't know if we excluded anything from like the bootable to our Caesar salad dressing like people's love, it's made with cashews and stuff. So we we infused the savory and the sweet through it. And the red velvet cupcake, I'm going to say, is one of the more popular ones. And I Teppei Ribbon is in there. And and, you know, because this book is about how do I say this? It's a very easy book. So to me, it's not like a complicated book where, you know, you're going to need multiple levels of ingredients from it. Everything is homemade, though. You know, this everything is from scratch. But it's a book that I think why it turned out to be such a great selling book is that it's relatable. And we talk about our story in there, too. And it's just it's just it's just a total feel good book. I think that people love it, too. Even Mother's Day coming up. It's one of those books that daughters like to give their moms and moms like to give their daughters because it's written by mom, a daughter. So there's a there's a beautiful feel about that, too. And, yeah, I don't know, like. I'm going to say that, yes, you're right, that that smoothy that's gone viral right now, too, like we've got to incorporate that, too, in our next book that we're doing. And that book is going to come out in spring 2021. And we're really excited about it because it's some it's kind of going to be every favorite that you wanted from the Made with Love book from 2016. It's now going to be included in this next book. So, yeah. Because we did go back a couple because we went. Well, then we're going to go out of business. Everyone's just going to go and copy our recipes. But it anyways, it is it's it's been it's been so well received. And because people are on lockdown right now. It is circulating. And I was joking with with so many of the fans and people that have been sharing their recipes online, they're taking pictures of everything they're cooking. So wouldn't that be amazing if it came back again as another bestseller? Right. You know, it did a revival four years later. So you never know. 

 

[00:37:04] Absolutely. From your lips to the universe's ears. Fantastic. 

 

[00:37:10] Well, I wanted to ask you, wrapping everything up for anybody who is listening to your story, any part of it from being a small business owner to being a Vegan, to being, you know, a woman, a female identified in any way anyone like that right now in the during this time period. What is a thought? Like the top three pieces of advice or mantras that you give yourself on a regular basis to kind of keep everything cool. You know, everything encouraged and motivated. 

 

[00:37:43] I mean, I do a daily twice a day, actually practice of meditation. I think it's very important to tune in to the space and. And just just tune into another frequency and get get our our head out of our head. If you want to call it that. We have to get our thoughts out of our head and into the space that can create all this goodness for us. And I think that right now, I think it's OK. You got to give yourself permission to be OK. I think there's many of us that feel guilty right now. Maybe trying to be happy and trying to be positive and almost feeling guilty because we really shouldn't, because the world's in a pandemic and no people are getting sick from this. And that sort of thing. And I think that for myself, that's what we need to rethink that. And because I think that our vibration is what's going to bring our our planet downward if we stay in that fear mode. And I think we just have to just be so kind to ourselves and just say, you know, it's okay for me to feel OK. Give yourself permission to to to feel OK right now. And that would be some words right now of wisdom from myself, from this global situation that we're in. 

 

[00:38:58] Perfect. I love it. Meditation, daily meditation and self permission to be OK. Those are awesome. I completely agree. 

 

[00:39:04] And I try to remind myself daily that, you know, from the moment I saw Yo-Yo Ma starting his movement of online music in collaboration of sharing to the Italian opera singer in the apartment building complex, there's there's a lot of beauty and humanity that we were not given voice to because there were a lot of other things going on and being able to harness back in on those and redefine who we are, as, you know, as it as a as a species throughout some of those beautiful lenses. It's an opportunity and I completely agree with you to giving yourself permission to find that beauty and revel in it and be OK with it is is just as important as having compassion for the pain and suffering. Happening right now, I want to say thank you so much, Kelly. I really appreciate you coming on today. I love your pearls of wisdom, your candor. And I know for everyone listening, I'm going to have Kelly back on our other podcast, which is Patricia. Kathleen speaks with female entrepreneurs and industry experts so that we can get some of her back story on a much more business focused angle. But today, I really appreciate all of your Vegan advice and your story, Kelly and I. I hope that the future is swift and that your shop bug opens back up and I will pop in and grab a cupcake. 

 

[00:40:23] I would love that. I would love that. Thank you so much for having me. 

 

[00:40:26] Thank you. 

 

[00:40:26] And for everyone listening, thank you for giving us your time today. And until we speak again next time, eat well, eat clean and be safe.