Electronic music producer Moby recently opened a vegan restaurant in Los Angeles that is giving away all of its profits to a number of different animal charities. The restaurant is called “Little Pine” and is located in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles.
Moby spoke in a recent statement about how he wanted the restaurant to be a non-profit, charitable organization.
“Opening little pine was never meant to be a conventional entrepreneurial endeavor. I want it to represent veganism in a really positive light, and also to support the animal welfare organizations who do such remarkable work,” he said.
“If we are losing money, I can’t sacrifice the quality of the food we serve. I would rather honestly have a restaurant that is 100% organic and loses a little bit of money, than serve compromised food that makes money. I don’t see the point in serving anything that I wouldn’t have in my house,” he added.
Moby has been a vegan himself for over 27 years.
“When I was growing up, around 8 or 9, my favorite food was stuffed shells. My mom would take those big semolina shells and stuff them with ricotta. So we are doing our version of that,” said Moby.
“I really like the idea of presenting this sort of like, hopefully well-designed vegan environment in a way that doesn’t involve Birkenstocks and mashed yeast. If someone wants to wear Birkenstocks, they should, but this is not the old cliched, joyless veganism,” he said.
According to the mission statement on the restaurant’s website:
the first, and most obvious, question you get asked when you’re opening a restaurant is, ‘why on earth would you ever want to open a restaurant?’ to open a restaurant you have to find and renovate a space, jump through 20,000 bureaucratic hoops, come up with remarkable food, and make sure that everything works flawlessly. and at the end of all this, if you’re lucky, you’ll break even. maybe.
thus the obvious question: ‘why would you ever want to open a restaurant?’ for me it’s the ability to take a bunch of the things I care about: organic food, community, veganism, architecture & design, and represent them in one space.
I can write about organic food and veganism and architecture & design, but it’s a lot more compelling and interesting to open a restaurant and show actual, physical examples of organic food, community, veganism, and architecture & design. blogs and instagram are great, but a picture of food will never replace an actual, beautiful plate of food served in a beautiful space.
The organizations being donated to include, The Humane Society, Farm Sanctuary, Sea Shepard, PETA, Animal Legal Defense Fund, and others.
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John Vibes is an author and researcher who organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference. He also has a publishing company where he offers a censorship free platform for both fiction and non-fiction writers. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can purchase his books, or get your own book published at his website www.JohnVibes.com.
