Today we’d like to introduce you to Cara Pitts.
Hi Cara, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Thank you for featuring me, I’m Cara, a Texas-based entrepreneur born and raised in San Antonio. I’ve spent my corporate career in the healthcare field when in 2017 I left my career to become a paid caregiver for my now 99-year-old grandmother Mary Lee. Being able to bring my grandmother out of the nursing home was a pivotal point in my journey that I didn’t realize at the time, it was going to be the foundation that led to Southern Roots Vegan Bakery (SRVB). I met my husband at that corporate job in 2013, once I was a caregiver for my grandmother, one night my husband, Marcus, and I watched the documentary “What The Health” and that changed Marcus’ mindset immediately. He wanted to go plant-based right away, it was a much more difficult road for me. (I started a podcast this year called ‘I Can’t Believe I’m Vegan’ because there is a big section of people whose journey is not that easy and I think it does a disservice to act like we are all the same.
Once Marcus switched his dietary preferences it started me on a journey to veganize our favorite meals. I always say I’ve been a baker since my Easy Bake Oven days in the 90s so I had a whole cookbook of recipes I had created through the years. Since I was in charge of making meals for my grandmother, she became my official taste tester. Once I had nailed down some southern classics that my grandmother approved, we started sharing them with family, friends, and our church. No one could believe they were vegan. Our church business ministry pushed us to start a business and directed us to Launch SA which is the entrepreneurship and small business center in SA, when we got there, we said it was only God because they were in the final days of accepting applications to a 10 week in person culinary accelerator called Break, Fast & Launch. It’s the nation’s first culinary business accelerator. This is the part of our journey where you can look at your situation glass half empty or full. Marcus was still working in the corporate healthcare world and the accelerator was 2 hours a day, 3 times a week in the middle of the weekday, a few weeks before class started Marcus entire department was laid off. If we had not already had this in place, I don’t know what we would’ve done. This accelerator was monumental in our journey and set us up for success.
Through the course, we started doing local farmers markets and some out-of-town events where we met Social Media Influencer, Tabitha Brown, which helped to gain their first viral exposure. She was so amazing and asked us to send her products so she could promote us on her ‘Very Good Mondays’ social media show on her page. One night we were sitting at home, and our phones started going crazy and it was all the orders coming through! We will also be so thankful to her because she didn’t have to use her platform to promote other small, black-owned businesses.
Long story short since then Southern Roots Vegan Bakery has been nominated as Best Vegan Bakery in the Country in 2021 and 2022. Peta awarded SRVB us as Best Sweet Potato Pie in the country for the 2021 Holiday Season.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
After going viral our expenses increased but our sales stabilized so it was hard to scale our business. We were turned down for any relief funding and had to take out loans to help fund our business. Going through BFL (Break, Fast, & Launch) I equate it to a GPS, you can be on your journey and you can take the route you think you should or you can follow the GPS and get there faster. So, every obstacle we faced during the pandemic, we had the tools to reach back and ask for guidance and assistance along the way to help us get to where we need to go faster.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Southern Roots Vegan Bakery specializes in recreating southern classics with a plant-based twist. We are most known for our famous cake donuts, they come in a variety of flavors like Red Velvet & Lemon Drop! We are set apart from others because of our story, our business was birthed out of our own personal decision to eat plant-based and we couldn’t find desserts we loved. I’m most proud that we have been nominated Best Vegan Bakery for the past two years in a row, that allows us to reach more people and show that eating plant-based sweets are better!
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
We are working to get into the food service industry. We want to be part of the change to eat more plant-based treats, so we want to partner with large corporate companies, universities, conference centers, and more to be the plant-based treats of choice. For more information reach out to Info@SouthernRootsVegan.com
We ship nationwide, have catering, retail and wholesale options. We’d love to offer your readers a 15% off coupon using promo code VOYAGE
Contact Info:
- Website: www.SouthernRootsVegan.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/SouthernRootsBiz
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/SouthernRootsBiz
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/SouthernRoots_V
Image Credits
Lion Tiers Photography
