How San Francisco’s Vegan Mob Became a Plant-Based BBQ Empire | Eater SF

"On a hot day in late October I watched a fleet of cars pull in and out of a dead-end on Charter Oak Avenue to pick up breakfast burritos and tea-leaf salads from a many-faced ghost kitchen that is Vegan Mob, where founder Toriano Gordon — dressed in black with cherry-red Yeezy-esque shoes — sat smoking at a picnic table and juggling his phone. What started as out-the-trunk sales, pop-ups and farmers-market gigs grew into food trucks in Oakland and San Francisco, a now-thriving restaurant in Santa Rosa (with an earlier Lake Merritt location since closed), packaged sodas headed for Whole Foods in 2024, and a cookbook, Vegan Mob: Vegan BBQ & Soul Food, due in February from Random House. In my experience there, Vegan Mob has become the Bay’s go-to for meatless soul food — from vegan po’ boys and mac n’ cheese to a vegan gumbo Evan Kidera at Señor Sisig called excellent — even as Gordon wrestles with financing barriers and dreams of making the brand as ubiquitous as Nike while insisting on ownership and cultural representation." - Paolo Bicchieri