Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Kraus
Hi Jennifer, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Cooking and creating for others has always been something I’ve been passionate about, and I always found my way to be a part of artistic and culinary endeavors in different ways. I wanted to follow this path earlier on in my life, but my father convinced me to get a degree doing something that would surely support me. I became a speech therapist but still loved baking, creating, and being involved in the hubbub of the food tents at my daughter’s sporting events. I would daydream about having a food truck one day and being able to share my food with a larger audience. I had become vegan, along with my daughter, in 2010 after we wanted to try it for the summer and we stuck with it. I have an autoimmune disease that attacks my kidneys and by following a vegan diet I was able to stave off my inevitable transplant until September of 2019. By that time I had spent months on dialysis and my free time had largely been spoken for. Soon after my transplant, quarantine began, and I finally had the energy and time to commit. I really sat with it and thought “Why not now?”. We had lived in the area for a few years, and during that time I’d noticed there weren’t a huge variety of vegan options around. I saw a need for something I could offer, and it created kind of a perfect storm that I decided to go ahead and run with. We started by offering Monday preorder menus (each week posting a menu offering a few Mains, Add-ons and Specialty items that customers can order and pick up the following week), and tabling at different small events in town. Quickly we saw that people really had been waiting for a business like us and we began building up a following of lovely and devoted customers. We started getting festivals and businesses reaching out to us and wanting to book us at their events, having customers come up to us at our tent and telling us they had our food once and had driven hours to come back and see us, and being asked to be a private chef during the Masters. We have been able to grow from a tent-and-table set up to having our own food truck, famously named Juniper, and have been able to be a part of so many incredible experiences throughout this journey.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Being a fully vegan business has also come with its challenges. There continues to be a stigma surrounding vegan food and people who think being plant-based means eating only ‘twigs and leaves’. Uprooted and our customers know that’s not us- and being able to feed a skeptic and having them leave full and with a new understanding about what healthful eating can look like makes it worth it.
We have been so lucky to work with and befriend a lot of other small businesses in the area (vegan and non), and the support and wisdom of others who have been down the road before has been invaluable. Building a community in every facet of life is important, and the people we have met through this experience has solidified that.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Uprooted is a 100% plant-based, largely gluten free, and allergen-friendly business. We have personal experience with allergies and are committed to being somewhere that customers can trust to take their dietary restrictions seriously. We are known for our takes on vegan food and wanting to serve delicious and inventive options that people actually want to eat. We love being able to create dishes that people come back for again and again while maintaining a focus on using local fresh produce in our offerings. We have offered our Monday pre-order menu from the beginning and we also take custom orders for personal meal-prep, large and small-scale catering and all manners of cakes and bakery items. With the addition of our food truck in 2022, our big blue converted horse trailer is now a big part of our recognition when it comes to picking us out of a crowd, and we are always so happy to hear people excited to see us at events!
Contact Info:
- Website: Https://eatuprootedvegan.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uprootedvegancuisine/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uprooted.vegan.cuisine
