Streeter: The complicated reality of rooting for Pinky Cole

In Aisha “Pinky” Cole Hayes’ business memoir “I Hope You Fail,” she deconstructs statements from “haters” used to discourage ambitions and keep you down. It’s an ironic title, because I don’t know one person who hopes that the Slutty Vegan founder and Baltimore native fails.

In fact, to paraphrase the viral “America’s Next Top Model” meme from former supermodel Tyra Banks, we were all rooting for you — and still are. Cole Hayes is a bold, brashly original creator in the vegan space, where there are not a lot of people who look like her. Which is why it’s been a sometimes disappointing emotional roller coaster as a Black, vegetarian woman from Baltimore to watch her go through very public missteps, even as she keeps forging ahead.

“It’s pretty painful to see the trajectory go this way. I saw myself in Pinky,” said Tammira Lucas, founder of The Cube, the nation’s largest Black-woman-owned coworking space, and “a true fan” of Cole Hayes since the restaurateur was a producer on the tabloid talk show “Maury.”

It’s been a hard year for Cole Hayes, who last year lost her business, known for provocative sandwich names and her gleefully in-your-face style — a shrinking violet would not call their cookbook “Eat Plants, B*tch.” She bought back the Slutty Vegan name and intellectual property, is actively looking to franchise, and has filed for personal bankruptcy, all of which she has detailed on her first season of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” airing now. Earlier this month, her company announced that Slutty Vegan will close at the Baltimore Peninsula and relocate to the Johns Hopkins University campus; they later issued a correction that the restaurant would instead be nearby.

Witnessing all this feels very frustrating, especially as someone who has stood in long lines at the Slutty Vegan food truck and happily cooked from Cole Hayes’ cookbook. She knows more about business than I do, but sometimes, I wonder if she could move with a little more stealth? Then again, that’s not her game.

When you are as public a person as Cole Hayes, you cannot make mistakes privately. I am not an entrepreneur, but as a Black woman who makes a living with her opinions and words, I have felt the extra scrutiny on us, where it seems like our wins are anomalies and our mistakes are expected.

“We can have these candid conversations about the things that could have been better, that she [Cole Hayes] did wrong, and also not be bashing her,” Lucas said. “What she has done is remarkable, in building a really strong brand. I know as a founder, that it’s not easy, and that as a Black woman founder, it absolutely is not.”

My own query on social media asking Black women business owners in Baltimore to share how they related to Cole Hayes was interpreted as if I were one of those haters she mentioned in her book. And boy, did they let me know. I think it’s fine to be critical of Black women as a Black woman, but I understood the instinct to protect.

“We love Pinky Cole,” local creator Kafi D’Ambrosi told me in a message after she came to Cole Hayes’ defense on my Threads post. “I think she did what she had to do. With so much shine on being a boss, launching, excitement and success, there isn’t a lot to talk about when you need to file for bankruptcy, and how it can be a positive decision.”

So what went wrong? Maybe, as Lucas believes, the business grew too fast, and sticking to Slutty Vegan’s food truck pop-up model might have been more affordable in this era of increasing real estate and food costs. It also comes down to where the business landed: a relatively new area like the Peninsula that “may not have matched her demographic customer base,” D’Ambrosi said.

“The location was not the greatest,” Lucas said. “I’m a very conscious buyer, and if I can spend with my people, I will.”

I had initially been excited about Slutty Vegan’s planned spot in Northwood Commons, not just because I grew up in the area, but because it’s a Black neighborhood next to Morgan State University, a premier historically Black institution. It would have been really cool to have such a popular, cool brand there, but the location never opened.

Being on “Real Housewives” also seemed like a risky thing to do as Cole Hayes’ business was struggling so publicly, but Lucas said she understood the decision to take back the narrative, even if it’s not a decision she would have made. “You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. What is it you want us to do? She took a chance on herself,” Lucas said.

Lucas points to Adam Neumann of WeWork, which, like The Cube, is a coworking space. He failed spectacularly and was asked to leave his own company — with a nearly half-billion-dollar exit package. “We have to take control like white men, who get the opportunity to fail over and over again, and not get backlash, and then constantly get the opportunity to do it again,” Lucas said. “Why not us?”

Cole Hayes has kept it moving with other projects too, meeting with “Power” star and friend Naturi Naughton about a TV project called “Edgewood” on a recent “Housewives” episode. Ultimately, Lucas hopes Cole Hayes can use both her steps forward and public setbacks as examples for others.

“What Pinky is building, failing along the way, has given her a platform for her brand of knowing what to do and not to do,” Lucas said. “She can lend knowledge and say, ‘When I built this, this is what happened.’ If you’d done it once, you can do it again.”

I hope so. I’m rooting for her.