‘Too Far Gone’: Slutty Vegan’s Pinky Cole Says She Fired Entire C-Suite, Sold All of Her Real Estate to Save Company

Entrepreneur Pinky Cole Hayes entered 2024 with a radical decision. The founder of Slutty Vegan — a plant-based burger empire once valued at $100 million — fired her entire C-suite and returned to hands-on leadership after stepping away to focus on motherhood.

“When a ship is sinking, you gotta be able to start patching holes,” Cole explained of her dramatic executive purge on the “Earn Your Leisure” podcast.

The 37-year-old entrepreneur shared with the hosts that she enjoyed “a really strong six and a half year run” with her provocatively-named vegan fast food concept that built a cult-like following.

“When you think about restaurants, restaurants have like a shelf life of about two years and once you get into that third year it usually gets a little rocky,” Cole reflected.

During her brand’s growth phase, she shifted priorities, “Y’all know I went off and I had kids.” During that time she pivoted away from being a mascot and the face of the brand to focusing on “doing brand partnerships.”

This strategic pivot made sense for the Clark Atlanta University alum.

“As an entrepreneur, there is a point in your professional career where you have to dominate in the spaces where you do well,” she said.

The approach initially paid dividends.

Raising Money

“We did a raise, we raised money to grow the business, we grew up to 14 locations. We got $25 million for 25 percent and the company got valued at $100 million,” Cole explained.

However, beneath the surface, trouble was brewing. Despite strong sales, the company’s operational infrastructure couldn’t support its aggressive growth trajectory.

“We’ve always made money, money has always been good, that was never the issue,” Cole insisted, “but what happened was is our overhead higher than the money that we were bringing in.”

Corporate overhead ballooned to an unsustainable $10 million annually.

“Our bills were like $1,000,000 a month upwards for all the locations,” she said.

By 2023, warning signs became impossible to ignore.

“We realized we got a problem. And the problem isn’t today, the problem is in the future,” Cole recalled.

The situation deteriorated, leading to her decisive action, “I came back in the company January 2024 and I’m literally like boots on the ground. I let go of the whole C-Suite.”

Despite her efforts to right the ship — cutting costs and selling real estate assets — Cole ultimately faced the entrepreneur’s nightmare.

“I had couple million in real estate, started selling off the real estate,” she explained, adding, “but I realized that we were too far gone and for a couple months I was fighting it. The conversation was like, ‘hey we need to put this into a restructuring.’ I didn’t want to do that.”

In February 2025, she lost control of her beloved brand through a restructuring due to “cash-flow issues” in a “volatile” market.

This was not the first setback she ever encountered in her journey.

After losing her first Harlem restaurant to a fire in 2016 — an event that left her car repossessed and facing eviction — Cole had already earned what she calls her “expert at failing” credentials.

Remarkably, just weeks later, Cole orchestrated the company’s repurchase through an entity named “Ain’t Nobody Coming to See You, Otis LLC.”

She told Forbes, “I actually lost Slutty Vegan. And I just bought it back. And to say that makes me very emotional. Because for the past year and a half, I have dealt with the toughest experience of my life.”

Now focused on “Slutty Vegan 2.0,” Cole has scaled back to eight locations across Georgia, Alabama, Maryland, and New York, while planning global expansion to Dubai and Africa. Her vision extends beyond burgers to Bar Vegan, a cocktail concept, and Hayes Hospitality Group — a joint venture with her husband Derrick Hayes, owner of Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks.

Legal challenges remain, including wage-related lawsuits from former employees, but Cole is focused. With a new mindset and restart to her building, she is primed to dominate like she had been over the past ten years.