A popular vegan restaurant was flooded with bad reviews after it stopped serving free food to police officers. Then, customers and celebrities stepped in to help.

• Atlanta restaurant Slutty Vegan saw an outpouring of support from customers after receiving a flood of negative reviews.
• The poor ratings came after the restaurant stopped offering free food to police officers amid protests for racial justice, and after founder and CEO Pinky Cole financially supported the family of Rayshard Brooks.
• Slutty Vegan fans offered support by sharing their positive experiences online, while Gabrielle Union, Ludacris, La La Anthony, and Chris Paul funded a day of free meals from the plant-based burger joint.
• "The community really stepped up," Cole told Insider. "People started catching wind that we were getting false negative reviews and in 72 hours we got 23,000 positive reviews."

Celebrities and loyal customers rallied behind the popular Atlanta restaurant Slutty Vegan and its founder and CEO, Pinky Cole, after the plant-based burger joint was flooded with negative reviews in late June.

The poor ratings came weeks after the restaurant announced that it would no longer serve complimentary meals to police officers — the eatery was previously providing free food to all essential workers — amid protests demanding racial justice and addressing police brutality against the Black community following George Floyd's death.

Cole had also recently partnered with Derrick Hayes, president and CEO of another Atlanta restaurant, Big Dave's Cheesesteaks, to provide financial relief to the family of Rayshard Brooks. Brooks was shot and killed by a police officer during an altercation in a Wendy's parking lot on June 12.

Cole's philanthropy organization, the Pinky Cole Foundation, and Big Dave's Cheesesteaks pooled funds to buy Brooks' family a car and provide them with life insurance. They also teamed up with Clark Atlanta University to provide college scholarships totaling more than $600,000 for Brooks' four children. The scholarships include tuition, the cost of meals, and room and board, according to a June 20 press release from Clark Atlanta University.

"Where Rayshard Brooks was shot, that's eight minutes away from my restaurant," Cole told Insider. "That means it's part of my community. As a local business owner, I have a responsibility to make sure that we support her in any way we can even if it's the smallest gesture," she said, speaking of Brooks' widow Tomika Miller.

Cole said that she started the Pinky Cole Foundation to help bridge the generational gap for Americans, especially Black people.

"Philanthropy is at the core of who I am," she added. "Giving back is very important to me because I saw my mother giving back when I was younger."

Through Pinky Cole's foundation, her restaurant Slutty Vegan was giving free meals to essential workers — including police — but that changed after George Floyd's death

Cole told Insider it was important to her to make sure essential workers had food to eat. As such, Slutty Vegan fed firefighters, several hospitals and senior citizen homes, local educators, and police officers for free, according to Cole.

"That felt really good," she said, adding that it was the restaurant's way of saying "thank you" to those fighting COVID-19.

But then, on May 25, George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, sparking protests against police violence towards the Black community.

"After George Floyd died, we had a decision to make," Cole told Insider. "It just didn't feel right in my spirit to still offer free food to the police when there are people protesting around the world, standing in solidarity with the fight against police brutality."

Cole said she posted an announcement to Facebook on June 1 that Slutty Vegan would no longer be serving police officers for free.

"Police are always welcome at the restaurant, and they don't have to wait in line, they just come to the front," Cole said. She added that initial responses to the post included sentiments like, "Thank you, we appreciate you standing with the community," and said it didn't get much attention beyond that at the time.

However, Cole told Insider that the Facebook post began receiving negative comments following her public support for Brooks' family in late June, prompting her to remove the post from the platform.

Cole said she woke up on the morning of June 25 to a flood of negative reviews online

"I knew something was wrong because I don't play about reviews," Cole said. "There has been this stigma for years that Black-owned businesses don't do well. So I have been working my hardest to make sure we are shown in a positive light, so we can lead by example, so we can change that false narrative."

Cole said Slutty Vegan has retained a steady 4.7 on Google reviews and a 4.5 on Yelp since its 2018 opening.

Cole told Insider the reviews she saw that morning were from people claiming to have gotten food poisoning from eating at the restaurant and saying that staff members spit into their food.

When she saw a review that said "They don't support the police," she got a feeling that something wasn't right.

"Something told me to go on Facebook," she said. "That same June 1 post now had 95 shares and over 100-something comments." Cole said they were all negative and many incorrectly stated that her team was refusing to serve the police.

Cole said she deleted the Facebook post at around 7 a.m. "Within the next couple of hours, the reviews started flowing," she said. "I got so much hate mail — I'm still, to this day, getting hate mail. People saying that 'I hope your business burns down,' and 'I hope your business falls apart,' and 'I hope the police don't come when someone robs your business.' That hurt."

Later that day, she posted the following statement clarifying that police are still welcome to purchase food from Slutty Vegan, they just won't be served for free. The June 25 statement below acknowledged the "online campaign to mischaracterize our actions and disparage our business through negative reviews and ratings."

Yelp has since started an investigation into the activity on Slutty Vegan's page, where the review platform has issued an "unusual activity alert." A Yelp spokesperson told Insider that comments have been temporarily disabled as its standards for reviews are that "all review content must reflect an actual first-hand consumer experience with that business."

Local fans of Slutty Vegan rallied around the restaurant to turn around its poor ratings, and celebrities got involved

"The community really stepped up," Cole told Insider. "People started catching wind that we were getting false negative reviews and in 72 hours we got 23,000 positive reviews."

She posted a screengrab on June 27 thanking fans for flooding the internet with 10,000 positive reviews in one day. The influx of reviews got Slutty Vegan to a 4.9 out of 5 on Google, according to Cole.

Cole told Insider that she does a great deal of work for her community and that she believes that's why so many people stepped up to rally behind her.

Following the outpouring of support from community members, celebrities joined in. Gabrielle Union, Ludacris, La La Anthony, and Chris Paul — all of whom were already fans of the food at Slutty Vegan, according to a representative for Cole — reached out to Cole's manager and came together to sponsor a day of free vegan burgers for the people of Atlanta. (Cole declined to comment on the dollar amount provided by the group of celebrities.)

Free @sluttyveganatl Today For ANY & EVERYBODY #atown

A post shared by @ ludacris on Jun 30, 2020 at 12:51pm PDTJun 30, 2020 at 12:51pm PDT

So, on June 30, around 2,000 customers waited — some for four hours — to get their hands on a Slutty Vegan burger, according to Cole. Some customers waited on the mile-long line with lawn chairs while others stood and danced as they made their way closer to the restaurant, she said.

Cole called it a celebration of community and a way to thank her customers for rallying behind her.

"It was more of a 'Thank you' to the city," Cole said. "Like 'Thank you for supporting this business, so now we're going to support you and make sure no one has to pay for food.'"

Cole said she gets emotional just thinking about the day. "It gave me more ammunition to really keep being the philanthropist that I've been," she said.

Slutty Vegan drew lines before celebrities stepped in, so Cole initially thought people were there for free food. But then she realized it was bigger than burgers.

"We really have an opportunity to change the world, and the restaurant is just a funnel to do that," she said.

Cole told Insider that her next step towards making a difference is for the Pinky Cole Foundation and Big Dave's Cheesesteaks to partner with the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. Together, they have pledged to provide life insurance for every Black man in Atlanta (their larger plan is to reach every Black man nationwide, but they are starting locally).

"We'll be the first to set the tone with our own money, and then we're going to welcome donations and people can just sign up for life insurance," she said. "It's really about general racial wealth and making sure people in the Black community especially are insured."

Cole said she hopes her philanthropy efforts will help to change the course of how people do "good business," which she says has a component of social responsibility.

According to Cole, Slutty Vegan is on track to open 13 new restaurants through 2022, starting with a second eatery that's expected to open on July 11 in Jonesboro, Georgia, followed by a third that Cole said would be coming later this summer in a surprise location.

"I came up with this idea in my bedroom and I didn't expect it to grow legs like it did," Cole said of the restaurant. "It's bigger than me now, and it's bigger than food. So the biggest thing that we're working on is to make sure that we can just help people. Black people, all people — just bring people together."

Representatives for Google, Gabrielle Union, Ludacris, La La Anthony, and Chris Paul did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

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