I have to be honest with you. Before I sat down with Kelley-Sue LeBlanc -- KSL, as she introduced herself when she walked into the studio -- I wasn't sure what I was walking into. I have owned the Red Arrow Diner for 39 years. I have been in the food business my entire adult life. And vegan food? It wasn't exactly my world.

But Kelley-Sue has a way of changing your mind before you even realize it's happening.

Kelley-Sue didn't always cook vegan food. She didn't always cook at all -- not professionally. For 25 years, she was a Director of Engineering in the tech industry. She was building software, leading teams, running at full speed.

And then she got sick.

Not a little sick. Sick in a way that nobody could explain. For eight years, her first thought every morning was pain and her last thought every night was pain. She tried everything -- different doctors, different specialists, a 100-day keto experiment that made her Apple Watch warn her she might be heading toward a heart attack.

Nothing worked.

Going plant-based was the last resort. She didn't even believe it would work. But within two weeks, something shifted. Within two months, she was so much better she couldn't understand why she had spent eight years declining.

She told me: the moment she realized food had done what medicine couldn't, she couldn't not share it with other people.

That's where The Sleazy Vegan began.

I had to ask. And the story is even better than you'd think.

Early on, Kelley-Sue walked into an upscale vegan restaurant in her fancy Italian boots with her fancy Italian handbag -- and was made to feel like an outsider. Like she wasn't vegan enough. Like she didn't belong.

She never went back. And when she was naming her own business, she thought: if the vegan community is going to treat people like that, I'm going to own it. She laughed herself to tears the moment the name came to her. Her daughter was mortified. She went and filed the LLC that same day.

The Sleazy Vegan isn't just a name. It's a philosophy. No judgment. No purity tests. No boxes. You don't have to be vegan to walk through the door. In fact, about 85% of her customers aren't vegan at all -- and that's completely by design.

As Kelley-Sue put it: having any kind of judgment or shame associated to food is just not happening on her watch.

One of the things that stopped me in this conversation was something Kelley-Sue wrote about her business -- that perfect can get in the way of progress, and that every time you make a choice that is better, you are helping make the world better.

Better is better.

She said it comes from her coding background, from years of working in an iterative way -- failing fast on purpose, finding the breaking point early, building from there. She applies the same philosophy to her food, her sourcing, her sustainability practices, her approach to veganism itself.

It is not a perfect system. She'll tell you that herself. But every choice toward better matters. And I think that's a pretty powerful way to run a business -- or anything else, really.

The road to The Sleazy Vegan Cafe at 205 N. State Street in Concord was not a straight line.

There was the ghost kitchen that wasn't on purpose -- a supply chain disaster that turned an $80,000 food truck build into a $150,000 impossibility overnight. There was Aggie, the food truck that finally hit the road and took the food to events, festivals, and the Manchester Taco Tour. There was the Pembroke City Limits chapter -- a music bar collaboration where Kelley-Sue spent a year sliding vegan sausage hoagies in front of skeptics and walking away, watching them take the third bite and look at her like she was a witch who had done something magical.

And then there was the pivot to Concord. State Street Kitchen. A tiny front space that used to be an art gallery, now serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Five tables. Full menu all day. Curbside so fast she can run it out to your window at the crosswalk.

Four years in. Four years of awards -- Best of 603, Best of NH Magazine, Best of New Hampshire from Hippo Press, the Cappy Awards. And still, when I brought up the recognition, she blushed. She got quiet. And then she said something I haven't stopped thinking about:

Cooking is where you share your heart.

If you listen to nothing else from this episode, listen to the part where Kelley-Sue breaks down how to get one grocery trip to become five completely different meals across five days.

Sunday is a salad -- raw, fresh, vibrant. Monday you take what's left and make a stir fry, ginger orange, gently cooked. Tuesday you take that and cook it down more -- maybe Mexican, maybe tacos. Wednesday it becomes a soup with Indian spices. Each day you are building on the layers of the day before, changing the flavor profile, adding something fresh, cooking the vegetables a little further through their life cycle.

No waste. No boredom. Complex flavors that you could never replicate twice.

It was one of those moments in the conversation where I genuinely learned something new. And after 39 years in the food business, those moments are special.

At the end of our conversation, I asked Kelley-Sue what she is most proud of. She didn't say the awards. She didn't say the cafe.

She said her family unit. Because it has taken her whole family to make this work. And she said something that I think captures everything about who she is and what she is building:

She is doing the black diamond here in New Hampshire. The hardest run. The one nobody else wanted to try. And if she can make The Sleazy Vegan work here -- she has a whole lot of other opportunities waiting.

I believe her.

Go find Kelley-Sue and The Sleazy Vegan at 205 N. State Street in Concord, NH. Open Thursday through Saturday 8am to 8pm and Sunday 9am to 3pm. Everything you need is at thesleazyvegan.com and on Instagram at @thesleazyveganfoodtruck and @sleazyvegancafe_concordnh.

And watch the full episode on YouTube at youtube.com/@beyondtheplatewithcarol -- it is one of my favorites.

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ABOUT CAROL ERICKSON

Carol Erickson has owned Red Arrow Diner since 1987 -- four locations across New Hampshire, open 24/7. She started Beyond the Plate to tell the real stories behind the people who make New England's food and hospitality scene what it is. Not just what's on the menu. What's behind it.

This article is brought to you by Red Arrow Diner -- 4 locations across New Hampshire, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Manchester, Concord, Londonderry, and Nashua. Come find us anytime hunger hits.
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