Bar Vegan, a cocktail bar and restaurant founded by Pinky Cole and her Slutty Vegan partners, will close on May 5 after four years at Ponce City Market, according to an announcement on Instagram.
Located on the second floor of the central food hall, Bar Vegan took over the space previously occupied by The Mercury, a cocktail bar backed by the owners of the former Pinewood Tippling Room in Decatur.
“In March of 2021, a handful of entrepreneurs, commonly from the Atlanta University Center, combined vision, style, culinary arts, and an idea, and molded it into a multi-million dollar scalable business,” the announcement read. “This past month, April 2024, the decision was made to close the location that created the hookahless blueprint, for there to be similar vegan bars across the country, BarVegan Atlanta.”
But the post indicates this might not be the end of Bar Vegan in Atlanta, just this location.
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The closure of Bar Vegan comes on the heels of the closures of Slutty Vegan in Duluth and on the campuses of Georgia Tech and Spelman earlier this spring. The closures were part of a restructuring of the Atlanta-based vegan restaurant chain founded by Cole in 2018.
Cole briefly lost control of her company “after a rocky 2024,” telling People magazine, “I was chasing something that I couldn’t catch for so many reasons” and that she “wasn’t the operational person,” but learned that as a business owner, “You can never take your hands off the wheel.”
In an interview with the AJC’s UATL reporter Brooke Leigh Howard, Cole said she regained ownership of Slutty Vegan in March and formed a new company under the Ain’t Nobody Coming to See You, Otis LLC, inspired by “The Tempatations” mini series.
Cole and her former Slutty Vegan LLC partners were involved in a lawsuit brought by former Bar Vegan employees in 2022 over unpaid wages. Despite Cole and her partners denying the claims that they withheld tips and overtime pay, they reached a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs in 2024 to pay $95,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees. However, an April 17 report by the AJC states that the settlement remains unpaid.
Rough Draft reached out to representatives for Bar Vegan for comment on the closure and the unpaid settlement.
Cole founded Slutty Vegan in 2018, operating the business as a food delivery service around Atlanta University Center. People ordered Cole’s vegan burgers with names like One Night Stand and Ménage à Trois through Instagram. She eventually opened a food truck.
The first permanent location of Slutty Vegan opened in Westview in 2019, followed by locations in the Old Fourth Ward, Jonesboro, Athens and Duluth. Rapid expansion in 2022 brought Slutty Vegan to locations outside of Georgia, including Birmingham and New York City.
Jonesboro, Old Fourth Ward, and the original location in Westview remain open in Georgia. Cole temporarily closed the Westview location for renovations. It should reopen in the coming weeks.