Slutty Vegan Owner Pinky Cole Has a New Outlook After Losing Her Business — and Almost Her Life (Exclusive)

Pinky Cole Hayes was thinking of her master business plan when life (literally) forced her to slow down and reflect on her path. 

During an exclusive interview with PEOPLE earlier this month, the Slutty Vegan owner, 37, revealed that amid all of her business endeavors, she experienced a life-threatening car accident. While she was driving at 70 mph on the highway in Atlanta, a mattress flew into and smashed Pinky’s windshield. “It was like Final Destination,” she said. “I’m not the person to get in accidents, and I wasn’t on the phone. I wasn’t texting.”

The unique experience resulted in the restaurateur having to go to the hospital and, begrudgingly, take a much-needed break from her business pursuits. “In life, we always worry about the things that really don’t matter until your life is on the line,” she explained. “I have a newfound perspective on the things that I prioritize now after that accident.”

Pinky, who shares children D Ella, 3, Derrick Jr., 2, and, David, 1, with her husband, entrepreneur Derrick Hayes, believed the freak accident was somewhat of a message from God telling her to rest — “so he threw a d— bed on me,” she joked. 

“Right now in this moment, I’ve really been in a place of peace, but I had a really rocky 2024,” she shared. Following a few financial setbacks with Slutty Vegan, Pinky lost her business and needed to find a way forward. 

“Our corporate overhead was about $10 million,” Pinky stated. “I was chasing something that I couldn’t catch for so many reasons.” Though she knew the fast-food chain was special and connected to a large audience — famous for consistently having hours-long queues — the corporate spend was too much for the entrepreneur to catch up with, calling it “a situation where something is just too far gone,” in which “the best thing that you could do is let it die so that you can rebirth it.” 

She admitted that she “wasn’t the operational person,” and had people in place to run Slutty Vegan from a business perspective but learned that as a business owner, “You can never take your hands off the wheel.”

On Feb. 13, Pinky had to make the uncomfortable and difficult decision to put Slutty Vegan through a restructuring, which meant that she had to relinquish control and ownership of the company to an assignee. “I fought it for a long time, to be honest, and I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to face the public scrutiny,” she confessed. “I didn’t want to face the opinions of others because I know I built something that’s so doted by so many people. I could have easily gone to social media and did a rally cry for help, but I didn’t want to be a victim.” 

Although her business looked like a failure on the surface, it’s just the type of situation that Pinky encourages entrepreneurs to embrace and find inspiration through in her ironically titled book, I Hope You Fail. In the book, Pinky shares her ideologies about life’s ebbs and flows and how the moments that feel like failures are building blocks on the road to success. 

“There’s going to be a couple of left turns that you’re going to make, you’re going to make a couple of U-turns. There’s going to be some speed bumps in the road,” she said of her business journey. “Somebody’s going to throw a mattress at you — but that is not reason enough to give up.” 

After losing her first restaurant in a greasefire in 2016, then her car getting repossessed and getting evicted from her apartment shortly after, she calls herself “an expert at failing.” Of course, resilience is what has driven Pinky’s path, as she’s fought and won her company back. 

Pinky says she went into “strategy mode” to figure out what her next moves would be following the restructure of Slutty Vegan, which included hiring a headhunter to find new leadership for the company. On March 28, 2025, the proud entrepreneur bought back her company (for an undisclosed number) under the name “Ain’t Nobody Coming to See You, Otis,” a purposeful use of the popular quote from the 1998 film The Temptations. 

“People love Slutty Vegan because they love me and I used to not tap into that, but I 1743601916 know I have a superpower with people,” she explained. “People love me, so I know that people are going to support and back me in whatever it is that I authentically do.”

Currently, Slutty Vegan has seven locations — five in Gerogia, one in Alabama and another in New York. The chain previously had two additional locations in New York, another in Texas, and another two through contracts with Georgia Tech and Spelman University, all of which have since been permanently or temporarily closed. The latter two were closed during the restructure.  

Now Pinky is turning her focus to what she calls “Slutty Vegan 2.0,” which she says will have “new rules and new intentions.” The reimagined Slutty Vegan will have “the same essence but with a new flow,” as described by the business owner. “My last investors, they brought value for what they brought value to, but when you think about elevation and growth, I’m elevating and growing with a new set of folks and I’m excited about it,” she shared. 

Slutty Vegan’s future looks bright as Pinky aims to hyper-scale the food chain in the way she intended for the business. “Global expansion is big for 2.0.” she revealed. “We’ve been talking about Dubai and Africa and just really scaling Slutty Vegan beyond the U.S. There’s some great opportunities for other people to get invested in the brand by way of having their own Slutty Vegan, which I’ll be able to share [more about] that in the future.” 

Besides Slutty Vegan, Pinky owns the brand’s spinoff operation, Bar Vegan, a tapas and cocktail bar with a modern flair, and is looking to expand even further into the hospitality space alongside her husband who owns the popular Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks. “The Hayes Hospitality Group, that’s coming soon. The goal is to build this big food empire,” explained the proud business owner. “Between me and my husband and his projects and my projects — I just love to connect people and community. And if I can do that by way of food, it’s a win-win for everybody.” 

With her current major business and life hurdles behind her, Pinky is looking forward and keeping her eyes on the prize: “I just want to sit back and watch all of the great brands that I build and create, be successful.”