By Janet Perry
It’s become a regular occurrence to see tried-and-true, well-established restaurants closing their doors. It’s a hard time for the restaurant industry—and heartwarming to see those restaurants who are hanging on, albeit sometimes by a thread.
But it’s even more impressive when restaurants survive while placing their beliefs on par with their personal bottom lines
We spoke with the owners of two vegetarian-only restaurants committed to serving plant-based foods, despite the challenging economic times—and found their communities are pulling for them now more than ever.
Cozy Plum
Charles White III is the owner and chef at Cozy Plum in Sebastopol. It’s a vegan restaurant, serving up comfort food. He and his business partner Lisa Le Donne opened their first restaurant in Santa Rosa in March of 2020 and then opened a second location in Sebastopol in May of 2023.
Although they closed the Santa Rosa location, Cozy Plum in Sebastopol is quickly becoming a beloved local restaurant where meat eaters are discovering they, too, can love vegan foods.
“For a short period, we were the first vegan chain in the history of Sonoma County, which I wore as a very proud feather in my cap.” White says. “That unfortunately didn’t last. We had to close Santa Rosa for a multitude of reasons.
“We’re doing our best to stay afloat and that’s about as good as it’s going to get right now,” White says.
He says he often hears that Cozy Plum looks busy but that can be deceptive. “That’s true for an hour at lunch and an hour at dinner,” White says. “But that does not pay the ever-increasing food costs, the ever-increasing wages and the ever-increasing taxes,” he says. “It is incredibly expensive.”
White’s background wasn’t in the food industry and his business partner is a teacher. So they did the practical thing and hired professionals in real estate and the restaurant industry to help them navigate this new venture. That didn’t help when it came to the daunting reality of the restaurant business.
“None of the things that we were estimated, quoted, promised were even close,” White says. “It was an uphill battle from before COVID.”
They were estimated to need about $10,000 in upgrades to the property, White says. “It turned into $70,000.”
They were told the sale would require about a three-month escrow. “It was a seven-month escrow,” he says. “During that time, we had to employ the [staff], and it was a huge money suck. We were exhausted and depleted before we even opened, because at about three months, we’re psyching ourselves up to open any day and any day dragged into four more months.”
They did all their wage number-crunching at $12 an hour, but that began to climb and within three years it was $17.06. “As a mom-and-pop who were rookies, that’s asking way too much,” White says.
That’s not taking into consideration how much more expensive some of the vegan ingredients are. White believes that if he served vegetarian offerings instead of vegan he’d be profitable quickly, but he’s committed to his vegan restaurant offerings.
One typical example he cites is the difference in the cost of mayonnaise. A gallon container of Best Foods regular mayo costs $34.99. A one-gallon container of vegan mayonnaise, meanwhile, is $129.99. “It’s $100 more for the exact same amount,” says White. “Now that’s true for every bit of dairy that we use.”
Then COVID hit
Even following the costlier-than-expected renovation and the extended escrow, Cozy Plum wasn’t out of the woods. Three days after the restaurant finally opened its doors, the shelter-in-place order hit.
“I had no idea what COVID was because I was so busy focusing on the restaurant, I wasn’t watching the news.” At the time, it had been months since White took a salary.
“Then you wonder—what’s it all for?” recalls White. “Yeah, and those are questions I don’t think we should be having to ask ourselves. But unfortunately, in this climate, we do.”
His partner eventually stepped away from the business and White is now the sole owner.
White is proud of what he’s created and hears how much his guests love what he’s serving. He, personally, had adopted a vegan diet for health reasons, but says he would never try to pass Cozy Plum off as a health food restaurant. It’s vegan comfort food.
“It doesn’t mean healthy,” White says. “Our burgers are not health food, it’s simply an alternative to meat. It is not something that somebody should be eating every day, the same as they shouldn’t eat a hamburger every day. It’s a treat that is very similar in taste and texture to a traditional animal hamburger—without the animal. And that’s why it’s there.”
He says that although he migrated to a plant-based diet for health reasons, he has maintained that vegan diet for the animals.
He describes adopting the diet as “an epiphany”—and knows others have experienced a similar awakening.
“It’s that you kind of have this enormous, tangible relief—because, if you’re like a lot of people, you carry a little bit of guilt because you love animals, but you’re eating them. Once you do make the change, it all kind of lines up, and it’s a tangible relief.”
And that’s what keeps in on the vegan straight and narrow. “I could get away with eating a steak on New Year’s, for example, but I just choose not to because the idea now is not appealing to me,” he says.
Although many of his vegan guests are appreciative to find a good vegan restaurant, White says the best feedback he gets is from non-vegans. He says he truly enjoys the conversations he has with meat eaters when they come in.
“I happen to be a pretty tall, large guy,” he says. “I’m 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds. When I’m able to talk to them and say, you know, look at me—I’m no pantywaist and I get plenty of protein.”
He calls them “wonderful conversations about eating meat.”
“Some of the stuff we have in the restaurant is quite healthy, but most of it is comfort food, and that’s the whole point,” he says. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Cozy Plum employs 16 people and is open daily.
“Every day, local people say, ‘please don’t close,’” says White. “They smell it—they smell doom in the future because of so many other restaurants that have closed, restaurants with decades-old reputations, lots of experience and lots of local reverence.
“And yet here we are, so they’re kind of thinking our days are numbered too.”
White says he’s not taking any more loans out for operating capital. “Not going to happen,” he says. “I’m not getting myself further in debt. And if I have to put payroll on a credit card, then the doors are going to close. That’s my marker.”
In order to support himself, White has decided to open a business in the auto industry, which had been his career for many years. That and driving for Uber and Lyft will pay his personal bills while he cannot pay himself a salary from the restaurant. He moved to a small studio apartment in Sebastopol a quick walk away from the Cozy Plum.
“You know, I walk into the restaurant very early most mornings, and I see our big, beautiful, expensive 5-foot logo that we brought from Santa Rosa mounted on the wall here,” White says. “For some reason that represents, like, the little engine that could. And I see that every morning when I walk in, and every time I look at it, I’m like: Don’t close it. Don’t close it.”
He knows other restaurant owners who can relate.
“I have a few people that I share stuff with, and they’re suffering too. It’s like we’re in this war that we do not want to lose. For whatever reason, sometimes it’s hard to explain. We just don’t want to throw in the towel.”
Cozy Plum
6970 McKinley St., Sebastopol
(707)823-3333
Tony Tutto Pizza
Farther south, in Ross, Lacey Sher is hoping to spread the word that her beloved local pizza place, Tony Tutto Pizza, is actually a vegetarian restaurant.
Sher has been professionally cooking natural food and vegetarian food for 25 years. She had previously owned a restaurant in Red Bank, New Jersey, and then in Oakland. “I can cook for all kinds of illnesses and special dietary needs,” she says. “That’s been my focus for many, many years.”
When she closed her Oakland restaurant she returned to her Marin roots. “I met Tony because he had taken over the grocery store that I grew up going to as a child,” Sher says, of the late Greg DiGiovine—aka Tony Tutto—who in 2018 relocated his pizza restaurant from Mill Valley into the space long ago occupied by Ross Grocery. She was thrilled to see his pizza restaurant was actually vegetarian.
Sher would go in often to get pizza and befriended DiGiovine, who’d originally made his name in the music industry as manager of such industry icons as Carlos Santana, Marin record producer Narada Michael Walden and late jazz drummer Tony Williams.
“I brought [Tony] a sampling of my chocolate cake,” Sher says. “I’d been making this cake for more than 20 years in all my restaurants. People love it.”
Tutto loved it too and began offering it at the restaurant. Sher says she started noticing that he needed help in the restaurant and she began lending a hand. Two years later, Tutto became ill and his family reached out to Sher and asked if she would take over. Sher says she felt honored and bought the business in August of 2023. (DiGiovine, aka Tony Tutto, died of glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer this past July. He was 72.)
“I’m just kind of trying to keep as many things ‘Tony’ for now as I can, because Tony’s not with us anymore,” Sher says. “That was kind of my reason for taking over—to keep his legacy going.”
Staying vegetarian
Sher says over the years her own diet has changed and at home she’s not 100% vegetarian. “It’s very recent that I’ve started eating some other things,” she says. “At this point my diet is mostly vegan and vegetarian with some pescatarian sprinkled in.
“I just think that people need to do what helps them perform at their highest level. Sometimes our bodies change and we require different foods.”
Sher says regardless of that dietary choice she is still an advocate for a vegetarian lifestyle. “I love animals, that’s really where it comes from,” she says. “I don’t really want to be ingesting the suffering of another creature.”
It’s an “energetic vibe thing,” she says.
“They loved Tony and so everyone is really happy that I took over for him and kept it what it was because it was great. And he was great.”—Lacey Sher, Tony Tutto Pizza
“How we eat and how we ingest food and how we feel about the food that we’re taking in is very important to how the food functions in our body. And if we’re constantly guilt-tripping ourselves every time we eat something, that’s not very healthy either.”
Sher likes to use local, seasonal ingredients and even grows some of the restaurant’s produce herself. “It’s not 100%,” she says. “We get things from Italy, but I try to make sure they’re organic. I have some criteria—it has to be organic, biodynamic or sustainable. It is vegetarian here. Some of the cheeses Tony used are not strictly vegetarian. So if somebody asks, we have an option.”
She believes DiGiovine would’ve supported her finding new sources as it was of the highest quality. “That’s really what his philosophy was.”
Sher has added different salads. “I grow a lot of produce so when things are in season, I try to use things from our garden, like eggplants for the eggplant Parmesan pizza and cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers and herbs,” she says. “I go to the farmers market every week and I try to make seasonal salads.”
Sher has also added more desserts, as well as lower-alcohol, natural and food-friendly wine selections. She’s also added a selection of non-alcoholic beers.
“I’ve added my own specials too,” Sher says. “Of course, Tony had great specials, but I’ve added some new ones in the tradition of Tony, you know, using the farmers market as my creative inspiration and the garden.”
She’s also promoting their seasonal soup. “Tony had an amazing, wonderful vegetable soup, which is like a cup of health. It’s like minestrone, but without noodles. That’s like a Tony tradition, for sure. The soup is always vegan and always gluten free.”
Sher says they survived COVID because it’s more of a quick-service restaurant and they did a lot of to-go business. “Our price point is not super high,” Sher says. “I think it’s an affordable luxury when you come here.” She says even young kids come in for the $9 to $10 a personal pizza.
“These little boys will ride their bicycles down and get their pizza and sit outside,” Sher says. “It’s the cutest thing ever.”
Sher says the restaurant business is incredibly hard. “This is my third restaurant and I think the hardest thing is finding personnel that can afford to live in California in general and that can work in a restaurant,” she says.
“A lot of restaurants can’t sustain the food cost and the labor cost together,” she says. “It’s finding ways of doing that well, that keeps people going. It’s not a big moneymaking operation, usually, unless you have multiple locations and it’s a very dialed-in system.
“This is a very personal thing. You take on a lot, and sometimes you have to float things.”
She says the community has been very supportive. “The families in [Ross] are very kind,” she says. “They loved Tony and so everyone is really happy that I took over for him and kept it what it was because it was great. And he was great.”
Sher says that when people ask if the restaurant will ever start serving meat she fondly remembers Tony Tutto’s tongue-in-cheek rejoinder:
“Maybe tomorrow.”
Tony Tutto Pizza
16 Ross Common, Ross
(415)383-8646
