iEatGrass

Chef Ayindé Howell is a lifelong vegan and food activist working to decolonize the food industry. He began selling vegan food with his mother out of the back of their Toyota minivan when he was 13 years old and has evolved into manufacturing vegan food for the masses since then. iEatGrass, LLC. began, first and foremost, as a solution to the lack of diversity in the plant-based food sector and lack of access to quality vegan food from the food service side, i.e. people who supply stadiums, cafeterias, colleges, etc. Mac and Yease, our flagship product, is a recipe based on Chef Ayindé’s great-grandmother Mary’s baked Mac & Cheese, a recipe passed down through the generations and veganized!

We are grateful for the opportunity to grow and offer our food to more people and representation is very important for iEatGrass; people don’t realize that while there are a lot of people of color in the service part of the food industry, there is little to no representation on the side of ownership. Chef Ayindé’s culture, experience and perspective are heavy influencers on the flavors and textures of the food he creates, making it unique in the plant-based world. The food industry still needs to be decolonized and he is doing his part by manufacturing amazing plant-based food for his own community first, and then the world. The more people see themselves represented in a vegan lifestyle, the more they will be willing to participate in it.

“I learned how to cook vegan food by impatiently watching my father cook by the stove, ‘it takes time,’ he would say, ‘and good food will slow the best of us down.’ As a chef, I want my food to bring that same joy I would get after the ‘wait’, to you and your family. iEatGrass brings you the highest quality ingredients in small batches, and a homestyle flavor that tastes like coming back for seconds.”

-Chef Ayindè