Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Christina Avery. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Christina, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
This idea was born out of need, as most good ones are. I had recently moved to Kingston from Texas, expecting progressive Canada to be riddled with delicious plant based options. Alas, it was not so. I found myself having to travel to bigger cities just to get a decent restaurant experience, and helping found the Kingston Vegetarian Network- a working group of enthusiastic activists trying to generate movement in our community around plant based options and eating.
It was very apparent that local chefs were not interested in adding more plant based variety to their menus, and that there was a huge hole in the market for this. “Someone needs to do this”, was also coming up against having no food experience professionally. To gain that, I started working at a local queer worker’s cooperative cafe, The Sleepless Goat. It was here that I met Rad, the chef to help me make this dream happen.
Fast forward through a whole lot of gross falling in love with each other, we found ourselves in a position where Kingston Vegetarian Network was putting on Kingston’s very first VegFest, and they had offered us a spot teaching a cooking demo and also a free food booth if we wanted to put something together. And why don’t we just come up with a business name because people will want to know how to eat it after? We also concurrently had a friend looking for a vegan caterer for her upcoming wedding, and someone else wanting to host a catered meal in home should we ever want to start doing that.
You could say Knifey Spooney started itself. We just had to show up, consistently make kick ass food, make it happen working with your spouse, survive as a food business that runs mostly on weddings, in home catering and markets during a pandemic, get through a pregnancy as a trans man then return immediately to cater a 150 person wedding 6 weeks later, and rarely take a day off for 7 years consistently to get to where we are now.
Christina, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
The thing we lead with is that this business is going to get political. We are queer and trans, which means that even just by showing up and existing-is political. We met each other at a radical queer co-operative space, so we are reluctantly participating in a capitalist economy, while enthusiastically using our platform and reach to forward the agenda of a more livable society for us all. Our success means nothing if we haven’t been able to be authentic, had to compromise our ethics, or haven’t brought other people with us. We want to be deeply rooted in our community, we just happen to do it with tasty food. It’s amazing how food opens the door to talk about so many things-environmental issues and climate change, economic inequality and food instability, intersectional politics, mental health, our capitalist war machine society etc etc. We get to have interactions with folks all the time that are so much more than just serving them a sandwich ( but for real, try our sandwiches-we don’t mess around. This week’s special was local artisan bagette sando with house cultured cashew spread, local spinach, long braised lion’s mane mushrooms in jus and crispy onions.)
We are so proud of the food we bring to the table, and hope to revolutionize what vegan food means for our community and beyond.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
This is my favorite story of all time. About me: I was a single mother, fresh out of a long term relationship and the gym I had been working at as a personal trainer and fitness instructor was closing. I had always been much more interested in the food and nutrition side of fitness, and used that opportunity to explore how I might start making food for people. The problem I kept running into was that I had never worked in a kitchen and had no idea how to professionally work with food. I needed a lot more knowledge and experience to have a shot.
In a stroke of good luck, my all time favourite café, The Sleepless Goat, (a place I already spent a lot of my time for free and pretty much the only place in town with vegan sweets) was hiring. With the most impassioned cover letter, and an “eat more pie” shirt on-they didn’t have a choice but to give me a job. On the night I got the news that the spot was mine, I also saw Rad for the first time-which I can only describe as the one and only time in my life I experienced love at first sight. I didn’t know who he was then, but the mystery was soon to unravel.
On my first day at the job, who walks in but this dream human, and he was a regular customer. AND his nickname there was “Soy Latte”
About him: A queer, good looking, tattooed, motorcycle riding chef at the fanciest French restaurant in town. And he likes soy milk and could be a vegan? And I was just painfully in love immediately. After 6 months of flirting with him, one day he inquires about the help wanted sign in the window and asks if I want to go for a beer to talk about it. DO I?!?!??! Nevermind that I had to fly by myself at 5 am with my two small children to British Columbia and I hadn’t started packing. A night of drinking sounds perfect. I.was.free. So I just casually whipped up a batch of my favorite cookies, barfed in the shower a little bit from nerves, and put on my very best. We met at a bar and I nervously threw cookies at him and told him way too much about my entire life and how great being vegan was. He then got up to go to the bathroom, and I noticed the hat he was wearing backwards was a cross section of a pig, all sectioned up into cuts. Which is weird for a vegan to wear. Waaaaaaiiiit. Turns out he was not vegan. Not even close. He was an enthusiastic French food enthusiast, and it would be a long road and another great story before we would begin to walk down the same path.
How did you build your audience on social media?
This is the most overused statement in branding ever, but always “be authentic”. The Sleepless Goat cafe, the one where I met Rad, was a queer, co-operative anarchist type cafe. It stood for social justice, community connection and radical societal transformation. Our seed was planted here, so moving forward into a different business always had these principles at it’s core. We stood for something right from the start, as the very nature of serving plant based food is taking a stand and doing something different than everyone else. During the early days of our business, Rad realized that he was transgender, and began what ended up being a surprisingly public transition process. The support we got from our community softened the blow of reactions from people closer to us that weren’t as welcoming. As a trans person, even just existing is a radical act of “being political”, so it didn’t even seem like a choice to also bring that into our branding. People have found us because of our social justice work, and despite our political messaging sometimes showing people the door-we have a very strong base because they are there because they find our messages resonant. We post a collection of tasty looking food, photos of us going on adventures with our business, videos about current events that we feel people should be paying attention to (most recently the ongoing genocide in Gaza), and thoughtfully written content. We do not do sponsored posts despite many offers, and we do not compromise our ethics to make money, Stay true to yourself and your people will find you.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://knifeyspooney.com
- Instagram: knifeyspooneykingston
- Facebook: knifey+spooney
Image Credits
Viara Mileva Photography