We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Franceska Lynne a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Franceska, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start big picture – what are some of biggest trends you are seeing in your industry?

When we started our company in 2017, all of our food was vegan but none was deliberately gluten-free. We began to get questions right away about gluten at the markets where we sold our food, and made the decision to make as much of our food gluten-free as possible. It is more expensive, as gluten-free flours and pastas can cost as much as 3-4 times more than those made with gluten. We make smaller batches and have discontinued a couple of items that are pricier to make and weren’t selling as well as they did at first. For our tie-dye business, my husband follows several well-known tie-dye artists online to get ideas and inspiration, and we have branched out from short-sleeved tees to long-sleeved shirts, hoodies, toddler onesies, and we even dyed a prayer shawl for our rabbi friend. We feel like there are many more vegan dishes to invent and many more intricate and interesting dyes to create. In many ways, as the vegan and gluten-free world continues to grow and younger generations continue to discover tie-dye clothing and art, we are just getting started! The sky is the limit!!!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Twilight & Lemongrass started in 2017 when we, husband and wife team Franceska Lynne and Warren Gang, decided to build a business around our love for vegan food. In 2021, tie-dye tees were added to the mix, and we now create and sell our food and original handmade tie-dyes at markets around metro Atlanta. We love special orders and are ready to make something unique and unforgettable for our customers and their friends and families.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

Warren Gang and Franceska Lynne first met at The Paideia School in Atlanta as sophomore and junior high school students. They became close friends but lost touch for a couple of decades before reconnecting on Facebook. Living on opposite sides of the country, they fell in love and Franceska moved back to Atlanta in 2015 to marry Warren. They began by cooking several large pans of vegan Mac & Cheez for a vegan charity event, and then got the idea to make a go of it as a business. Twilight & Lemongrass, named for their wedding colors, twilight blue and lemongrass green, was officially born in 2017.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

We make all of our vegan dishes from scratch and we dye all of our clothing by hand. Franceska has been a vegan for 35 years and had a good working knowledge of plant based cooking techniques. She had already spent all of her adult life “veganizing” her favorite foods, so making larger batches to sell was not too much of a stretch. Warren, a longtime Grateful Dead fan (“Deadhead”) has been a tie-dye aficionado since 1980, and the desire to create dyes of his own was always there.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.vegoutcomfort.com
• Instagram: @vegoutcomfort
• Facebook: @vegoutcomfort