We were lucky to catch up with Lauren Montelbano recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lauren, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I lived the first 20 years of my life very differently than I have lived the last 20. If I hadn’t had the missteps of my youth, I don’t believe I would have found the career path that I derive so much purpose from now. By age 18, I was already pretty deep into my substance and alcohol abuse, heavily medicated for a myriad of mental and physical health issues and on a path of reckless self-destruction. I didn’t care about myself or the world around me. Luckily, I hit my bottom when I was 24, ending up in jail, and decided this was not the life that I wanted or had envisioned for myself.
So I attended treatment and made a blueprint for what I wanted my life to look like. I packed my bags and moved across the country and set out to be the person that I had penned down on paper. This woman was healthy, ate well, exercised, went to therapy, made new friends and cared about herself. I slowly became that woman and the better I felt, the more motivated I was to do better. The better I did, the more I wanted to help others to feel as good as I felt.
I got my 500 hour YTT training abroad, became a holistic nutritionist and found that a plant-based diet really helped me to achieve the optimal health that I wanted, while also fighting for the lives of the animals I have always loved.
Having a mission of health for the planet as a whole keeps me pushing everyday to do more.
Every person I help to make healthier shifts in their diet, every wedding I cater that opens someone’s eyes to a different way of eating, every vegan athlete I help to achieve their goals and every event I do that helps to bring awareness to animal advocacy keeps me motivated to continue sharing my mission.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have always loved to cook, as I spent my youth watching family come together while preparing meals. It was always a production and a very celebrated activity. Over the years, I became vegetarian and enjoyed my time meal planning and prepping and recreating meals from magazines and cookbooks.
When I was ready for a career change, I knew I wanted to explore the culinary arts. I never pursued formal training, but favored traveling around the world, learning about different cultural cuisines from the people who lived there.
When I came back to the states, I started at the bottom as a dishwasher, and gradually worked my way through the ranks and accepted a position as the head chef at Madison’s first vegan restaurant. I felt a great deal of pressure and pride providing healthy whole food based meals in a city that didn’t have many options. The restaurant flourished and opened a second location. During the pandemic, I pivoted, as many did, and started my own meal service, catering and personal chef company, The Vibrant Veg.
I offer weekly meals, event, wedding and retreat catering, nutrition consultations, private chef services and I cook for a team of vegan cyclists as they ride across the state of Iowa every year. I feature local farms, design meals with health in mind and love telling a story through food.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When running the 2 restaurants, I was operating in extreme burnout. I had insomnia and chest pain. My doctor wanted to put me on anti-anxiety and sleep medication to mitigate my symptoms. Having gotten off and stayed off all medications for 7 years, I was not willing to trade in my mental and physical well-being for a job, even if I loved it. I attempted to make some changes to better the mental health of myself and my staff, but was met with resistance from the owner. In the end, I had to choose myself and walk away.
I didn’t know if I ever wanted to cook again. I didn’t know how I could continue in an industry that promotes and requires 12 hour days, nearly every single day. For the second time in my life, I was lost.
I took some time away and spent my days in nature, healing the past 3 years of my life. I decided that the cooking wasn’t necessarily the problem, it was how I was doing it. So I started my business on my terms, taking on the jobs and clients that I wanted to take on. I have been running my company for almost 4 years now and I’m so proud of how far I’ve come and how many lives I’ve been able to impact because I didn’t give up.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

When I was working at the restaurants, people wanted to interview me and the restaurant wanted to share all about who I was and have me as a focus in the marketing. I thought this was very strange at the time because a restaurant’s identity should be about the food and philosophy, not necessarily about the person who developed it and prepared it.
However, I quickly learned that it’s much easier for people to grasp onto a person and a story, than it is a concept. Through my story of resilience, hope and health, people started to relate with me on a personal level. I wasn’t just a chef, I was a woman who had turned her life around and who you could trust to put together beautiful, nutritious and inventive meals for you. People love an underdog and I was definitely that in a sea of comfort food and cheese. Through my story, tenacity, and quality of work, I was able to build a name for myself and within that, brand loyalty.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thevibrantveg.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chef_laurenmontelbano/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lauren.montelbano
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-montelbano-24b327205/
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJPVoZ3tWqs

Image Credits

Beth Skogen, Marina Koyen,