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

Lyndsay, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Let’s be honest, the restaurant industry is physically and mentally demanding and has some of the slimmest profit margins of any industry you may try to succeed in. In my opinion, to be successful in this industry, you have to be willing to sacrifice, work extremely hard and be insanely creative when it comes to marketing and drawing more business in. Doing something that is unique to your surrounding competition is very important as well. In my case, I noticed that they were very few vegan food options, let alone any FULLY vegan restaurants. Although I didn’t have very much funding to begin with, I came up with creative ways to utilize what i did have to get the business off the ground. Once people started finding out about us, what we were about and what we stood for, we instantly became a hit! Our continuing success comes from careful spending habits, innovative upgrades and changes to keep our customers engaged and an overall love and passion for delicious plant-based food!

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

My name is Lyndsay Peterson and I’ve been cooking professionally for about 15 years. I got my start like most young adults in restaurants, working at a fast-casual Mexican restaurant. I soon learned how much I loved working with food…the look on people’s faces when they ate something that was so delicious to them just touched my heart like nothing ever had in my life before. That’s when I knew that one day, I would open my own restaurant. Pretty early on I got a position as an executive sous chef at a high-end restaurant and that’s what really changed me. Food became EVERYTHING to me. I read cookbooks constantly, learned French technique from some insanely talented chefs and did whatever I could to soak up as much information and experience that I could. I spent the next 13 odd years working in several different restaurants in a food/chef-driven community. I worked so hard, put in so many hours and sacrificed so much time with my family to learn everything that I could about running a restaurant. After a few more years, I decided to make a move down to the Florida Keys. I got here and was so lost. I tried working in several different restaurants and realized that there was no kitchen culture here! There was no love of food! It was all turn and burn, seats in and seats out. I hated it. Finally, during COVID, when I was furloughed from my job for about 4 months, I sat down and wrote a business plan. This was it. All the hard work, time, effort and passion was about to pay off. But I didn’t want to open a restaurant that was like anything else here. At this point I had been vegan for about 12 years and decided that I wanted to share that journey, my love of animals and my love of food with my new community. Seaside Eatery was born and I spent the next 8 months building out an old food trailer with my other half, Thomas Caito, to reflect the brand’s aesthetic and feel. I worked tirelessly to make sure every single aspect of the menu was perfect, taste testing and plating for friends and family, gathering input and making changes as needed. I knew that selling a fully vegan brand and concept was going to be difficult, especially in an area saturated with seafood and meat-based restaurants. My response to that was to create food that i loved to eat, personally. People loved it. We were busy since opening day. The draw that we have on our community is humbling and inspiring. We continue to work hard to keep innovating and providing healthy, thoughtful and uncompromising food in a place where that is not so common. We absolutely love our customers and their outpouring of support and love is what makes the Florida Keys such a beautiful place.

Have you ever had to pivot?

As with most young chefs, kitchen culture tends to lead most into drug and alcohol use and abuse. It is inevitable for many of us and that is exactly what happened to me. Throughout a majority of my career, I spent that better part of my small amount of time off at the bar. Most of my peers did as well. My dependence on drugs and alcohol grew, slowly changing my outlook on life and I began emanating an overall begrudging attitude. After losing many friends in the industry to overdose, drunk driving accidents and other drug related deaths, I finally decided that it was time to pivot my life and move 3 hours away. This was the best move I have ever made in my life and albeit very difficult to adjust, has made me the person I am today. I am proudly over 2 years sober and have created some incredibly strong relationships in that time period. This allowed me to gain clarity and finally realize my dreams of owning my own restaurant. Had it not been for this decision, I’m not entirely sure that I would even be alive today. For anyone else who has, is, or will go through this, just know that we can and we do recover!

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Simply put, word of mouth and social media helps us grow more than any other strategy we have attempted. Being in the Florida Keys, there is that ‘small town’ feeling and everyone talks. If a local that has been here for their entire life comes to our place and eats lunch, they end up telling ALL of their other local friends. It’s wonderfully free advertising!

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Instagram: instagram.com/seaside_eatery
• Facebook: facebook.com/seasideeaterykeylargo