One of Tacoma’s only vegan restaurants closes, and the building was sold

Viva Tacoma, one of the two dedicated vegan restaurants in the region, closed after service on February 28 after a decade in the District of Proctor. The owners Nancy Parkison and Richard Baker, who also sell the building to new owners who plan to transform it into advertising, announced the closure on Instagram last week.

“Thank you to all our wonderful customers who have supported us over the years,” they wrote. “We will love you and we will miss you!”

Fans in the comments deplored the loss of a source of “delicious dairy products”, raw and gluten -free foods, including homemade bakery products. He also tried to use certified organic ingredients.

“Another enormous loss for the vegan community,” wrote one. “No other place like this here,” said another.

Many restaurants now offer vegetarian, vegan or gluten -free dishes as part of their regular menus, although allergies remain a concern for certain customers. Quickie also in Hilltop has served vegan dishes since the 1990s, while places like Happy Belly in downtown Tacoma and bringing together juice on the sixth avenue have joined the modest melee based on plants in recent years.

The reason for the closure is simple, said Parkison at the News Tribune during a telephone call on Thursday.

“Taxes have gone crazy, food prices have gone crazy-especially organic, which we are,” she said. Salaries have also increased at levels that have stretched the balance sheet, and these challenges show no sign of fall or slowdown, she added. “We just can’t do it. It is simply not possible.

She said they did not collect pay checks themselves and had not taken a vacation since the restaurant’s opening at 2620 N. Proctor St. in 2014.

“But we did this … because we wanted to give back to our community and show people you could eat in this way – vegan foods, gluten and biological without health. But that time was gone, ”she continued.

Affairs prosper before the cocovio-19 pandemic, she said, but since she has not felt more and more unbearable to be a small independent restaurant.

Parkison and Baker opened Viva as a semi-post retirement project, they explained in a Facebook video last year when they celebrated the restaurant’s 10th anniversary. They have run a “very successful” security company for 25 years.

At the start of their relationship, said Baker in the video, they agreed that later in life, they wanted to find a way to “pay before” after their own fortune.

“It was nothing specific,” he continued, “he knew that it would concentrate in one way or another on health and well-being. “The idea of ​​having a restaurant has never come.”

Thanks to their personal interest in health, they have become regulars of a restaurant based on plants called Amerawcan Bistro in the St. Helens district. When the chef, Francisco Hernandez, told them that he closed this restaurant, he asked the couple if they wanted to embark on a joint venture. They found the Proctor Space, previously Capers Cafe, and developed a menu that combined the bistro favorites and the couple’s own repertoire: “meat” in walnut enchiladas, cauliflower wings, a philly-style sandwich made from grilled portobells, a hawaiian-inspired pizza with a templeh, black benlines and Water.

The restaurant responded both to take away and to the table service. Today, menu prices vary from $ 12 to $ 32.

In recent years, the kitchen has been led by the brother of the chief of origin, Erlindo Hernandez. In a comment, Parkison alluded that he intended to cook elsewhere “in the near future”.

The details of the sale of the building were not yet available, but the new owners will have access to the end of March, said Parkison.

Viva Tacoma will serve his last meals on Friday February 28 from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.