After months of building a following through community events, pop-up dinners and local festivals, Chakra’s Café is looking to take its next step.
The vegan bakery and catering business has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help purchase a mobile food cart or trailer, an owner Chef Tierra Williams said would allow the business to serve customers more consistently while expanding into larger festivals throughout Delmarva.
Williams said the fundraiser comes as the business gains momentum but continues to face one major obstacle: customers have no regular place to find it.
“The biggest issues that we’re having are two things,” Williams said. “One, there’s no place for people to just come and get my food. I don’t have a location right now or just a spot people will know that I will be at.”
Williams notes the other issue is being able to participate in larger festivals and community events without a turnkey setup.
Founded in 2017, Chakra’s Café relocated to the Delmarva region last October. Williams describes her mission as introducing more people to vegan food by creating familiar dishes with plant-based ingredients.
“I call myself a transitional chef,” she said. “I try to make dishes that look and taste like meat to give people a different outlook on it.”
Williams said that approach is intended for people who may have had negative experiences with vegan food or who have never tried it before.
“We’re trying to bring vegan cuisine with a Southern flair to Delmarva,” she said.
While the business has grown through catering, baked goods and special events, Williams said operating without a permanent location has made it difficult to build consistent customer traffic.
“I’m usually just carrying tables and a whole bunch of things,” Williams said. “I’m only usually able to just sell my baked goods. It’s really hard to show my cuisine side and really get people to taste the food that I like.”
A mobile food cart or trailer, she said, would allow Chakra’s Café to prepare and serve more of its menu while giving customers a predictable place to find it. Williams said she is also exploring the possibility of refrigerated vending machines that could stock fresh products at permanent locations.
The fundraiser follows what Williams described as a period of growing recognition for the business. She said Chakra’s Café recently participated in Juneteenth celebrations in Wilmington and West Rehoboth and plans to compete in the baking competition at this year’s Delaware State Fair. She also said the business has received more invitations to festivals and community events than in previous years.
In the near term, Williams said she hopes supporters will see improved festival setups and more consistent opportunities to purchase food. Longer term, she envisions operating multiple food trucks serving communities throughout Delaware and Maryland.
“I want to be in Rehoboth for a few days,” she said. “Maybe Milford, Milton, even Dover. I might come back around and go out to the Ocean City and Salisbury area.”
For customers like Scott Hutton, the expansion would fill what he sees as a gap in the local dining scene.
Hutton, who has been vegan for a decade, said he adopted the lifestyle for a combination of health, environmental and spiritual reasons.
“We’ve been vegan since 2016,” he said. “I did it for a combination of reasons. One was for health reasons, the planet was another reason, and I’m also a Buddhist meditator.”
After moving to the area from Philadelphia, Hutton said he found far fewer vegan dining options than he had become accustomed to.
“There are restaurants with vegan options, but very few,” he said.
He first learned about Chakra’s Café through a flyer at Ray’s Produce in Lewes advertising one of the business’s monthly dinners. Hutton said the meals stood out because of both their quality and creativity.
“They had, I think, a seven-course meal,” he said. “Everything was prepared from scratch, very artisan, great quality.”
The dinners paired multiple courses with documentary films exploring food-related social issues, an experience Hutton said required an unusual amount of preparation.
“Every course was just so interesting and so well done,” he said.
Hutton believes a mobile food cart would expose more people to the business than its current event-based model.
“I think more people will try it,” he said. “Once they taste it, I think they’ll come back.”
Joseph Lawson, executive director of the Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice, said he first became familiar with Williams through her previous work as a television reporter before later encountering Chakra’s Café at community events.
Lawson said he has since worked with Williams on events where she provided meals, including screenings of the documentary They’re Trying to Kill Us. Although he does not consider himself vegan, he said Chakra’s Café changed some of his assumptions about plant-based food.
“I thought it was amazing,” Lawson said.
He said Williams’ ability to recreate familiar Southern dishes using vegan ingredients distinguishes the business.
“I was intrigued that she was able to make food that looked like, tasted like Southern food, Southern African American food, and it was vegan,” Lawson said. “I thought this is extremely unique.”
Lawson said that approach could encourage healthier eating without asking people to abandon familiar flavors.
“She’s able to translate those recipes, translate those tastes, appeal to the same palate with the soul foods but with something much more healthy and better for you,” he said. “That’s unique and it’s a gift.”
Beyond the food itself, Lawson said he believes businesses like Chakra’s Café deserve community support because they contribute to both entrepreneurship and community well-being.
“When somebody chooses something that makes a difference to a lot of other people, you want to support them because it’s a very good thing,” he said.
Williams said she is extraordinarily grateful to the local organizations that have played an important role in helping the business grow since arriving on Delmarva. She credited groups including the Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice, Veg Rehoboth and the Delaware Arts Collaboration for providing opportunities to reach new audiences through community events. She also thanked supporters like Hutton and others who have sought out here CinéBite movie dinners.
“We’re hoping we’ll get there,” Williams said. “It’s people having faith in us that helps us keep going.”
Readers interested in supporting the fundraiser can learn more at: https://gofund.me/45581df2a.
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