‘Mini-mall’ caters to vegans

Sustainable Life • Like-minded retailers sell range of niche goods

By Toby Van Fleet

The Portland Tribune, Dec 24, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (51 Reader comments)

Ryan Mason inks a tattoo featuring vegetables on client Jeffrey Wilson’s arm. No animal products are used at the business, Scapegoat Tattoo.

KATIE HARTLEY / TRIBUNE PHOTO

Eight years ago, Brian Wilson sat down to a breakfast of ham and eggs and experienced an unexpected epiphany.

“I realized I didn’t deserve it because I didn’t kill it,” he says.

The Nevada native stopped eating meat that day and, a month later, became a vegan. Wilson, now 32, runs his business, Scapegoat Tattoo, as a vegan business. That means he makes sure that there are no animal-based glycerins in the inks he uses, or in the soaps.

“A lot of people, when they think of veganism, they don’t think anything past diet,” he says.

Wilson just moved his business to the northeast corner of Southeast 12th Avenue and Stark Street. An unmarked building sits there, about the same color as the December-gray sky.

But that seemingly sleepy site, across from the soon-to-be-redeveloped Washington-Monroe High School site, is becoming the new home for a handful of Portland businesses offering everything from hot dogs and cupcakes to wallets and sweatshirts to Chinese medicine, all free of animal products.

It is, in essence, a vegan mini-mall, occupied by a group of like-minded business owners.

“We all share a lot of the same customers, and we’re all friends,” says Chad Miller, who owns Food Fight Vegan Grocery with his wife, Emiko Badillo.

Food Fight closed its location at Southeast 41st Avenue and Division Street (Wilson was tattooing next door there, too) for more floor space and the opportunity to locate in a cluster of vegan businesses.

The concept is basic: vegan one-stop shopping. Complementary businesses are likely to do well when they are grouped together, especially in a niche where political beliefs are so tied to purchasing power.

“It’s a good business decision, but we kind of just wanted to see each other most days,” says Josh Hooten, who owns Herbivore with wife Michelle Schwegmann.

Herbivore publishes a magazine by the same name and sells vegan clothes and accessories (no leather, no wool, no silk). It moved to its Stark Street storefront from Northeast 30th Avenue and Killingsworth Street.

Hooten and Schwegmann met Miller about five years ago in the vegan community. Recently they all had been kicking around the idea of centralizing their businesses together.

Lisa Higgins, owner of Sweetpea Baking Co., also was in on the discussions.

Higgins started her bakery, which will anchor the corner spot when it opens in early January, three years ago.

When the Stark Street space became available, it was the right time and right place for everyone.

Nonvegans are welcome, too

Since Food Fight opened at its original spot five years ago, it has become a hub for the city’s nonmeat eaters, with a reputation for carrying the finest vegan junk food.

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