Vegan BBQ at RNC: Black chef gets long lines with a side of trolls
(NewsNation) — On Wednesday, the signature jackfruit-based brisket at Shana Gray’s vegan barbecue food stall at the Republican National Convention was sold out before 5 p.m. In fact, in a town known for cheese and sausage delights, her stall has been one of the most popular at the convention, often with a line of eager customers.
“(There are) a lot of carnivorous people (at RNC), but they were curious to know what vegan barbecue was. And they gave it a shot,” she said. “They were just wowed about the flavor that it brought. They were like, ‘I’d never thought that plants could taste like this.’”
Though her stall sells vegan and meat versions of each dish, she said her vegan items have been “hands down” the crowd-pleasers at the convention.
But despite the positive response, her stall has also been the target of a few trolls online, a couple of whom called on the RNC to “ban all vegan vendors for the rest of the convention” after a self-identified reporter tweeted that the RNC was “going woke.”
“I (have) tried to disconnect myself because I don’t want to fall into that rabbit hole of where they are because clearly they want me to go there with them,” Gray said. “Someone made the comment that veganism and Trump do not mix and my response was ignorance and common sense don’t mix either.”
But as a Trump-supporting, Black, vegan restaurant owner with a storefront at the private, Jesuit, Marquette University, Gray is no stranger to controversy.
The former president actually brought Gray on stage during a May campaign rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin — about 20 miles from downtown Milwaukee — after which she says she was the target of bullying and harassment online.
During the event, a local news outlet reported Gray declared that she would be supporting former President Donald Trump and that her business had suffered due to the crippling inflation — an issue that has dogged President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. In NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ’s early July poll, nearly half of those surveyed said inflation was the biggest issue facing the country.
At the Waukesha rally, Trump told his supporters Gray’s business had done better three and a half years prior, while he’d still been president. Local outlets later reported Gray’s Marquette location had only been operational for a year, though she told NewsNation she’d been catering vegan food in Milwaukee “for years” before opening her restaurant.
During that same campaign event, she also reportedly made comments about a customer who she said was a migrant who’d recently crossed the border and paid for their food with a prepaid card. When asked, Gray chose not to comment on that anecdote to NewsNation.
In the aftermath of the rally, Gray said she’d been bullied and harassed online. NewsNation reviewed screenshots of messages Gray received calling her a liar, the far-too-easily lobbed N-word and other racial slurs. People also targeted the reviews section for her business on Google and Yelp.
“People who identify as liberal/Democratic and in between stated that they wanted my business to close,” she said. “I am legally addressing the false narrative that was reported by previous journalists,” she added, of the stories covered by outlets following her appearance at the Waukesha rally.
The controversy stirred up a defiant drive in the business owner.
In response to the “10,000” calls that she says shut down her phone systems at her business in the months since, she decided to launch a podcast called “The Controversial Vegan. The first episode will drop at the end of the month.
She also focused on maximizing the economic boost her business could get from having a stall at the RNC, translating into hundreds of hours of work for the four-day convention. And the payoff has been long lines, a community that has largely embraced her and sold out vegan brisket.
“I deeply appreciate the business opportunities the RNC brought my business and the other vendors and I hope for such vibrant engagement to become a regular occurrence beyond this event,” she said.
Now, after facing criticism and trolling — to varying degrees — from both sides, she worries that the divisive culture will only get worse.
“It is so unfortunate, even in the current climate that we’re in now, it just shows you how people’s imagination has gotten away with them,” she said of the trolls. “And it seems to me, it’s going more into the hatred. We’re getting less and less a connection with humanity. And it’s sad, and it’s unfortunate.”
Having enough labels to contend with already, she rejected the notion of a political one.
“I identify as a human being. I identify as a Black woman living in America. I identify as a person who wants to bring back humility. I identify as a loving person. I identify as a person who does what is best for her in her community.”
But she was clear on who she planned to support in November.
“Trump, 2024.”
