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The owner of a former vegan restaurant in California blasted police after it took them three hours to respond to her call for help when protesters took over her space.
Mollie Engelhart was forced to close her Los Angeles-based restaurant on Sunday, sending out customers who’d come out for Father’s Day due to angry demonstrators who were protesting the recent change in her menu.
Sage Plant Based Bistro sparked fury among some customers when it became Sage Regenerative Kitchen & Brewery as Engelhart shifted her previously all-vegan menu to include meat and dairy products. Customers at the eatery on Sunday left after protesters took over and police failed to show up in a timely way to protect the owner and paying customers.
“On Father’s Day, I’m trying to focus on my husband and my children and giving good customer service to other families that have chosen Sage for their Father’s Day experience,” Engelhart told Fox News Digital. “These people came inside of my restaurant, harassed my customers, my employees, vandalized my restaurant, and openly said they’d like to put me out of business.”
(Video Credit: Fox News)
“I believe that there’s other places that they could put their passion,” the chef and restaurant owner told Fox News Digital. “There are more pressing issues than my restaurant. This is all very disappointing. We are a small family business trying to make it. California is the hardest place to do business.”
She railed against crime in the restaurant’s neighborhood, Echo Park, and the little government response she sees to the problems.
“It’s so, so disappointing to have no support from the city, but this is not new,” she said. “On Mother’s Day, a man got fully nude and screaming, and the cops never came. Just a social worker for the ‘distressed un-housed person,’ but the cops never come.”
California’s oppressive regulations and the demands made of businesses during the COVID-19 lockdowns forced Engelhart to sell her farm in the state and move her family to Texas where she started again from scratch. She continued to hold on to her three California restaurant locations in Pasadena, Echo Park, and Culver City, however.
In an interview with Bon Appétit magazine in May, Engelhart explained her transition to a different menu and regenerative farming which focuses on promoting soil and ecosystem health.
“There were a thousand awakening moments where I recognized that we can work with animals to create much better soil, much better human health, and much better environmental health,” she said. “That idea, that I could eat without harm, that my diet could cause less harm—it became really clear that it was a fantasy. My identity was attached to it, and I had to let that identity go to come to where we are.”
Many of her customers, however, were not willing to make the change and the backlash was explosive.
“I didn’t expect so much pushback against regenerative agriculture as a concept,” she told the magazine.
But the protesters disrupting her business are only part of the bigger picture in the neighborhood where crime has driven out other businesses.
“We’ve come full circle,” she told Fox News Digital. “When I moved into the neighborhood of Echo Park, there was a lot of crime, but there was order, and then the neighborhood got very expensive and beautiful and saw a lot of investment.”
“Now we’ve gone back to a lot of crime,” Engelhart added. “Two of the three drug stores in the neighborhood have gone out of business because of theft. My building is half empty and the block is half empty.”
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Author: Frieda Powers
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