David Frosch was picking up an order at a Toledo restaurant that shares a building with Vegan Taste. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted their spring and Easter baked goods on display: carrot cake, glazed vegan taste tarts, spring chocolate chip cookie cake, lemon sugar cookies that look like daisies, blueberry and lemon chia muffins, cookie dough pops, and new carrot cake whoopie pies.
KJ Jackson, who owns and runs the vegan, gluten-free, and dye-free bakery with his wife, Kelsey Jackson, offered Mr. Frosch a free sample. He picked the cookie dough pop and said he was taking it to his pregnant wife, who was waiting in the car.
The happy customer returned shortly with rave reviews. They wanted more.
Vegan Taste, located in the Laskey Crossing shopping center in the A Graze! Shared Kitchen at 1734 W. Laskey Rd., was founded a year and a half ago by the Jacksons. He was a personal trainer, she was an elementary school teacher in Rossford. Neither envisioned anything like this happening when they started baking their own vegan food simply because it was challenging finding it in area stores.
Between 2005 to 2020, 9.6 million U.S. citizens adopted plant-based diets for a “300 percent increase” that upped them to 3 percent of the population, according to vegannews.press. Vegan diets are free of animal-based foods such as dairy products, eggs, honey, meat, and fish.
Mr. Jackson explained how it all began for his family.
“We watched a documentary on Christmas of 2015, and I threw out all my snacks,” he said. That included the 50-pack of gummy fruit snacks he’d been snacking on during the documentary. “It was the health connection and getting rid of a lot of processed foods.”
His wife added: “We decided plant-based was the way we wanted to go. Plant-based and vegan are comparable. We wanted to cook and eat real foods for ourselves and the family we wanted.”
“What food was out there we didn’t like,” he continued. “So, we decided to make stuff on our own. We started out of our house, and when it got too busy, we had to get it out of the house.” That’s when they moved to the shared kitchen.
She added: “The closest spot for vegan food until a couple of years ago was Ann Arbor. And then we transitioned to gluten-free as well, and that’s a big part of our business.”
They started three months before the coronavirus pandemic hit, and said that the delivery aspect of the business attracted customers as well as wholesalers. They grew rapidly and now have four employees to work in preparation, baking, toppings, packaging, and building maintenance.
“We just feel like we were really blessed,” Ms. Jackson said. “We are very, very blessed to have employees who do what they’re supposed to do and help us come up with new ideas. They’re great at that.
“And we’re just super, super thankful for our customers and wholesalers.”
Mr. Jackson added: “We add so many customers from the wholesalers.”
“They trust us enough to put our products in their local shops,” Ms. Jackson continued.
He said Toledo’s recent Restaurant Week “helped us blow up” in sales. He noted that they made a dozen glazed vegan taste tarts for Brew Coffee Bar, located near the University of Toledo campus, that sold out by noon.
“They called us asking for us to deliver more,” Mr. Jackson said. “We made over 300 tarts for them that week.”
They resemble Pop-Tarts only they’re larger, thicker, and much tastier.
“People know us by those now,” said Mr. Jackson, adding they can be ordered as a single item in stores or either singles or half-dozens in orders.
They have two large ovens, a walk-in refrigerator they share with the other eateries, and their own separate prep area and storage shelves in the back, where items are packed. Sales and displays occur in the front of the building.
“Everything is made from scratch — 100 percent from scratch,” Ms. Jackson said. “People ask, ‘You make your own frosting? You make your own dough?’ And that’s funny because our backgrounds aren’t in baking.”
Mr. Jackson, 37, from Canton, Ohio, used to cook with his grandmother. Ms. Jackson, a 31-year-old Temperance Bedford High graduate, grew up baking items such as banana bread and chocolate chip cookies with her mother. Neither had formal cooking or baking training, and never worked in restaurants.
But both took to this like fish to water.
“Every single recipe comes from our home,” Ms. Jackson added.
How they got their baking knowledge up to speed? Did they read, take classes or watch videos?
“We just taste test…And when you are combining vegan and gluten-free, it is very hard to make it good,” she said.
Mr. Jackson described how how they steer clear of some of the staple ingredients of traditional recipes.
“We don’t use the [store-bought] flour and pretty much no animal products, no dairy,” he said. “There is a vegan butter that we use and alternative milks like soy and almond milks. We make our own almond milk and switch out the egg for water and flax seed. It’s called a flax egg. Sometimes we put a pinch of baking powder in it, which helps thicken it.”
What are the keys to establishing successful recipes?
“A lot of tasting,” Ms. Jackson said, chuckling.
Mr. Jackson added: “We’ve thrown a lot of recipes away.”
The Jacksons serve as taste-testers along with their 4-year-old daughter.
“She either says, ‘Give me some more of those yummy cookies,’ ” said her father, pausing for effect. “Or if she doesn’t like it, it’ll be, like, ‘Yuck.’ ”
She wears a matching chef hat and apron and helped her mother make a carrot cake, dumping measured ingredients into bowls.
“She puts the hairnet on and looks like a little baker,” Mom said.
They also have a 1-year-old daughter who is an aspiring taste-tester.
Ms. Jackson said the lemon sugar cookies are their top-seller, and predicted the carrot cake whoopie pies will rival that item. The little pies are stuffed with crème and have nuts mixed in, and have already been a rousing hit with those sampling them.
The Jacksons deliver to northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan, and also have two dozen restaurants and stores that carry their goods. Orders also can be placed at vegantastetoledo.com by clicking delivery or pickup, and live chats are available. They also have an Instagram account (Vegan_Taste419) and Facebook page (Vegan Taste).
They have pick-up locations for their items in Perrysburg, Sylvania, Bowling Green, Wauseon, and Toledo. Home deliveries are available between Findlay and southeast Michigan from Market Wagon.
They’ve done so well that on April 1 they opened a storefront and are selling items there to the public, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Friday.
“You had to go to a coffee shop, bakery or pre-order to get our items before that,” Ms. Jackson said. “This is our biggest, most fun news.”
It was a hit with their recent visitor, who shared the cake pop with his pregnant wife.
“Everything just looked so amazing,” Mr. Frosch, of Toledo, said. “I was prepared to spend whatever it took to get some of this, and especially after they gave me the free sample. This is so good.”
Mr. Frosch said he isn’t a vegan and hadn’t eaten gluten-free foods before.
“But if it’s this yummy,” he continued, “I want some more. It was sweet, but not too sweet. It was just, like, perfect — the texture, it had a whole lot of flavor to it. It’s just so good.”
First Published April 8, 2023, 11:00 a.m.
