Meet Opal Parikh of Oasis Vegetarian Cafe

Today we’d like to introduce you to Opal Parikh.

Hi Opal, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I come from a culture of small business owners/entrepreneurs. My parents, grandparents, cousins and family friends have all found their hands in various entrepreneurial ventures. Ive been bathing in the soup of business. That kind of lifelong exposure will get into your brain and wire you to seek out that life. This, however, is not just a life of “being a boss”. This is a life of navigating economic disruptions, personnel problems, always taking your work home with you, finding a refrigerator repair man when you’re out of town, calling in sick (to yourself) and realizing no one can cover you but you, and all the other small things that make you questions whether or not the razor thin margins of owning a restaurant are worth it. But, I’m still here, undeterred.

Having been immersed in this world since I was born, I saw the unique path that I could forge for myself and my life. I did not start here though. I found myself working in supplemental education, corporate OSHA compliance sales, back to supplemental education and finally direct education advocacy for children in foster care. Ive been an employee longer than I’ve been a boss- through it all, however, I have known I would land in the world of small business.

I arrived at Oasis by a convergence of not amazing factors. What was amazing was Oasis itself- it truly was and is an oasis in the desert. The original owners spent almost 30 years (we are officially in our 30th year now) creating one of the most original and magical vegan/vegetarian restaurants in the Inland Empire. Long before plant based eating became a trend, Oasis was serving a community that had a hard enough time as it was finding food outside their homes. Their passion for creating food that was nourishing as well as delicious, was immediately recognized and built a cult following in the local vegan community. When we first arrived, we saw what a special place this was, and when it came time for the original owners to retire, rather than shut down, they opted to sell to my family. My family found themselves at the helm of a wonderfully unique space, caretaking what was and imagining what it could be. Shortly after taking over, my mother fell ill and I left the advocacy sector to step into a manager role while my father took care of her. She ultimately passed away, and my partner and I bought my father out.

The step into full ownership was not nearly as rocky as it could have been- namely because I walked into a space that had purpose and a team that believed in the restaurant. Three years ago I transitioned Oasis into a fully plant based restaurant. We cleaned up our menu, searched for partnerships within the local community, expanded our offerings to include people with more severe dietary restrictions, and have managed to keep almost everything on the menu prepared in house. We’re pushing back on what it means to be a whole food, plant based restaurant that can deliver amazing flavor while maintaining our integrity- we believe the food we serve you should be the same food we are willing to serve our families.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Well,

We took over in 2019.
Then 2020 happened.

We pivoted the way all our compatriots had to pivot. We survived, other restaurants did not. We have not really completely recovered from the hits we took in 2020. Post 2020 everyone saw the cost of goods go up. You did not have to have a business to recognize that. On the wholesale and restaurant side, we saw what you saw.

We are in the business of vegetables- which means we are also at the mercy of weather related problems- a few years ago lettuce was pretty much decimated in California due to weather and pests. Earlier this year tomato crops shot up from $26 a case to over $60. Cauliflower was going for $60 for 12 heads. When you’re in the business of fresh food and you’re a mom and pop, you do not have market share. No one is negotiating wholesale pricing for you the way big franchises or multinational corporate restaurants are. It has been more unstable now, the last two years, then I have seen in years past. The sad reality is that these struggles are literally the struggles of every single mom and pop you know.

What has been smooth is the recognition by our community that what we do and the food we make is loved and appreciated- its why we pivot every time the market goes sideways. That community support as allowed us to recently partner with Blue Zones Project Riverside. Their backing our instinct to deliver food with integrity and well being in mind has bolstered our confidence in continuing to deliver the best plant based food we can to as many people as we can convince.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Oasis is one of Riversides oldest vegan restaurants.

Others have come and gone, but we have spent the last 30 years serving up scratch made, whole food, plant based meals to the community. Our cuisine is pulled from the many states of Mexico as well as Central American delights- from Guatemalan holiday tamales and El Salvadorian pupusas, we incorporate many of the flavors from those regions.

We are whole food based, so almost everything that comes into our kitchen is sliced, diced, blended, baked and turned into the final products. Our customers cannot get enough of our house made sauces and are constantly asking us for the recipes. Our proteins are also as unprocessed as can be- our seitan is made in house over the course of 3 days, jackfruit chopped and marinated with our own blend of spices, a house made veggie patty that will beat anything you find in store, tofu thats marinated in house (we could never pull off making our own tofu) and we have recently introduced a vegan egg substitute from the company Acre Made, whose industry standards align with our own when it comes to health and sustainability. Most of our food is prepared with olive oil or avocado oil, something we found our customers have come to appreciate greatly.

Our crowning glory is ever and always the people who do not follow a plant based diet that return to dine with us, regularly, because they love our food. What higher compliment is there than that?

Our food is for everyone.

What were you like growing up?
As a kid I was chaos. I was either reading any book I could get my hands on (we were frequent fliers at the library) or I was unsupervised and running wild with neighborhood kids. If you asked my parents, my mom would say I was just like her (this is a woman who climbed fruit trees and hopped on and off trains back in India as a child), my dad would also say I am just like her. Curious, mouthy, not just interested in the what but also the why, and unequivocally trained to be a terrible employee. A quiet life was not for her, and therefore not for me.

We were out all the time. We are shaped by our parents and the experiences they expose us to- and so we hiked, camped, spent time in the mountains during the winter sport season, volunteered our time during the holidays, traveled locally and abroad and spent time doing as much as was available to us outside of the house.
The person that this turned me into was curious and completely untethered. I was only curious in what I wanted to know, and if that did not include calculating the area of a square, then to put it simply, I was not going to do it. I devoured literature, consumed history, and found a way to get out of high school relatively unscathed with a 2.5 gpa. Weirdly enough, the same gpa got me out of college.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.oasisvegetarian.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oasisvegetarian/

Image Credits
Manoj Jayagoda