By Chanda Temple | For The Birmingham Times
One month after deciding to leave her banking job of 16 years to start a new career in information technology (IT), Fatimah Jackson was diagnosed with breast cancer.
In denial, thinking the doctors had gotten it wrong, she sought second, third, and fourth opinions. Six months later, she was in treatment. It was the summer of 2020.
For the next year and a half, Jackson underwent chemotherapy and radiation and later had a mastectomy. During treatment, she looked for things to keep her busy. Because she was vegan — a lifestyle that excludes the use and/or consumption of animal products — she started doing vegan meal prep for others to make money. As she posted photos of vegan lasagna, curry bowls, and salads to Facebook, she gained a following.
“People said the [food] looked good but they wanted to know where the meat was,” Jackson said of her meals. “I told them, ‘You don’t need meat.’”
A few friends decided to take Jackson up on her “no meat” comment and started using her meal prep plans, too. Then, those friends posted their own pictures of Jackson’s food. Her following continued to grow, and people booked her for pop-up events which led to her selling vegan food through her new company, Solcial Veg, in August 2022.
“I felt like I could actually make a business from it. That was going to be my hustle,” said Jackson, who lives in Birmingham’s West End neighborhood.
Then one day in 2022, a former George Washington Carver High School classmate of Jackson saw one of her food posts and inboxed her with: “Is this a hobby or is this a career?”
When Jackson told him it was a career, he offered an opportunity that changed her life.
“He wanted me to bring healthy food to Bessemer, [Alabama],” said Jackson. “[He] said I could make and sell the meals from his commissary kitchen,” a licensed commercial kitchen space where food-service operators can prepare and store their food.
She jumped at the chance because she had been wondering how she could expand her business and be in a commissary kitchen.
Birmingham Restaurant Week
On Tuesday, July 15, Jackson will present her vegan spinach artichoke dip with chips during the Birmingham Restaurant Week (BRW) Preview Party at Haven in downtown Birmingham. The dish is made with vegan cheese, vegan mayonnaise, fresh spinach, chopped artichoke, vegan cream cheese, fresh garlic, and smoked paprika.
“It tastes like the real thing, [which includes dairy ingredients]. You can’t tell the difference,” said Jackson, 47. “If there is a potluck, I’m bringing spinach artichoke dip every time.”
The goal of BRW, which takes place July 17–26, is to promote special deals offered by Birmingham area restaurants, bars, food trucks, and caterers.
Jackson participated in BRW in 2024, but this is the first time she’ll be a presenter at the Preview Party, which will feature a variety of non-vegan, vegetable, savory, and sweet bites from culinary creators like Ivory Leshore, Corazon food truck, A’s Kitchen food truck, Sol Y Luna, Taj India, Michael’s Restaurant, 1918 Catering, Magnolia Point, Slutty Vegan and Adored Sweets.
BRW’s Ashley Gooden said, “We always kick things off with our Preview Party. It’s one of the best ways to get a taste of what [BRW] is all about. You get to sample dishes from more than a dozen of our incredible participating restaurants, and it’s the perfect night for foodies to explore what’s to come.”
Foodie With Goodies
By August 2022, Jackson was selling her vegan food through Solcial Veg, the name a nod to how much vegans want to be included in social settings where vegan food may not always be available. The “sol” in Solcial Veg is the Spanish word for sun, and Jackson added sol to her company name because she liked the sun character she already had from a previous lotion company she used to run.
“When I first went vegan in 2017, it changed my social life because there were no good [food] options when I went out with my friends,” said Jackson. “My options were fries and a salad, and that got boring to me. I ended up not going.”
“I love to eat. I’m a foodie,” she added. “But being limited to those two items was not fun to me. I wanted to be social.”
Because vegans or transitioning vegans can feel excluded during the holidays or at big family events where traditional foods are on the table, Jackson sells meals for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the Super Bowl. This year, she added the Fourth of July, for which she sold vegan burgers, vegan baked beans, vegan macaroni and cheese, vegan potato salad, vegan coleslaw, and even vegan ribs made with jackfruit and wheat gluten.
“The same things that I want as a vegan, other vegans want, too,” she said. “I want to cater to them and everybody else in between.”
An Open Mind
Today, Jackson offers a long list of vegan menu options to help vegans and non-vegans stay connected over good food and good conversation. She hopes the dip she serves at the upcoming BRW Preview Party will show people what’s possible from Solcial Veg.
On Fridays, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Jackson serves lunch. On Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., she prepares a vegan brunch with a rotating menu that has included pancakes and vegan sausage, vegan chicken and waffles, loaded grits and/or loaded “fysh” and grits, vegan buffalo chicken wraps, jackfruit quesadillas, and vegan Reuben sandwiches.
Both events take place at her Bessemer location, 830 22nd Street, in a building with the sign EK Suites outside. On Mondays and Thursdays, from 4 to 7 p.m., she’s at the boxcar at Birmingham’s Railroad Park, where she has a rotating vegan menu that has featured vegan burgers, vegan hot dogs, loaded grits, and nachos. She also does catering, which has included her vegan lasagna and peach cobbler.
“I always tell people that you have to have an open mind with vegan food because you never know if you will like it or not until you try it,” she said. “You don’t want to judge a book by its cover. You have to open it up and read it.”
For Birmingham Restaurant Week, she will have meal deals on Friday, July 18; Sunday, July 20 and Friday July 25 at her Bessemer location.
The Sun Comes Out
As Jackson looks back, sharing her positivity in her lavender-colored company shirt that features a happy-looking sun behind two leaves, she reflects on everything she’s done since her breast cancer diagnosis in 2020.
Her voice starts to break because she sees what she calls a “silver lining” in her journey. She survived cancer, a divorce, and the pandemic, all of which could make anyone stop and reevaluate things. But she didn’t sit and sulk about what had happened to her — she stood up and took charge.
“I just wanted to live my dream. I wanted to be an entrepreneur,” said Jackson. “When an opportunity came, I went for it. And when I started, everything else just fell into place.”
“My message to people would be that you have to stay optimistic, even when things seem like they are at their lowest,” she added. “You’ve gotta know … rain won’t last forever. At some point the sun has got to come out. You’ve just got to get through it.”
In addition to the Preview Party at Haven in downtown Birmingham, BRW also feature a scavenger hunt (Saturday, July 19, from 2 to 8 p.m., at City Walk), a Sipology brunch (Sunday, July 20, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., at City Walk), and a food truck and vendor market (Saturday, July 26, from 2 to 7 p.m., at City Walk).
To learn more about Solcial Veg, visit www.Solcialveg.com. For more information about Birmingham Restaurant Week, visit www.bhamrestaurantweek.com.
