Powered by Plants in San Luis Obispo County
Photography by Jerry Perez
Inspiration strikes people in many different ways. The spark for Ivy Alvarado, the founder of a plant-based food truck that roves San Luis Obispo County, comes by way of song.
Her business partner and mother Melinda remembers the lyrics: “You’re eating up the jungle when you eat burgers,” she says, noting her daughter’s lifelong love for the environment. “Trees are [Ivy’s] thing.”
Ivy, who is now 28, shares her passion for the natural world with others through each order served from her Plant Ivy food truck. Talking about the living, breathing world around her can still make Ivy emotional. It’s why she eats the way she eats and lives the way she lives. For some time, Ivy’s passion even dictated how she drove; in high school, Ivy converted a car to run on vegetable oil and collected leftover oil from restaurants to fuel it. “While we were driving down the road, me and my friends, we smelled like French fries,” Ivy says. “It was so cool.”
Life hasn’t been all joyrides for Ivy, though. In 2008, while working at a San Luis Obispo Subway restaurant, she collapsed. Ivy had been chasing after a young boy who left his Game Boy behind in the restaurant when her heart stopped. At just 16 years old, Ivy had gone into cardiac arrest. Her next conscious moment wouldn’t be until 10 days later, once she emerged from a coma.
“Doctors first said that if she woke up from her coma, she’d be a vegetable,” Melinda says. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. After more than a year of progressive physical, occupational and speech therapy, Ivy finished high school.
At Cuesta College, Ivy took an entrepreneurship class where students set a goal of having a viable business plan by the conclusion of the course. At first, Ivy envisioned opening a coffee shop. Later, she and her family considered getting into the jewelry or t-shirt business. But because Ivy’s health incident had left her with the use of just one hand, she and her family kept searching for the right business opportunity. She wouldn’t have to search for long.
While attending the Central Coast VegFest, a vegan food festival hosted annually in San Luis Obispo, Ivy found it curious that hardly any of the vendors at the festival were local. That’s when the wheels started turning, Ivy says, and the Plant Ivy food truck was born. It just needed a menu.
A number of years after conceiving of the idea, Ivy tried an Impossible Burger on a friend’s recommendation during a trip to Los Angeles. The meatless burger, which is made of protein from potato and soy, was the perfect match for her lifelong love of plant-based foods and the environment. When she launched her business in 2018, first as a catering service then a food truck, the Impossible Burger headlined the menu. It remains a cornerstone of the Plant Ivy food truck today.
Ivy can quote statistic after statistic about the ways Impossible Burgers benefit the environment, sharing enthusiastically how we could save 3 trillion gallons of water a year if half the burgers consumed in the U.S. were Impossible Burgers. Her maxim is simple: “Be kind to the earth.”
The Plant Ivy food truck currently spreads kindness Wednesday through Sunday at 675 W. Grand St. in Grover Beach. The experience hasn’t been without its ups and downs, the Alvarados say, noting the many permits and logistics included in the process. The pandemic was another hurdle for the family, which was put out of business for six months due to California’s stay-at-home order. Through it all, though, they never thought about closing up shop.
Part of what attracts customers is Ivy’s welcoming smile and friendly personality. On any given day, she’s the one taking orders from the window of the truck. A seat that L.A. Custom Food Trucks tailor made for Ivy helps make her favorite part of the job — interacting with people — a little easier.
Each of Plant Ivy’s 10 different burger options is served on toasted, pretzel-style buns and stacked high with fresh burger staples: tomato, lettuce and onion. A few notable customizations on the menu include fig chutney, jalapeño, pesto and wasabi. If you ask Ivy for a recommendation, she’ll point you towards the apple burger with added jalapeños and vegan provolone. It’s a little creation she calls the “Ivy Special.”
The Plant Ivy food truck has been changing minds about plant-based food, earning accolades over conventional burgers at competitions and even satiating the taste buds of some of the world’s pickiest eaters: kids. “We’ve had kids tell us that they’re never going to have a meat patty again,” Melinda remarks.
Though Ivy encourages people to consider the environment at meal time, she’s not anti-meat; she just wants to help create a balance between eating tasty food and protecting the world around us.
