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By Angela Hay
At Squash the Beef in GlenVillage on East 105th Street, chef Kurtis Williams makes plate after eye-catching plate of delicious food while a relaxed DJ set plays in the dining area. On the menu are giant burgers, hand-cut fries, nuggets, and overstuffed sandwiches. He prepares the kind of hearty, filling meals you want to savor after a long day at work or when spending time with friends. This comfort food, however, has been carefully crafted by the chef to be not only good for your body but also for your soul. 
From Crisis to Cuisine
Eight years ago, Williams and his partner Candace Maiden watched the documentary “What the Health,” described as exposing “the collusion and corruption in big business that is costing us trillions of healthcare dollars, and keeping us sick.” Williams and Maiden were both struggling with health concerns, and Williams had recently lost his mother due to food-based illnesses.
“We began to recognize that a plant-based diet could help with things like high blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes,” Maiden said. “All of those things could be corrected with a change of diet.”
“We went cold turkey,” Maiden said. “One day we said, here’s our set day, and we got rid of everything and went on that journey.”
They started with a basic plant-based diet of rice, beans, vegetables, and fruit, but found that they were still craving the food they loved before.
They also ran into social difficulties due to their new eating habits.
“People stopped inviting us places,” Maiden said. “It was one of those things, ‘you guys are plant-based and vegan, I don’t know what to feed you.’ Or ‘I’m not coming to your house for Thanksgiving because y’all not going to have any real food.’”
Williams decided to ‘squash that beef’ by offering to bring their own food. He was a natural chef who cooked for his family and was known for delicious food, but he had never worked in the restaurant industry before.
“Kurtis started cooking and trying different recipes, and people would try the food,” Maiden said. “They were skeptical, and then they would say, ‘Oh, my God! This tastes better than the real food!’”
They traveled to plant-based restaurants in New York and Chicago for inspiration and began to think more deeply about food and food addiction.
“When you think about meat, you’re eating some processed version of it,” Maiden said. “You really aren’t loving the meat. You love the texture and the taste. There are ways to season your food to give you the taste you want, and there are plants that mimic those textures. Everything that we’re used to eating, we can find a plant-based substitute for.”
Turning a Passion into a Business
They decided to turn their new lifestyle into a business venture after Williams, an unknown chef, took first place at a vegan chili cookoff.
“It was almost unanimous, how many votes he got,” Maiden said. “We’re like, ‘Wow, number one.’ People remarked on how good the food is, saying, ‘I couldn’t even tell that it was vegan.’”
Their first big event was the Cleveland VegFest in 2019. They sold the award-winning chili and comfort rolls, which are eggroll-like bundles of soul food favorites like sweet potatoes and mac and cheese. That success led them to catering events, weddings, fairs, and festivals.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, all those events disappeared almost overnight, forcing this new business to make a quick pivot.
“We started strategizing that there were still a lot of people who didn’t have access to plant-based foods,” Maiden said. “So, we launched a campaign through Honeycomb Credit to purchase a food buggy.”
Honeycomb Credit is a platform that connects local businesses to local investors. With this strategy, Squash the Beef raised $30,000, allowing them to purchase and operate a mobile kitchen.
That mobility allowed Squash the Beef to serve neighborhoods classified as food deserts, where people lack access to grocery stores and fresh food.
“We have to recognize that there are, in the African American community, a lot of health challenges that are not necessarily inherent,” Maiden said. “It’s all about the diet we inherited from our culture. If you do the research, you find that a lot of the foods we find comforting were actually brought through slavery and impoverished times.”
This type of cooking helped people make delicious food on tight budgets, but the nutritional value suffered.
“Kurtis and I have roots from the South, both in Georgia and Alabama,” Maiden said. “Food that is very culturally relevant, but not good for the body. High cholesterol, high animal fats.”
Geremiah Stokes, Candace Maiden and Chef Kurtis Williams. Credit Squash the Beef website
Maiden and Williams wanted to honor their roots with the menu items they created, while communicating that healthy vegan eating isn’t just limited to affluent white communities.
“The original vegans were Africans, you know,” Maiden said. “They ate from the land. They didn’t eat any animal products. Being a Black-owned business, we’re showing people that veganism comes in all shapes and sizes. You can still have culturally related foods and be plant-based.”
In line with this mission, Squash the Beef will return to the annual event, Taste of Black Cleveland, on July 31 at Rocket Mortgage Arena FieldHouse. They will present their food alongside more than 20 other Black-owned food creators.
“For a lot of African Americans in Cleveland, Ohio, who are first-generation business owners or chefs, the startup is different,” Maiden said. “The amount of exposure and access to capital is very different than our white counterparts in the restaurant business. Taste of Black Cleveland showcases and targets companies that aren’t able to pay for a marketing team or maybe are starting a little slower but have great food.”
Because they won the vegan category last year, they’ll spend this year’s event in the winners’ VIP section.
The Future of Squash the Beef
Looking toward the future, Williams and Maiden want to transition from the GlenVillage location, which is an incubator space for new businesses, into a larger, more permanent location. To make that happen, they applied for the Cleveland Chain Reaction competition, putting themselves in the running for a $40,000 small business support grant. They were finalists in the competition last year and were recently selected for Season 8.
They also hope to partner with grocery stores to sell their unique lemonades, comfort sauce, and homemade nut-free cheese sauce.
Most importantly, they’ll continue to share their passion for delicious, healthy food with anyone willing to try some.
“Check out a plant-based restaurant, support a plant-based business,” Maiden said. “There’s such a need for it. Hopefully, we can start to make plant-based just as mainstream as the American standard diet.”
