After two and a half years, Brandon’s Vine Vegan restaurant will close its doors this weekend

A Brandon-based restaurant known for its comforting, plant-based fare is unfortunately serving its last customers this weekend.

Vine Vegan at 2080 Badlands Dr. closes on Sunday, April 27—the latest Tampa Bay plant-based eatery that joins the unfortunate ranks of other shuttered storefronts like Golden Dinosaurs, Voodu Vegan Bistro and 3 Dot Dash.

Vine Vegan—which made its debut in January 2023—will serve its full food menu of grain bowls, burgers, wraps, salads and sandwiches until its last day of service. Breakfast options like pancakes, avocado toast and egg sandwiches are also available through the weekend, in addition to its beverage menu of coffees and milkshakes.

“As someone with no restaurant experience before this, I never came into the business to be a millionaire, but I just wanted to help change the public opinion about vegan food—to offer food that was delicious and familiar. I wanted to invite people who were both curious and defiant about the vegan lifestyle,” owner Danielle Stevens tells Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “And over the years, people have become vegan because of the restaurant and I’ve met countless wonderful people through the business.”

“I’ve had so many wins with Vine Vegan, so I don’t see our closure as a failure by any means,” she adds.

In addition to the restaurant industry’s already thin profit margins, Stevens said she has dealt with inflation on products, an overall increase of overhead costs and a general decline of business over the past year or so. She did a variety of things to try to boost business—like adjusting operating hours, tweaking its menu and even hosting a month-long Slutty Vegan burger pop-up last summer—but the restaurant never picked up enough to stay afloat.

She tells CL that the vegan restaurant—with a large majority of its customers actually being omnivores—saw a roughly 25% dip in business this year compared to 2024, and endured an even slower summer than expected. And with a seating capacity of almost 100, Stevens says that it would be much easier to cover costs if the restaurant space was smaller.

It’s not all bad news though, because Stevens is still planning to serve her popular vegan eats one way or another. Vine Vegan will be rebranded into a different company and turned into a plant-based food truck instead, but its menu will still offer a range of fan favorites.

“My plan is to launch a food truck sometime in the future, hopefully in the fall but I haven’t decided on the timeline yet,” Stevens says. “A lot of popular Vine Vegan items will be on the menu, but I think the food truck will offer more of a Latin flare instead.”

She plans to sell her vegan eats throughout Pinellas and Hillsborough counties at plant-based events and popular markets, in addition to popping up in Brandon to cater to her former regulars.

Notably, Stevens explains that her next venture will not have “vegan” in the business name, in an attempt to attract more omnivorous customers, though her food will remain completely plant-based.

Keep up with any updates on Vine Vegan’s forthcoming food truck by following its Instagram at @vineveganfl on Instagram and Facebook.

Vine Vegan is open from 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 11 a.m.-4 p.m. on its final Sunday.

Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.

Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2025.