About
Meet Heather
Heather's passion for animals, cooking and the vegan lifestyle shines through in her delightful healthy dishes. For six years, she has wholeheartedly embraced a plant-based diet, inspired by her daughter, McKenzie. This commitment is a cornerstone of her holistic approach to well-being. Her kitchen is alive with a variety of spices and influences from diverse cultures, reflecting her belief in harmony and connection through food. You can truly taste the love in every meal she prepares. While you may be seeking her culinary services, know that they come with deep respect and warmth -- coming from the friend you have not yet met. Your taste buds are in for a delightful treat, your stomach will thank you, and your body will thrive!
Our Story
Heather and Stephen Landale launched The Joyful Vegan, LLC, in March 2025. Heather had dreamed and schemed something like this for years, while she experimented with home-cooked meals delivered to family and a few friends and catered a few events.
We made the decision early on to keep things as simple as possible – one entrée or dinner per week, one day a week, delivered to customers’ doors. Heather found a commissary kitchen and acquired the appropriate license.
Heading advice to grow slowly, we started with a soft launch of weekly deliveries in March to four friends and Heather’s brother, Kevin. This “Fabulous Five” group, and a few more who made orders for April, provided useful feedback and invaluable encouragement!
As weekly deliveries increased in April, we made one of our most important business decisions: bringing in our friend Jennifer, to help in the kitchen. With her steady yet upbeat temperament, and earlier career as a chemist, Jennifer has in many ways been Heather’s anchor in the kitchen. Months later, we added our niece and a couple of neighbor friends to the team for as-needed help with food prep and deliveries.
For growth, we relied on word-of-mouth support and flyers. We anticipated growing slowly for several months, putting up a website sometime in the summer. That all changed when we learned that Eugene would be hosting, at the Lane Events Center (aka The Fairgrounds), its first Annual Vegan Fest, with hundreds of attendees expected – on May 4.
Fortunately, Heather had already sought out a website designer, Natasha, whose superb work for another website impressed Heather. Natasha then worked hard to get our website ready just in time for the first annual Eugene VeganFest on May 4. (The second annual Eugene VeganFest is May 3, 2026!)
What happened that day changed how we saw our business. We were of course thrilled with the line at our table, seeing over 100 people taste and enjoy Heather’s delicious cooking. But what we did not anticipate were the palpable feelings of community, hope, and joy among so many of those who visited our table.
And of course, it wasn’t just our table, or primarily our table – it was the Eugene Vegan Fest itself. Over 1,200 were in attendance, excluding vendors, with a long line outside the venue. The volunteers there were remarkably helpful, grounded, and subtly joyful themselves. People, including us, were as hungry for this food for the spirit as we were for any food for the body.
In our periodic emails to customers, announcing new menus, we started naming this aspect of what was happening. “In times of fear, joy is a form of resilience and resistance.” Several customers thanked us, one prominent local advocate saying she read our emails specifically for those messages.
Fast forward to Spring of 2025. We are in the midst of our first advertising campaign – with new local news source Lookout, an organization we are proud to support. We’ve added to our advertising campaign a message about joy and health being forms of resilience and resistance. Marketers would call this “branding”. We call it naming the thing that genuinely keeps us motivated during challenging times.
We hope you’ll try Heather’s delicious cooking – delivered right to your door! We hope you’ll feel healthier and feel you are making a difference, with perhaps more plant-based food in your diet, dishes that do not compromise on taste. And we hope you’ll feel yourself part of a growing, joyful community resilience.
