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This Toronto Business Thinks Being Healthy Is ‘Gangster,’ FFS

Make it stop.
What is this? Image via screencap

Right now getting a "fresh" pressed juice is almost as easy as getting regular juice. What's a company to do in a city's oversaturated market of healthy meals? Do the same thing all young white entrepreneurs do when they get lost in the crowd — Rachel Dolezal your business just enough to seem edgy but approachable. Following in the footsteps of Run and Gun Coffee, the place that sold a Tupac latte with "bullet holes," Garden Gangsters sets out to "redefine healthy as gangster." The website features an image of a gun with some kind of healthy green shooting out in lieu of bullets. Because that's gangster, or whatever. By now you are thinking, "What does this have to do with salad and pressed juice?" Well, according to their about page which features the word "gangster" four times:

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"Taking care of your body, that's gangster. Caring about the planet, that's gangster. A local-first mentality, that's gangster. At Garden Gangsters we're redefining what it means to be gangster. So join us for a cold pressed juice and a salad, and always call your mother on Sunday."

Despite their attempt at an explanation, it still doesn't really make sense. Literally, gangster does not mean any of these things, not even in the informal sense of the word. You can't "redefine" a word just because you think it will help your business. While it would be easy to pass this off as a rookie mistake, this isn't owner Ian Paech's first rodeo in the world of healthy and expensive juices. Paech owned the now closed Evolution Food Co which was more or less the exact same business, only less appropriative of what he assumes is "cool" black culture. While it's not clear why Evolution Food Co closed its doors, possibly he thought pretending to be black (in a cute and approachable way) would pan out differently.

I emailed Garden Gangsters to hopefully get some answers as to why anyone thought this branding was a good idea and haven't heard back.

No. Image via screencap

Of course, Paech is the problem for this specific cringe-worthy branding—but this problem didn't begin or end with him. He's just doing what's arguably been a profitable marketing tactic for white people. Take the wildly successful Thug Kitchen blog and cookbook for example. In its inception, nobody knew who ran the website that aggressively used AAVE to teach people how to cook (arguably good) recipes. Once it was revealed the blog was run by a cute white couple, people weren't very happy. No, this didn't really damage their business—their books are still displayed on bookshelves across the world and nobody really cares anymore. Ignoring the fact that pressed juice and being healthy are two of the least gangster things anyone can claim, like his predecessors Paech zeroed in and is hoping to find success by pretending to be black in the overwhelmingly white world of "clean eating."

Also, nobody says "gangster" anymore.

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