Tabitha Brown is a vegan chef and an Emmy-nominated social media personality with more than 4 million followers on both TikTok and Instagram. She also has partnerships with Target. In other words, she’s killing it.
An aspiring actress, she took an unorthodox route to fame: by going viral in her car. In December 2017, she was driving an Uber in Los Angeles thinking she’d be discovered by picking up a director, casting agent or some studio muckety-muck who would notice her charm as she chauffeured them around town.
Instead, in between a ride, she picked up a vegan sandwich at Whole Foods and decided to review it online.
“I was new as vegan and in Whole Foods,” she told me on “Renaissance Man.” “I was going to give a little breakfast, I had never heard of vegan bacon at that time. I don’t know what that is, but let me get the sandwich. And so I did the video. I posted it. I think nothing of it, because nobody was really watching my videos, so I went back to driving an Uber and got home that evening. And there so many notifications on my phone, it was like an Amber Alert. It was just buzzing and going crazy. And I was like, ‘What is happening? Who is watching this video?’ And the video had, I think maybe 50,000 views or something. And the next morning it had over 100,000-plus. And I told my husband, ‘I think it went viral.'”
Within four days, Whole Foods reached out. She was pronouncing the name of the sandwich wrong. But the video was so good, they changed it to her version. And the item, which was only available in Southern California, became so popular, they rolled it out across the country within 30 days.
“And I became the brand ambassador for the sandwich and for plant-based living,” she told me, adding “I haven’t drove Uber since then. It has literally changed my entire life just from that video.”
A vegan food star was born. But there were a few forces behind her turn. Tabitha had been suffering with unexplained autoimmune issues. She had chronic fatigue, blurry vision and a headache in the back of her head for a year and seven months.
“Some days were better than others, and I knew how to fake it to look normal,” she said. “But some days I wanted to sleep all day because I had chronic fatigue. I just couldn’t get well.”
She did a vegan challenge, and in the first 10 days, her headache disappeared. “Now, I had tried every drug the doctor offered me. I was on steroids. I was on all kinds of medication. I would get shots in my head, shots in my spine. I would try anything and nothing healed. I started getting energy again,” Tabitha said. “After 30 days, I told my husband, ‘I’m starting to feel like my old self again,’ where I had almost lost hope before and now I’m feeling restored. And I look back, and here we are going on almost six years, and it has truly changed my life and saved my life.”
Also while in the depths of her illness, she submitted herself to God and her faith (something she refers to as her “freedom walk”). The Eden, North Carolina, native also embraced her country roots — something she usually covered up while pursuing acting because she had been told her drawl made her sound ignorant.
“And I kind of tried to cover that and mask that. But then in the last five years, being on my freedom walk, I realized that, ‘Oh, wait a minute, I don’t have to hide that. I can be exactly who I am,'” Tabitha said, adding that folks in the Carolinas are the “nicest people. I believe that not because I’m from there, but just because it’s true. So we we love people hard in the Carolinas. And I try to do that every day.”
That love oozes out of her. Growing up, she saw herself as a sitcom actress: a cross between the elegant Phylicia Rashad and the approachable working-class Roseanne Barr. But, ultimately, she ended up cooking and launching the popular children’s show “Tab Time.”
“I wanted to create a show that gave us the old-school feeling. I grew up on ‘Mister Rogers.’ I loved watching him,” she said. “Now, we are in such a rush for so many children to grow up so quickly and so I wanted to do something to slow it down a little bit because we only get a small amount of time for children to be children.”
Tabitha is breath of fresh air — and I’ve heard her viral carrot bacon is life-changing. This week, she’s been promoting her Target goodies with food trucks all over Los Angeles. I planned on stalking the truck, but instead I’m just shamelessly inviting myself to her home for dinner. I hope she accepts.
Detroit native Jalen Rose is a member of the University of Michigan’s iconoclastic Fab Five, who shook up the college hoops world in the early ’90s. He played 13 seasons in the NBA before transitioning into a media personality. Rose is an analyst for “NBA Countdown” and “Get Up,” and co-host of “Jalen & Jacoby.” He executive-produced “The Fab Five” for ESPN’s “30 for 30” series, is the author of the best-selling book “Got To Give the People What They Want,” a fashion tastemaker and co-founded the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, a public charter school in his hometown.
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