One Chef, two restaurants, many, many lives

Stacey Dougan’s creative plant-based menus provide.

Las Vegas, Nevada

How does she do it? This 40-something mom has been envisioning the very best, healthiest, tastiest menus for more than 20 years, all the while moving between east coast, Africa and west coast USA venues of her own creation.

Stacey Dougan puts it simply, “I don't do this for awards. I do this because I genuinely want to help people develop your lifestyle because I know how much it has helped me.” She began eating a plant-based diet to cure her own issues with eczema and cracking, dry, bleeding skin. “Veganism helped me rid myself of eczema through cleansing my diet and eating a lot of raw fruits and vegetables,” she explains. The skin issues disappeared over time and she was convinced. She never looked back.

Abingdon Co. Image displays Chef Stacey Dougan handing a blender and pouring a substance into a yellow bowl while in a kitchen

Radical Idea

That still doesn’t explain how a successful young music industry professional from Atlanta would pivot so sharply and literally dump all of her savings into what, at the time, was a radical concept: a vegan restaurant in the deep south.

“I’ve always had that entrepreneurial streak in me,” she laughs. A few of her friends found the raw food trend at the time (nothing cooked at temperatures higher than 115 degrees F) and Stacey found herself in the restaurant kitchen purely to save her investment. “I had to learn how to cook because somebody had to figure it out and I wanted to save my money. So I ended up doing that. We had the restaurant, Everlasting, for about three years. It was amazing,” she smiles, remembering both the hard work and the incredible creative energy of the place, which spurred her on into an entirely new universe built around gourmet, healthy foods derived from plants and fungi, and exclusive of animal proteins or byproducts.

Abingdon Co. Image displays Chef Stacey Dougan rinsing out lettuce while wearing an abingdon watch.

Viva Las Vegas

After that restaurant, Stacey stopped working at the record label and started going around as a personal chef, espousing the vegan experience everywhere, roaming as far north as Chicago. One of her clients there was an African ambassador, and before she knew it the 20 something chef was set up with a kitchen in Ghana, where she stayed for two years, much of it cooking for the Ambassador and others. She even opened Sugar Cane, a plant-based health food store, broadening her influence in the community. “I loved Ghana, and stayed because the place was just wonderful, the people, wonderful,” she says, remembering.

“It's been an awesome, incredible experience just to be able to cook for people all over the globe, literally, and also be able to cook for some celebrities as well. Now I have these connections, and that truly helps,” she smiles. “My world started in entertainment so it only makes sense for me to go back to that with my food and my meals. And so, that's where we are,” she laughs, pointing to her current locale, Las Vegas, where she’s been since starting a restaurant, SimplyPure, with the clean-eating, plant-based philosophy her menus reflect.

Vegas also gave Stacey direct access to those celebrities she referred to, from Usher to Erykah Badu and Bill Clinton (yep, that diverse). She’s been a personal chef and/or caterer to dozens, making sure that she’s behind the scenes helping them stay healthy and perform at their very best. “I really enjoy taking care of people and I have such a love for music. I want to take care of the people who create that amazing music. They feel the love!” she chuckles.

The Journey

Music might be her hook, but Stacey helps so many. She met Abingdon Mullin at a women’s networking event some nine years ago, not long after SimplyPure opened. “I remember her standing up and saying that she was a pilot and I was floored because I’d never met a woman pilot. She was like a unicorn to me. She and I immediately just kind of gravitated toward one another,” she recalls. “The Abingdon Co code relates to me. I feel like women who wear these watches are not only adventurous but also creators and innovators. The watches are not gaudy, but elegant, and I can still be in my elements wearing it. It is the only watch that I own,” she notes.

Abingdon Co. Image displays Chef Stacey Dougan while holding tongs with her right hand and wearing a abingdon watch on her left wrist cooking food on the stove

A Family Affair

Stacey had a baby boy, Zion, shortly after that meeting. She grew that baby and the restaurant, SimplyPure, concurrently. It was a lot to take on. And for seven years both thrived under her intensive, direct care, right through the teeth of the pandemic. But, being true to herself, Stacey realized she wasn’t giving herself the love she needed, working so hard for everyone else. In March 2021 she closed the restaurant, and, after a brief and well-deserved hiatus, relaunched SimplyPure online.

Now she’s a personal chef with a catering service and online shop, as well as a line of online cooking classes, and her own cannabis infused food line. Some of her videos even feature eight year old Zion cameos as a sous-chef!

Healing Through Food

She’s known in Las Vegas for her ability to produce pop-up dinner parties that cater to the unique tastes of her clients for gourmet delicacies that are not always what they appear. It’s all fabulous tasting food, full of protein and nutrients from plant-based sources.

Away from the daily grind of running a restaurant Stacey is sitting on boards and participating in committees aimed at making her world, our world, a healthier, more delicious place. “My thing is being an advocate for the community, whether it be the African American community, the motherhood community, the human community…we just need to heal in some way and so to offer my part, I show people how to heal through food.”

What she says about her Abingdon watch

“The Abingdon Co code relates to me. I feel like women who wear these watches are not only adventurous but also creators and innovators. The watches are not gaudy, but elegant, and I can still be in my elements wearing it. It is the only watch that I own.”

Abingdon Co. image displaying Katherine Rose Sun mother-of-pearl, sapphire crystal and 24k rose gold plated steel case and crown watch with a white genuine leather strap.

What she wears:

Katherine Watch

Stopwatch, Military Time, Date Function, 5 Hand