By Ashley Ragone
News Editor
After health struggles and a drastic career change, business partners and couple Francesca Avitto and Kate Wnek are bringing vegan dining to the College and Ewing community.
Lady and the Shallot, a gluten-free, nut-free and plant-based restaurant, recently established its first brick-and-mortar location in Campus Town after operating as a vendor in the Trenton Farmer’s Market for several years. With this storefront, Avitto and Wnek are eager to connect with the younger audience they find to be highly aware and eager to pursue a plant-based diet.
Shaping a business model
Avitto, who was a hair stylist, and Wnek, a teacher, started dating in 2013. Despite coming from varied professional backgrounds, they found common ground in their love of food.
“We actually started in a private chef and event-planning company,” said Avitto in an interview with The Signal. “That's how we first became business partners. I think we just did it kind of for fun, because we enjoyed it. And then it just became bigger. We started getting a lot busier, and then down the line, we began to get a lot healthier.”
Their decision to walk away from their previous careers and implement dietary changes did not happen accidentally; it was a purposeful change inspired by their family’s health struggles.
“We went vegan because my mom, when I was in my late 20s, was diagnosed with early onset dementia, and then she had it for 10 years. It was the most awful thing that could ever happen to her, and my family and me, and it really made me look at what I put in my body and what people eat,” Wnek said. “And then my wife [Avitto] had stage three kidney disease, so she started to take a look at, you know, what she could do to make her kidney disease dormant, which she actually did, which is amazing.”
With their idea for a restaurant in place, Wnek shared that she came up with the unique name on a whim. “We were like, let’s do a two-name company name, like William and Sonoma,” she shared. Their pet cat, named Lady, also inspired the idea.
Early beginnings at the farmer’s market
The Trenton Farmer’s Market, which has been operating since 1939, was the first home to Lady and the Shallot — and saw the business prosper for several years.
Initially, the pair connected to the market through their neighbor who operated a barbeque stand there.
“When it was time that we were going to start looking for locations, we had never even looked at another location,” said Avitto. “We said to each other, we should look at the farmer’s market, because we’re going to be farm-to-table.”
Having been eating vegan and wanting to prioritize fresh ingredients, they knew they wanted to bring locally sourced and fresh produce into their dishes. They believed the farmer’s market was the obvious choice, as they could use their fellow vendors as a great resource.
Despite warnings that their corner slot would never prosper as it was “cursed,” the duo never fell victim to such luck; Lady and the Shallot ran to great success for seven years.
In their time at the market, they would be able to provide the closest farm-to-table dining experience possible, while maintaining menu flexibility and accommodating the variety of crop harvests throughout the year.
“We literally would, in the morning, walk around and just get whatever we needed,” said Wnek. “And it was seasonal. So for corn season, we would do street corn and in the fall for root vegetable season, we’d be doing soups and all kinds of stuff.”
Though Lady and the Shallot is still farm-to-table, Wnek shared that the ease and speed at which the market could provide such locally sourced food is one of the aspects they miss the most.
Building a future in Campus Town
With their small business truly starting to prosper at the farmer’s market, Avitto and Wnek wanted more creative freedom, and square footage, to manage their restaurant.
“We were catering weddings, we were doing baby showers and parties and stuff, and we would have to close the business, because we didn’t have the space,” Wnek said. “Our kitchen was so small.”
Along with the consideration of space, they wanted to build more of a sit-down restaurant, as opposed to the take-out style they found was more manageable with the smaller space of the market, where they could decorate and establish their own hours.
After announcing their relocation last May, Lady and the Shallot officially reopened in Campus Town on Dec. 2, 2025 and have been building a young customer base among the campus community.
“The feedback we’re getting is positive. We have a lot of returning customers already, so that’s cool,” Wnek said.
Avitto added, “We’ve always loved having a target audience of young people… More young people are not only health conscious, but you’re very aware. You’re aware of the ‘whys’ of being vegan, and not just the health aspect, not just the trend of it.”
So far, Avitto and Wnek have found that their chipotle crunchwrap is among their most popular dishes, with their own favorites being the lady’s rancheros and rainbow greens bowl, respectively. Their lady’s rancheros, which uses tofu scramble instead of eggs, was inspired by Wnek’s father.
When asked about their goals for Lady and the Shallot’s future, the pair hope to create more resources for their customer base.
“We want to get our business to a place where we can kind of branch out, we want to write cookbooks. Customers have asked us for them for years,” Avitto shared. “ And we finally actually have some time, because we have such an amazing team that really got the way we do things, and we are able to step away a little bit.”
One member of that new team is Cara Shapley, a junior Deaf and inclusive education major, who works front of house and enjoys being able to connect with customers through her role.
Since first connecting with Avitto and Wnek through a mutual friend, she shared that she has truly enjoyed getting to work at the restaurant.
“They’re everything you would want in a boss: respectful, fair, easygoing, every single good adjective in the dictionary could describe them in some capacity. They’ve easily become people I know I could go to if I ever needed anything, even outside of work,” Shapley said. “Every customer who has had an encounter with them, which they probably have, always has something nice to say about them. They instantly made my coworkers and I feel like a part of their family.”
She has also seen first-hand how Lady and the Shallot has maintained their supporters from Trenton Farmer’s Market, and already made a positive impact on the lives of students from the College.
“Some of my peers from my classes have come into LATS and ordered from here, to which they are now regulars,” she said. “During finals week, some athletes also came into LATS and said this is one of the first times they’ve had a healthy meal since the semester started, and they’re glad LATS relocated so close to TCNJ.”
Lady and the Shallot is now open in Campus Town. More information can be found on their website and through their social media.
