Olga Kouloufakos follows the same routine every Saturday morning during the spring Amherst Farmers Market season. She arrives at the Amherst Common between 7 and 7:30 a.m., neatly sets up her tables, her yellow and white striped awning and her banner, with the name ‘Twisted Buns: 100% plant-based’ written in swirling black calligraphy.
An array of empanadas and tarts are always set up in the three-shelved cabinet on the left while the cinnamon buns and brioche twists are always laid out in the two-shelved cabinet on the right, directly next to the long chalkboard sign with all the day’s treats listed out with colorful hand-written text. The remaining scones and sweet tarts are set up in the middle in separate 1950s-diner-style glass domes. Kouloufakos then heads to the Little Pond Flower Farm’s stand to buy a two-dollar mini-bouquet to put on top of the right shelf directly next to a glass tip jar.
Before customers line up at her booth, she trades one of her treats for a bag of microgreens from Supreme Micro-greens and garnishes this week’s savory tarts. As the clock strikes eight, she struggles to connect her square card reader to the nonexistent internet connection in Amherst Common and turns to her first customers with a beaming smile. Her slightly curled gray hair with brown tips usually ends up pulled back into a slick ponytail as she adjusts her green rimmed glasses that bring out the light green of her sparkling eyes.
She adjusts a small wooden pig figurine on the right shelf, a reminder why she became vegan in the first place, before asking the first customer with her medium pitch melodic voice, “What can I get you today?”
Kouloufakos’ comfort food at Twisted Buns stands as a testament to her journey to change people’s minds about vegan food in a personal, gentler and less politicized manner through her combined art and activism. She hopes that her creations may inspire others to try more vegan food and see the lifestyle as more than under seasoned tofu.
“Whether it’s a bite of a cinnamon bun that transports you back to childhood or a cake that transforms a gathering into a joyful celebration, you could say we’re in the business of spreading happiness,” Kouloufakos writes on Twisted Buns’ website. “And this is just the beginning!”
Out of the 25 places Kouloufakos has lived in the last fifteen years, living in North Carolina had the biggest impact on her, the epicenter of factory-run pig farms in America, and where she had the biggest revelation about her eating habits in 2019. At the time, she had a pulled knee and a growing hatred for factory farms, which created, what she calls, the “perfect storm” to make her switch to veganism.
She had already been vegetarian for twenty years before the switch. She spent the entirety of one August in her early twenties in her hometown Athens, Greece, and woke up every morning to the soft jingle of bells tied around a flock of goats that ran past her window every morning. A week after she returned to the United States, she saw a nature documentary where a baby goat was killed and eaten on camera and was since too disgusted to eat meat again.
Switching to veganism, helped her realize it was more important than ever to explain and help others follow the lifestyle. That included her husband, Craig Jones. When Jones met Kouloufakos in September 2009, he dealt with a multitude of stomach issues and other aches and pains which only worsened when he ate dairy and pork. He originally ate vegan food with Kouloufakos just to see if it would improve his physical health but found that he really enjoyed the lifestyle.
“After two weeks, it wasn’t just the stomach, it was so many other issues that were so much better instantly, you know?” Jones said. “After two weeks was up, I was like ‘I have no desire to go back.’”
“I wouldn’t have cooked for him anyway,” Kouloufakos laughed with a smile.
However, whenever Kouloufakos attempted to talk to others about veganism, she experienced a sudden rise in people asking her if she wanted cream cheese on her bagel, cream in her coffee or meat-lovers pizza. Everyone knew she was vegan, but the overly nonsensical politicized nature of the lifestyle led to people taunting her for a choice she willingly made.
“Once I found out I was like, ‘Well. If nobody knows. If I tell everyone they’re all going to go vegan too!’ It didn’t work out like that, at all,” Kouloufakos said. “I had someone who we asked to walk the dogs and all the sudden she’s coming over like, ‘Do you want some bagels and cream cheese? And I’ll bring you coffee with cream in it?’ And I was just like ‘What? Why?’”
While Kouloufakos began looking for ways she could raise awareness for animal rights and vegan eating, artists in North Carolina were constructing sculptures to acknowledge the mistreatment of the pigs on factory farms, leading to Kouloufakos feeling both inspired and lost about what she could do. One day in 2019, she listened to a talk from vegan activist Ed Winters, better known as Earthling Ed, and he said something that has stuck with her ever since.
“Everybody has a talent and that should be your form of activism,” Kouloufakos said with a small smile as sunlight reflected off the edge of her glasses. “I started thinking, like, ‘What’s my thing’ and the one thing I’m good at is making food. So I said ‘Okay! I’m going back to the food and I’m [going to] show people that being vegan is not just sprouts and hummus, which I love, but there’s more to it than that.”
She worked as a recipe developer and food photographer for her blog The Vegan Feast starting in 2019, but it wasn’t satisfying enough. She wanted a more face-to-face people-first job where she could connect with others about her food and share life stories. Making a final move from Vermont back to Western Massachusetts in 2022, Kouloufakos began working towards opening a small vegan comfort food stand for the 2024 Amherst Market season while continuing to work as a recipe developer and food photographer on the side. She loves veganizing her grandmother’s Greek recipes. She didn’t want to lose that opportunity while working towards the creation of Twisted Buns, which officially opened for business on April 20, 2024.
Twisted started as an idea in the back of Kouloufakos’ mind after her switch to veganism in 2019, but it only started to take shape as a business in Jan. 2024. The original plan was to call the business Sinful Buns, but the URL was already taken. By Feb., they switched the name to Twisted Buns and began getting their house inspected by the Amherst health and fire departments for the necessary permits to work out of their home kitchen. During this time, Kouloufakos and Jones hand-made the yellow and white striped awning for their booth and Jones hand-constructed the wooden display cases where Kouloufakos would proudly display her treats.
Now, several months later, the pair follows a loose routine every Thursday through Saturday in their new rented commercial kitchen in Haydenville to make sure every one of Kouloufakos’ baked goods is fresh and ready to consume by Saturday morning at eight a.m. Kouloufakos begins by preparing the fillings for the week’s savory and sweet tarts, taking time to bake the squash and mix up the apples in a cinnamon sugar base. From Friday afternoon to early Saturday morning, the pair prepares the dough and bakes until they have to load the boxes of goodies into Kouloufakos’ gray 2006 Subaru Outback and head to the market. Despite running on zero hours of sleep, Kouloufakos still smiles and engages in lively conversations with every customer, heating up baked goods and recommending her favorite creations.
“I’d say that more than half our customers have no idea we’re vegan, honestly,” Kouloufakos said. “And I feel like it’s a gentler way to let people try it, and then they’ll see, because once you see the word vegan people get very emotional. It’s a political statement, they want to argue with you, you know? But I mean, people can’t be grumpy when they’re eating cinnamon rolls! This way we get people coming back and saying ‘I had no idea! This is good!’ and then hopefully, next time, if they see something vegan on a menu, they’re more likely to try it!”
One of Kouloufakos’ repeat customers is Carter Adams, the CEO and “certified-egg-operator” of Eggs & Co at the Amherst Farmers Market who visits Twisted every week to buy treats for themself and anyone else working at their booth that Saturday.
“They are the only people I spend money on. Even when I’m not working, I make sure to get something from them,” Adams said with a smile. “I didn’t know they were vegan for the longest time! But their stuff is so good. I was so sad when they were out of the apple strudel last week.”
Currently at Amherst Winter Market in the Bangs Community Center, Kouloufakos sells freshly baked goods every other Saturday morning from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and is preparing for the spring market to start up again in April. Even amid all the dreary snow and ice, Kouloufakos’ hopes about her business are only rising higher with every customer she talks to and market she attends. Although she only sells baked goods at the Amherst Farmers Market, she hopes to spread her business beyond the Amherst Common to help more people learn about the beauty of vegan food.
“This is my art,” Kouloufakos says, leaning gently on the two-shelved cabinet with its tiny pig statue smiling up at her. She almost seemed to smile back at it with joy. “This is my way of contributing.”
Carlie LaFauci can be reached at [email protected]
