One Detroit Vegan Restaurant Is Becoming A Coffee Shop, Ice Cream Spot, And More

As a kid, there are, arguably, few things more exciting than a walk-up ice cream window—especially when school is out for the summer, the sun is beating down, and the only important decision on the agenda is chocolate, vanilla, or a swirl.

Meghan Shaw, co-founder of Street Beet, wanted to capture that specific kind of nostalgia, which is why she has launched a new walk-up concept called Soft Spot. The only difference is that, just like everything else at this popular Detroit eatery, all of the soft serve is vegan.

Together with chef Nina Paletta (who is no longer with the business), Shaw opened Street Beet as a pop-up in 2018, before moving to a permanent brick-and-mortar space in 2025.

The restaurant has become known for its fun, plant-based twists on popular fast-food menus (like Red Lobster and Taco Bell), and now it’s building on that success with two new concepts under the same Street Beet roof: Soft Spot and a new neighborhood coffee shop called Pour Decisions.

Soft Spot

“When we moved Street Beet into our permanent home in Corktown, we knew we wanted the space to eventually be more than just the restaurant,” Shaw told VegNews.

“We have this really great walk-up window and a dining room that was sitting empty during the day, so both concepts felt like a natural way to make better use of the space and give people more reasons to come see us.”

Inside Street Beet’s new vegan soft serve and coffee concepts

Soft Spot will make use of the walk-up window with rotating seasonal soft serve flavors, creative soft serve slushies, dips, sundaes, "Blizzys," and floats, all alongside classic vanilla (for those who like to keep things simple).

"I wanted each concept to have its own identity and feel like a destination on its own. Street Beet already has a very established personality and menu, and I didn’t want to just keep adding more and more things to it until it became this giant menu that didn’t make sense ...They all live together and share the same DNA, but each one gets to have its own personality."

Pour Decisions, meanwhile, will fulfill a longtime dream for Shaw: creating a welcoming space where people can spend their working days drinking coffee, with access to free Wi-Fi, plenty of space, and, crucially, enough outlets to go around. As anyone who has ever worked in a coffee shop knows, the outlet struggle is real.

Pour Decisions

“When we had the opportunity to create our own coffee shop, having free Wi-Fi, plenty of outlets, and a space where people actually feel comfortable staying for a while was really important to me,” Shaw explains. 

It was also important to offer dairy-free milk as the default, of course. In a bid to cater to all diners, Pour Decisions will use oat milk as its milk of choice, while nut- and soy-based milks are off the menu to limit common allergens.

“I want these concepts to feel fun and approachable,” says Shaw. “You don’t have to be vegan or plant-based to enjoy any of it."

"If you come to Pour Decisions because you want a really good latte and pastry, or walk up to Soft Spot because you want a twist cone and fries, and the fact that everything happens to be plant-based is almost secondary, then I think we’ve done our job," she added.

Street Beet, Soft Spot, and Pour Decisions are located at 1800 Michigan Avenue, Detroit.