Koshary Corner owner Iman Moussa needed to do something drastic. Despite turning a habit cooking for her Howard County neighbors into a full-scale business at Baltimore’s R. House, a slowdown in demand and mounting bills loomed large.

The food hall stall was named after its signature item: koshary, the ubiquitous street food and national dish of Moussa’s native Egypt. It’s humble, carb-heavy fare that combines rice, pasta, lentils and tomato sauce. It also happens to be vegan — as Moussa’s entire menu was until recently.

In January, Moussa made the fateful decision to change her business from “plant-based” to “plant-forward,” adding a few items containing meat to the menu. “We want to not only stay open for years to come but to expand and bring our plant based foods to as many communities as possible,” she wrote in an Instagram post announcing the shift. The hope, she added, was to be able to pay staff better wages and give a portion of sales to nonprofits whose work she believes in. The halal meat would be an addition to the menu, not a substitution, she said; the other items remained unchanged.

The backlash was immediate.

While a few commenters offered support, others had harsh words. “I don’t eat at restaurants that move to serving meat,” wrote one on Instagram. “Moving backwards in your ethics will lose you customers,” said another. “What a shame to couch murder as compassion.” One commenter pointed to the example of Sage Plant Bistro & Brewery in California, a business that shuttered less than a year after incorporating meat into its menu.

Moussa was incensed. “To wish for a small business to fail… is evil,” she said. “You have no clue what goes into this.” The move came after eight months working through logistics on things like how to eliminate cross-contamination with animal products in the kitchen. “It really took a lot of grueling mental work and, of course a lot of nerve.” She knew some customers wouldn’t be happy, but now it’s gotten to the point where she’s afraid to promote items containing meat lest she be targeted.

“I am very hesitant to put anything online, because my concern is they [customers] go on Google or anywhere where they impact your reviews or say something that’s not true.”

Commenters in the private Facebook group Baltimore Vegans said they felt betrayed by Moussa’s decision, according to My Mama’s Vegan owner Debonette Wyatt. But she empathized with the business owner. “Nobody wants to have to make that decision but at the end of the day, people are trying to survive,” she said.

For Moussa, the original decision to focus on plant-based fare was both a byproduct of concerns about sourcing and a reflection of her own culture, where vegetables take the focus. “In Egypt, we eat a ton of vegan food, but we don’t call it vegan,” she said. The country is home to a large Christian population that abstains from both meat and dairy during Lent and other fasting days. Popular Middle Eastern protein choices include falafel, made from chickpeas, as well as ful, a stew made of fava beans. And relatively few Egyptian dishes incorporate cheese.

While Moussa follows a mainly pescatarian diet herself, she found that many American diners, including her own son and younger members of her staff, wanted meat. “All of those young kiddos are gym rats,” she said. “They were like, ‘We love your food so much, but I can’t eat this before the gym. … It’s missing a lot of protein.”

Moussa was reluctant to listen until last year. Her rent at R. House, the Remington food hall where she relocated in 2023 after originally opening at Clarksville’s Common Kitchen, is “insanely high,” and the cost of food has increased drastically in the past few years. She began to face competition not just from other new vegan businesses, but from many nonvegan restaurants offering more plant-based options. The latter proved especially hard, she said. Not having to go to an exclusively vegan eatery is “amazing for the vegan customer, but not great for vegan businesses who already have a very small pool to pull from.”

She felt squeezed from every end. “I put everything into this business, and I’m not ready to lose it, ” she thought. “I’m not done yet.”

It’s a dilemma familiar to Naijha Wright-Brown, co-founder of Maryland Vegan Restaurant Month, which runs through March 30. “I know the challenges that folks are facing,” she said, pointing to My Mama’s Vegan, which merged with the Urban Reads Bookstore in 2022 in an effort to share costs. At the time, Wyatt said, “We were really just holding on.” Things are going better now: Late last year, My Mama’s Vegan opened a branch inside Lexington Market. Still, Wyatt said, “It is such a tough time for businesses, vegan and nonvegan.”

The tough economic landscape has affected Land of Kush, the Seton Hill restaurant Wright-Brown co-founded with her husband, Greg Brown, in 2011. It was one of the few vegan options in Baltimore when it opened and is now one of countless local eateries where vegans can find plant-based options. And they’re feeling the strain. While Land of Kush has no plans to add meat to its menu, “We’re barely surviving out here,” Wright-Brown said. The restaurant recently called off a long-planned expansion to East Baltimore, citing financial hurdles. The building at 801 N. Chester St. is now home to The Madison 801, which serves meat.

Allison Robicelli, a Baltimore-based food writer and Koshary Corner regular, said she supported the restaurant doing what it needed to survive. “If they need to add meat to their menu to keep their lights on, I’m all for it,” she said. “I just want them to be OK.” As for the considerable pushback Moussa received, Robicelli said she’s used to seeing her own work as a journalist critiqued on the internet. “I can’t do anything without people … complaining about it.”

Ultimately, Moussa said leaning into meat is a risk that appears to have paid off. Recent sales have been 20% to 45% higher than they were a year ago, “which makes a massive difference for us.”

She’s seeing more people interested in booking her food truck, too. In the past, “event organizers would call us because they want an option for vegans. So we were always the extra truck.”

Now she’s the main one.