An OG vegan influencer and chef has a new café after a years-long legal battle

Years after a long-drawn legal battle, Chloe Coscarelli is reclaiming her name — and address — with a new vegan café set on her old stomping grounds.

Coscarelli, a vegan influencer and chef whose popularity soared in the early aughts, announced Friday that she was opening CHLOE on Bleecker Street in New York. It marks the entrepreneur’s official return to food service since an ugly legal dispute between her and her former business partners who co-founded the By Chloe restaurant chain in 2014. The new café will open at the address that originally housed By Chloe.

To the public, By Chloe seemed like a success thanks to Coscarelli’s acclaim from winning an episode of Cupcake Wars, her vegan cookbooks, and the restaurant’s popular fast-casual vegan burgers, mac and cheese, and fan favorite beet ketchup. At its height, By Chloe had more than a dozen locations spread across New York, Boston, California, and more.

But drama was unfolding behind the scenes.

Coscarelli said in public statements and a lawsuit that her former business partners with the hospitality firm ESquared ousted her. Meanwhile, ESquared accused Coscarelli of “gross negligence” and sabotaging business deals.

In a lawsuit filed by Coscarelli in 2017, she claimed ESquared wanted to open restaurants that served animal products and byproducts against the vegan chef’s ethos. The hospitality group denied this. Coscarelli also said that restaurateur Jimmy Habor with ESquared threatened her and made her feel unsafe.

Things soured further in 2019 when, after leaving By Chloe, Coscarelli opened a pop-up lunch spot called Supernatural with celebrity chef Tom Colicchio. In a lawsuit filed that year, Coscarelli and Colicchio said that Coscarelli’s former business partners were attempting to intimidate and harass her. The duo also said ESquared hit Coscarelli with trademark infringement claims because her name and likeness were still tied to By Chloe despite her departure from the brand.

ESquared’s lawyers said Supernatural would confuse By Chloe customers while Coscarelli and Colicchio said the claim was baseless and that the pop-up wasn’t connected to By Chloe in any way.

What ensued was a long, winding attempt for Coscarelli to move on with her name, face, and likeness.

In 2020, Coscarelli won a lawsuit that granted her 50% ownership of the restaurant chain. But it didn’t last long. By Chloe’s parent company filed for bankruptcy.

When a new group of investors bought its assets a year later, the purchase didn’t include the “By Chloe” trademark and the restaurant chain, which had eight locations in New York, was rebranded as Beatnic. Beatnic is now down to one remaining New York location and one in Boston.

In 2022, the chef and hospitality group finally settled a lawsuit giving Coscarelli the liberty to use her name, image, and likeness again fully. But it would be two more years until the chef announced her next brick-and-mortar venture.

Following the legal disputes, Coscarelli continued to release recipes and do partnership deals with brands like Whole Foods. Still, her Instagram posts remained fairly infrequent.

On Friday, Coscarelli announced she was returning to Bleecker Street.

“Standing on the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal, I promised myself that someday, somehow, I would return,” Coscarelli wrote on Instagram. “And when I did, it would be on my own terms. Well… that day has come!!”

CHLOE is set to open Tuesday. It will be an all-vegan all-day café serving “classic eats.” Coscarelli did not respond to a request for comment and did not expand on menu details.

“There are no words to express how grateful I am for this incredible opportunity and the amazing team who has helped turn this dream into a reality,” Coscarelli wrote on Instagram. “We’ve been working around the clock to create a truly special place that I hope will become one of your favorite neighborhood spots.”