Story
Meet the Family
Tabay's Mindful Kitchen was built by family, shaped by experience, and guided by a shared love for food. Before TMK became the immersive outdoors-inspired food truck it is today, it began with the people behind it and the stories that continue to guide every part of the journey.
Tabay Atkins
Tabay opened Tabay's Mindful Kitchen in the summer of 2022 at just 16 years old, but his story starts long before then.
When he was six years old, his mom, Sahel, was diagnosed with cancer. After a long battle with chemotherapy, she became cancer free, but she wasn't the same. The effects of cancer treatment left her weak and broken down. At two weeks cancer free, she stumbled upon yoga and began a 200-hour vinyasa teacher training. Tabay was by his mom's side as she began practicing yoga for the first time, and during the two months of her teacher training, he noticed a dramatic transformation. His mom was able to walk on her own again and she was happier and healthier than she had been even before cancer. It was then that seven-year-old Tabay had found his calling. He wanted to teach yoga to help others heal and stay healthy the way he saw yoga help heal his mom.
Tabay started traveling the country with his mom, taking specialty yoga teacher trainings. He got his first yoga certificate at age seven and later completed a 200-hour vinyasa teacher training at ten years old, becoming the youngest certified yoga teacher in the world. Inspired by his mom's recovery, Tabay began teaching vinyasa yoga classes, donating all of the money he made to cancer patients.
Tabay continued his education, becoming a reiki master, getting 500-hour vinyasa certified, and completing over 1,000 hours of specialty teacher training experience including yoga for kids and teens, yoga for cancer patients and survivors, yoga for children with autism, restorative yoga, and more.
Over the years, Tabay has been featured on Good Morning America, The Doctors, CNN, The Drew Barrymore Show, the cover of Yoga Journal Magazine, and many other national media platforms. He also served as a Nike Yoga Ambassador, helping inspire young people around the world through mindfulness, movement, and healthy living.
It was through the practice of yoga that Tabay learned about the plant-based diet and vegan lifestyle. When he decided to go vegan at 12 years old, he became determined to show people that plant-based food could still be exciting and familiar. He began teaching cooking classes focused on making plant-based food approachable and enjoyable, years before he eventually opened the food truck, serving those creations to the public.
As a young child, he learned how to cook from his mom, who had trained at Le Cordon Bleu, which is how he developed a deep appreciation for food, creativity, and nutrition from an early age. He was able to take this experience and translate it to a vegan diet to share what plant-based food is all about.
Tabay is also certified in plant-based nutrition and works privately with clients on meal planning, meal prepping, and wellness guidance, helping people create healthier lifestyles through balanced, whole food plant-based nutrition.
“My love for cooking came from my mom. She taught me everything I know. I started in the kitchen when I was very little under my mom's supervision. When I was eight years old, I started cooking on my own.”
“Every vegan meal people eat at my food truck is one non-vegan meal that they are not eating somewhere else. Each meal makes a difference for our health, our environment, and the animals.”
Wanting to expand his impact and make delicious vegan food even more accessible, Tabay opened his own food truck in Dana Point, California. Tabay's Mindful Kitchen was started in 2022 when Tabay was 16 years old, and it was his way to inspire people to eat more plant-based food. It worked too — people who wouldn't even consider trying vegan food soon became regular customers. After two years in California, Tabay shipped his truck to Maui, Hawai‘i. In the year and a half Tabay's Mindful Kitchen operated on Maui, Tabay continued to serve smiles and open minds. It was a chapter of growth. TMK continued to build a loyal following around creative plant-based comfort food.
Eventually, the call to academia led Tabay to move to Bozeman, Montana. Preparing to continue his education, he decided to bring the food truck with him and begin the next chapter of Tabay's Mindful Kitchen.
“When I opened the truck, there were two main things that I was trying to accomplish. Firstly, I want to show people that you can be vegan without missing out on your favorite flavors. Second, I want to make vegan versions of people's favorite comfort foods more accessible. But now, it’s time to have some fun with it! In addition to our first two core values, I want to make eating at my food truck an experience people will never forget.”
In these recent years, Tabay has developed a deep interest in the natural world and America's national parks. Shortly after opening the food truck, he took his first road trip and quickly fell in love with the outdoors. This fascination that began during Tabay's Mindful Kitchen's first years in California grew even stronger during its time on Maui and ultimately reshaped the brand as it transitioned to Montana.
Wanting the business to reflect his growing love for nature, adventure, and exploration, Tabay completely reimagined and rebranded Tabay's Mindful Kitchen into the immersive national park-inspired brand it is today, combining plant-based cuisine, adventure, and mindfulness into one unique experience.
Tabay is now attending Montana State University, majoring in Paleontology while continuing to grow and evolve Tabay's Mindful Kitchen here in beautiful Bozeman, Montana.
Sahel Anvarinejad
Sahel is the co-founder of Tabay's Mindful Kitchen and Tabay Atkins' mom and culinary inspiration.
She has always loved to cook and started out as a young child yearning to cook alongside her mom and grandmother. Long before attending Le Cordon Bleu, she was a great chef, always cooking for family and friends. No matter how tired she is, she has never been too tired to be in the kitchen cooking. You really taste the love in every bite you take of her food.
Beyond the kitchen, Sahel has always been deeply passionate about children's well-being, mindfulness, and helping others live healthier, happier lives. Her entrepreneurial spirit and passion for creating meaningful experiences eventually led her down an unexpected path into yoga and healing.
Sahel was misdiagnosed for almost a year before being diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cancer. By the time she was finally diagnosed, she had to have very intensive chemotherapy.
After battling cancer, Sahel was left unable to walk on her own and emotionally spent. Never having done yoga before, she unexpectedly jumped into a 200-hour yoga teacher training. Although she was still unable to fully walk on her own when the training began, throughout the class Sahel experienced healing both physically and emotionally. By the end of the training, she had regained her strength and was fully recovered. The experience changed her life and inspired her to share the gift of yoga, healing, and mindfulness with children and families.
She went on to become a yoga teacher specializing in yoga for kids, and opened the first kids yoga studio in Orange County, CA. She also created yoga and cooking summer camps for children and taught yoga at local elementary schools, helping introduce mindfulness and healthy living to children at an early age.
When Tabay decided to go vegan in 2017, Sahel fully embraced the challenge, determined to recreate the comforting foods and flavors she loved without animal products. Together, she and Tabay began developing plant-based versions of familiar favorites that everyone could still enjoy.
As Tabay prepared to launch Tabay's Mindful Kitchen, Sahel knew the menu needed to reflect the comforting fast-food classics she and most of the population grew up loving. Working side by side, she and Tabay created fully plant-based comfort foods packed with flavor and nostalgia.
To this day, Sahel spends most of her time doing what she loves most: cooking. When she's in the food truck, she's cooking. When she's in the motorhome kitchen, she's cooking. When she's at home, she's cooking. And when she's not cooking, she's thinking about cooking, talking about food, or dreaming up new recipes. The kitchen is truly her happy place, and everyone around her gets to benefit from the love she pours into every meal.
Larry Tabay Atkins III
Larry is Tabay's dad and a former professional American football player who spent five seasons in the NFL as a linebacker and defensive back.
He spent his collegiate career playing for the UCLA Bruins, establishing himself as a versatile defensive prospect. Larry was drafted into the NFL in 1999 and played until 2003, appearing in 49 total games. He was selected by the Kansas City Chiefs where he spent four seasons with the franchise as a rotational defender and special teams player. He joined the Oakland Raiders for his final professional season, appearing in three games during the 2003 campaign.
Although Larry doesn't have any formal culinary training, he was raised by his grandmother who was a great cook. If she was cooking, the whole neighborhood would come over. As she got older and couldn't stand in the kitchen, he would take over with her guidance.
“When you were tasked to prepare something, it had to pass the judgment of the whole family. Food was highly criticized if it wasn't up to par.”
Larry is now taking his culinary talent and bringing it to Tabay's Mindful Kitchen.
“I am very proud of Tabay and everything that he has accomplished to date and looking forward to see what more he will do.”
Amy & Michael Nejad
(a.k.a. Maganee & BabaJoon)
Amy and Michael Nejad are Tabay's grandparents, known in the family as Maganee and BabaJoon. Long before Tabay's Mindful Kitchen became a food truck, they helped create many of the family traditions that would later shape its story: cooking, hospitality, travel, hard work, and a connection with the outdoors.
Maganee and BabaJoon were both born in Tehran, Iran. They grew up as neighbors, fell in love, got married, and moved to the United States in 1968.
After arriving in the United States, BabaJoon studied engineering while also working in foodservice, first at the Jolly Roger and later at the Newport Beach Tennis Club. Those early kitchen jobs gave him firsthand experience in restaurants, service, and even led him to become friends with John Wayne.
“I started as a bus boy and ended up to be assistant chef. And when the chef left, I took over.”
— BabaJoon
Maganee already had a deep connection to food. She cooked traditional Persian dishes for the family and helped create the kind of kitchen environment where recipes, flavors, and family stories were passed down. Her cooking would later inspire Sahel's lifelong passion for food, which eventually became one of the foundations of Tabay's own love for cooking. Maganee was also a hairdresser and florist, putting lots of love, care, and attention into her work.
“Sahel always wanted to cook. She was always hanging around in the kitchen with me when she was little.”
— Maganee
In the early 1970s, BabaJoon entered the gas station business and began opening Unocal 76 stations. He quickly made a name for himself throughout the company, becoming its top performer and earning the nickname “Main Man Mike.” Each year, he won awards for his stations, and the company would send him and the family to conventions and award ceremonies across the country.
Maui became one of those frequent destinations. For Sahel, those trips made the island feel like a happy place from a young age, something she carried with her into adulthood. Years later, that connection inspired Sahel and Tabay to move to Maui, where Tabay's Mindful Kitchen would eventually follow.
But travel was already a major part of the family. Maganee, BabaJoon, and their four children took trips often, traveling around the world, across the country, and over the seas. Those experiences gave Sahel and her siblings a lifetime of memories and helped establish travel as one of the family's most important traditions.
One of the most cherished traditions was Yosemite. Every year, at least once a year, Maganee and BabaJoon would take the family camping in Yosemite National Park. When their parents visited from Iran, they joined the trips too. Over time, the tradition continued with the grandchildren, becoming a very meaningful part of Tabay's childhood.
“We enjoyed going to Yosemite. We loved camping, making the fire, going in the river, having all of the family together, and doing everything together.”
— BabaJoon
Those yearly Yosemite trips were paused after Sahel was diagnosed with cancer, and the tradition did not fully return for many years. Then, in an effort to bring that part of the family story back, Tabay celebrated his 16th birthday with a family camping trip to Yosemite. At the time, he did not know it would become the beginning of a new tradition of national park exploration, one that would eventually help shape his identity and the identity of Tabay's Mindful Kitchen.
In 2021, when BabaJoon retired from the gas station business, Sahel and Tabay took over his 76 station in Capistrano Beach, continuing the family legacy. That same station would later become the place where Tabay opened his food truck, bringing together generations of family history in one location.
Today, Maganee and BabaJoon are enjoying retirement while continuing to travel with Tabay and Sahel. Together, the family has created a new version of an old tradition: road trips across the country, visits to national parks, and many new memories made along the way.
