Kerry Fitzmaurice is here to share a meal and a conversation at her new restaurant Pure Grit, a vegan, fast-casual barbeque restaurant she opened in New York City’s Gramercy Park this past summer in May 2022. 

Kerry has been in the world of sustainability ever since graduating from SEAS in 1991, working in environmental consulting at the US Environmental Protection Agency and Arthur Andersen, and later pivoting to marketing and advertising at firms including 72andSunny and Mother. A plant-based eater since the age of 10, Kerry feels the importance of connecting the dots between what we eat and the environment. 

She decided to help others connect those pieces while visiting Texas. Inspired by the local cuisine, Kerry imagined what barbeque could be if it was taken out of its typical, overtly animalistic genre. A marketing professional at heart, she wanted Pure Grit to surprise people, “to be a cool brand,” she says, “not a vegan brand or a barbeque brand.” This remarketing of barbeque as inclusive to every diet, from plant-based to gluten-free, is where she shines. 

The name “Pure Grit” especially resonates with Kerry. “Pure of spirit, authentic, honest, transparent. And then there’s the grit,” where she explains this dichotomy “as both meaning perseverance, that fierceness, but also that reminder of the soil, the plants that make up the meals.” 

“I feel like I’ve won if I inspire one person to have a plant-based meal every week,” she says. Taken from her outlook on her own environmentally-minded lifestyle, Kerry views these micro wins as opportunities that will add up to macro change. 

“I feel like I’m finally living my NatRe dream,” she says of her education at SEAS, which in many ways inspired her to pursue her smoked, jackfruit-filled dream. She’s excited and looking ahead to becoming green-certified as well as kosher-certified, which involves deeply examining every aspect of Pure Grit’s impact, from food waste to reclaiming water use. Kerry also has big dreams of expanding as she transforms the face of barbeque, one person at a time.