Caroline Morrison's plan to open a vegetarian restaurant in Raleigh was so audacious that no bank would lend her the start-up money.

Childhood friend Aaron Stumb, who heads Wake Tech's Culinary Arts program, says he can understand why.

"Opening a restaurant is tough enough. But a 100% vegetarian restaurant? That's even tougher," Stumb said. "I thought she was crazy. Of course, I never told her that."

Morrison ignored the doubters, however, and, with her family's financial help, opened Fiction Kitchen in downtown Raleigh in 2012. Now, the thriving restaurant routinely receives rave reviews for its inventive menu and relaxed atmosphere.

"I knew I had a customer base," the longtime vegetarian said. "There weren't many vegetarian options in the area for people eating out, so there was a gap in the market just waiting to be filled."

Morrison, who earned a Culinary Arts AAS degree at Wake Tech in 2009, got a late start in the business, returning to school at age 30 after a decade as a helpdesk agent and trainer at IBM. She had tired of sitting behind a desk all day, acting as a liaison between clients and tech staff, and longed for the personal relationships she had built while working at a pizzeria and a coffee shop when she was in college.

"I liked the customer service aspect, knowing and interacting with the people who came in every day," she said.

In fact, she was working at the pizzeria when an IBM manager impressed by her customer service skills recruited her.

Wake Tech provided a foundational understanding of cooking, Morrison says, adding that she knew she couldn't afford any missteps if she wanted to run her own restaurant.

"I had never gone to school for something I loved so much," she said. "I learned you can never know everything about cooking. I still learn something new every day, which is exciting."

She found some instructors to be intimidating until she realized they were just enthusiastic about teaching and wanted to impress a specific skill set on students.

"I enjoyed my time with the instructors. They made an impact on my life and as a learner," she said.

Faculty allowed her to experiment with vegan dishes, Morrison says, as long as she also could demonstrate that she could cook in classic ways. Her old friend Stumb, who at the time was head chef at Durham restaurant Mez, helped her gain management experience by letting her fill in at various roles in the restaurant.

After graduating from Wake Tech, Morrison worked at various area restaurants, adding vegetarian dishes to menus whenever she went. She also tapped into the popup restaurant trend, showing up at different locations across the Triangle on weekends with vegetarian offerings and building a loyal clientele along the way.

To learn more about the business end of running a restaurant, she took classes through Wake Tech's Entrepreneurship & Small Business Center, where she wrote a business plan and started searching for financing.

Fiction Kitchen – the name grew out of the popups because she didn't have a kitchen of her own to use and routinely featured faux meat items like vegan BBQ – grew steadily for several years, but Morrison says it was always a challenge financially. Then, the pandemic hit.

The restaurant's small downtown location didn't have the space to handle outdoor dining or takeout orders, but Morrison had to pivot – she says she now hates that word – and make both work in order to survive.

"It was a big change in how we did business. It was really difficult," she said. "All my experiences in restaurants helped me get the business through that, but without federal and local grants, we wouldn't have made it."

Morrison often shares those experiences and insight into running a restaurant with Wake Tech Culinary Arts students when classes visit Fiction Kitchen or she comes to Southern Wake Campus for a talk.

Fiction Kitchen, which shifted to a completely vegan menu after the pandemic, moved in late 2024 from downtown to a larger location off Raleigh's Capital Boulevard, where the restaurant can seat diners inside and outside and handle takeout orders. Morrison said she plans to expand to lunch hours and may offer catering services as well.

"She's a phenomenal success story," Stumb said. "She's gone above and beyond what we expect of our graduates."