El Buda Profano

History: In late 2015 our founder Alan Pater bootstrapped «el buda profano», a vegan sushi bar in Arequipa Peru. MasterChef Perú Jim Daniel Echevarría came on board to help develop the menu. The result, 6 months later, was lineups out the door. In the following years the restaurant continued to build a solid reputation, both via word of mouth and online. People told us that there was nothing like it in their home town."Who needs fish anymore" they said,"best sushi ever". The time had come to grow the business. Plans were developed to expand into a larger space, into more locations. https://youtu.be/c43uahkCw8s In late 2019 we secured a larger, higher profile space in the centre of town. Planning and development of the new space was underway when, on March 15th 2020, the Peruvian President announced a complete lock down of the country. Only essential services could operate, everyone else had to quarantine at home. “Two More Weeks” short film - Peru was hit hard by the pandemic, more so then other countries. But in the last week of June 2020 the quarantine ended and restaurants were allowed to accept take out orders. Several months later in house dining was permitted with limited capacity, adequate ventilation and mask mandates. In March 2021 we opened our new location; vaccine mandates following later. 2022 presented its fair share of challenges, challenges common throughout the world. Supply chain problems, high inflation, and labour shortages all affected us as well, but we overcame these issues and took the business to new heights, doubling quarterly sales relative to pre-pandemic levels. Things were starting to look up! Then in December 2022 everything fell apart.