{"id":6334,"date":"2019-06-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/addison-vegan-ice-cream-hug-life\/"},"modified":"2019-07-23T10:51:15","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T17:51:15","slug":"addison-vegan-ice-cream-hug-life-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/addison-vegan-ice-cream-hug-life-2","title":{"rendered":"Popular vegan ice creamery Hug Life opens first Long Beach shop"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published on May 25 and has been updated.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It has a faithful following in Orange County, maintains a five-star rating on Yelp, and, now, it has officially made its first foray beyond the Orange Curtain: Hug Life has opened up a shop on Fourth Street where Do Good Donuts formerly operated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Owner Johny Tran currently has two locations in Orange County. The flagship location in Garden Grove opened in 2017 with his Orange shop opening the following year\u2014and he has built a reputation for serving some of the region’s best vegan desserts.<\/p>\n

From vegan ice cream tacos\u2014decadent, folded wonders where a sweet shell is filled with three scoops of ice cream and then topped with condensed coconut milk\u2014to vegan milkshakes, the self-proclaimed anti-dairy creamery offers a constantly shifting array of flavors: Vietnamese coffee. Mango and chamoy. Roasted black sesame seed with activated charcoal. Taro root.<\/p>\n

“Hug Life was conceived by a close-knit group of friends who had a plant-based lifestyle and listened to a lot of hip hop,” said Tran, who has a “Hug Life” tattoo in a nod to Tupac’s “Thug Life” tattoo. “Growing up with traditional families in a financial struggle, we didn\u2019t have much help or support. In fact, a few of us went against our family\u2019s wishes; we dropped out of school in order to pursue a vision.”<\/p>\n

That vision became Hug Life and was an attempt\u00a0“to eliminate awkward conversations that can occur between friends with different dietary needs.”<\/p>\n

The crew is not entirely new to Long Beach: Hug Life participated in a popup during Retro Row’s celebration of the first anniversary of California Drifters, an apparel shop on Fourth Street, last night. It was there they made their announcement.<\/p>\n

Hug Life is <\/em>located at 2707 E. Fourth St.<\/em><\/p>\n

Brian Addison is a columnist and editor for the Long Beach Post.\u00a0<\/em>Reach him at\u00a0brian@lbpost.com\u00a0or on social media at\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0Instagram<\/a>, and\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vegan ice creamery Hug Life will be opening up a shop on Fourth Street where Do Good Donuts formerly took up shop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":70313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[44],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[2691],"class_list":["post-6334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","category-hi-lo","tag-vegan","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6334"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=6334"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}