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Feeding Souls Through Food

Journey from Skid Row to Sunlife Organics

Article by Jennifer Birn

Photography by Courtesy of Khalil Rafati (unless noted)

Originally published in Austin Lifestyle

Inside every Sunlife Organics is a neon sign that says “Love, Heal, Inspire,” a unicorn with a rainbow horn and crystals founder Khalil Rafati travels the world to find. From the outside, he appears to be a fit, healthy, attractive man younger than his years and his orange sneakers by Pharrel illicit a quick smile. It all outshines the dark history that paved his way here.

On what made him get sober the time it stuck

“I had taken enough beatings, I had enough seizures and overdoses and went through the absolute horror of LA County jail multiple times. What you see in there, the smells, things that happen to you…I certainly didn’t get sober out of virtue, I got sober out of desperation. I suffered the high cost of low living. I had scabies, I had ringworm, my teeth were falling out of my head and I was sure I was dying of AIDS.”

Road to Recovery

“I was living with a guy from NA and the only friend I had who would still answer my calls was this guy named Sean. He was an old hippie, yoga teacher and masseuse who I told I don’t have any money and I was really having a tough time. He came over with mason jars of different juices he’d just juiced and raw almonds, macadamia nuts, avocados, goji berries, a bunch of stuff you’d imagine a hippie with a VW van would bring. I was starving physically and emotionally and he fed me and gave me a massage. It was a beautiful, nurturing and loving experience. And he kept coming back and bringing me food. I took to it immediately.”

“But, like any good addict, if I’m putting something in my body and it makes me feel good, I want more. So, did I really stop being an addict? The answer is no, the ingredients have changed, that’s all. I’m obsessed. I get up every day and this is what I do, I’m at SunLife Organics just shoveling it into my mouth because I know what it does for me. I’m 51-years-old, I don’t workout every day but this keeps me thin, it keeps me young, full of energy, it keeps me alive.”

Making Promises

When Khalil was newly sober he got an AIDS test and during the painstaking days waiting for the results he says, “I made a pact with God that if he could give me one more pass, one more chance, I would do good for the world. I was making smoothies in my kitchen and giving them to my clients (recovering addicts) who were responding like I was responding to them and I’d see these miracles take place in front of me and I was like, ‘I should open a juice bar,’ and that was the beginning of this…I’m still a deeply flawed individual. I’m a work in progress and I make mistakes every day, but I do the best I can to make the world a better place. I think we need to stop attacking each other and look in the mirror and say, ‘What can I do?’ Do what Ghandi said and be the change you want to see in the world. If that just means being kind to my employees, smiling when I’m meeting new customers and maybe treating them and giving them the nutrition to meet their challenges, that’s what I do.”

Food for thought

“When I was newly sober and studying Ram Dass and all these enlightened people, one thing I found in all of their different teachings was to be careful who’s preparing your food because you’re eating their energy. If you have angry people in an angry kitchen and you’re eating their food, you’re eating their anger…My idea from Day One was to create a lighthouse in the storm for people who were going through stuff like me. A safe drug and alcohol-free environment where people could work, feel safe and get real nutrition. Our ingredients don’t make sense financially (he sources and imports top-grade ingredients), it’s not good business practice, but if I cared about that we’d just be getting stuff from Cisco and throwing it in a bowl and you’d be suffering through yet another average pedestrian-grade meal. Instead, we deliver real nutrition, real sustenance. Whether it’s the matcha from Japan, maca from Peru or the cacao beans from Ecuador, I’m going to get into a situation where I can do direct trade with those people. The matcha we’re importing now, eventually we’ll import the maca and cacao. I’m not there yet, but I will be. That’s my jam.”

How the Austin SunLife Organics came to fruition…

Khalil got sober at 33, had to get minimum wage jobs walking dogs, cleaning cars and apartments and then as a recovery companion before he opened the first SunLife in Malibu at 41. Ten years later he opened the Austin location in Fall 2020.

He shares that although he’d previously considered buying a house here, “I never would have opened in Austin, but I was at Soho House in Malibu two years ago and the guy who started Paul Mitchell haircare products, John Paul DeJoria, walks up to my table and says his wife loves the smoothies I make and asked if I’d open one in Austin. I said no, that I needed to grab low-hanging fruit in California and do San Diego and Santa Barbara. Then he said, ‘What if I were to give you the money?’ I said maybe and he said, ‘What would I get?’ and I said, ‘I’ll give you 30% of the profits’ and he said, ‘Would you give me more?’ I said no. Then he said, ‘What if I were to donate all of the profits that you gave me to homeless people since you used to be homeless and I used to be homeless?’ and I said, ‘I’ll give you more.’ And he said, ‘How about 40% and my 40% will go towards feeding homeless people, building them structures, drug testing them and teaching them a vocation.’ I said ‘Done.’ He walked back to his table and 20 minutes later he came back to my table with a handwritten piece of paper and said, ‘Here it’s done. This is my legal contract with you.’” 

And now you’re living in Austin

“I left LA for a multitude of reasons. I was stagnant, I wanted a change. When we came here, within a week, the knots I had in my stomach living in LA for 29 years were gone. My shoulders began to drop, I began to breathe deeply rather than shallow.  Two weeks straight I walked the river they call a lake and I kept looking down at my shirt because people would look at me and smile and I thought I had something on my shirt. Then I realized they were smiling at me, not because I spilled something, but because we’re supposed to smile at one another. People here are so nice! I don’t want to beat up on LA because LA gave me the ability to build a brand, to write a book…but we were here about a week and my girlfriend says, ‘What about living here?’ and within two weeks we decided to stay.”

“It's bizarre for me to think about that guy shuffling down the street with one flip flop on muttering to himself, but that was me.” Today he speaks to the cop who arrested him for the last time nearly every day, saying, “You have to hold people accountable or they’re never going to change.” Khalil’s living proof that we can rise from challenges and change our stars. 

For more, read Khalil’s books. The first one “I Forgot to Die,’ is a biography. The second, “Remembering to Live” he says, “is the answer to all the idiots who would DM me and say, ‘I want to be rich like you. How did you go from living under a bridge to being a millionaire?’ This is the how-to. This is literally every step of the way what I did.”

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