Karin Ridgers, VeggieVision TV, offers an insight into catering for the vegetarian and vegan markets.

The word vegan may not be the most sexiest word we agree however catering for a meat free plant based diet is very easy. Vegan items are suitable for vegetarians – and meat eaters too.

The big tip is once you cater for vegans either by incorporating new items to your existing menu or even planning a new vegetarian menu is to start shouting about it too.

Why?

Well there is a growing breed of people all over the UK who will travel for miles out of their way to be catered for. They are very loyal and will certainly carry out a great deal of promotion for you, telling friends, family and contacts about you for no cost once you look after their needs.

Sounds too good to be true?

Well its not.  The trend of a vegetarian and vegan lifestyle is constantly increasing and there are also people who have a dairy allergy or dairy intolerant, need to cut down on animal products for health, lose weight, reduce cholesterol or who simply want a tasty healthier option.

Take last night for instance. We drove past about 20 cafes and restaurants to reach the 50’s diner we wanted to try – simply because they cook their vegan friendly burgers separately to meat and have soya milk and dairy free ice-cream. All freezable and will last a long time.

It’s easy to start spreading the word for your vegan friendly menu – you can drop us a line to tell the VeggieVision viewers.

Watch your new vegetarian and vegan clients walk and drive by your competition to support you in return for stocking their favourite range of vegan friendly goodies!

First things first:

Make sure your utensils are kept separate from the ones you use to prepare meat. A veggie sausage sandwich is not acceptable if it is cooked with the meat sausages either – make sure that there is a separate space for grilling or a new pan for frying.

The Pizza Hut even use different coloured handles on their pizza servers – green for veggie pizzas and black for meat ones. This is appreciated by their veggie customers. They also have, like many other restaurant chains, a book that lists all of the ingredients in their dishes so people can easily see what they can and can’t consume.

You can get a meat and dairy free version of everything now – cheese, margarine, yoghurt, ice cream – even snitchels, hotdogs, pies and mince.  Most taste great and lots of the products are hard to differentiate from animal based products.  Fry’s Vegetarian products, for example, offer a range of 16 different products, all fully approved by the both The Vegan Society and The Vegetarian Society.  They are also Kosher (Parev Mehadrin – a very high form of Kosher approval for Jews), Shuddha (suitable for Hindus) and Halaal (suitable for Muslims).

Long life soya milk can be kept for about a year in the cupboard. It makes a very nice, frothy latte and is delicious in porridge too!

Check ingredients of pasta – dried pasta is usually egg free and therefore vegan friendly. And think of other ingredients that you have that could add some pizzazz to a plain salad – avocado, apple, raisins, pineapple, sweet potatoes, asparagus, raw onions, raw mushrooms, sweet corn. I could go on.

Dessert is an area that still needs some work in terms of the availability of vegan fare by the hospitality trade. I have no idea why!  If you can find a way to offer a decent vegan dessert offering you will be a certain hit with a lot of potential new customers.  Again there is a dairy free version of cream, yoghurt and ice cream. Cakes, flapjacks and more can be made or even bought in – you can even have them posted to you if you find good suppliers over the internet and can easily be frozen and kept for when needed. Offering fruit salad – unless there is a big twist – is a vegan’s worst nightmare – it appears as the standard vegan option on so many menus.  Can some of the fruit be served warm or even fried? Will cinnamon, mint or even a dash of something alcoholic work for you?  Something small can make a huge difference to a vegan friendly dessert.

A clever restaurant we went to recently had their regular menu with everything on it – veggie, vegan and meat dishes. They had a veggie menu that had the veggie and vegan dishes and a vegan menu that had of course the vegan dishes. Very clever. So many of their clients would eat from the full menu and not even realize that they were enjoying a vegan friendly starter or main – they didn’t need too. The veggies and vegan travel from miles around and were very grateful to see their own menus.

Once you decide to stand out from the others and cater for us loyal customers put a sign in your window, flyers on the counter, contact the local media, maybe even work with some of the veggie and vegan local contacts and have an open evening for them. You must let people know that you are catering for their needs.

Karin Ridgers

Founder of VeggieVision TV www.VeggieVision.TV

For more information about Fry’s Vegetarian please look at www.frysdistribution.co.uk

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