Simple Checklist: Is Your Restaurant Vegan Friendly?

Think for a moment about the reason you first entered the hospitality industry. Maybe you were a teenager hoping to earn some extra cash. Or maybe you were a home cook excited to turn your passion into a career. Maybe you grew up in a family-run business and dreamt of taking over the restaurant yourself one day. Whatever your reason, you were likely brought to the industry for personal reasons and soon realized that being in hospitality isn’t about you at all; rather, it’s about your guests. You can offer them anything you desire, but if your guests don’t want what you’re serving, you’re no longer in business.

Hospitality is defined as “the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers”. The more you work in hospitality, the more you learn to be of service. To use your time, energy, and expertise for the satisfaction, pleasure, and comfort of strangers. And in turn, these strangers entrust you with their money, their time, and in some cases -- the ones we’re going to focus on here -- with their values, their health, and their life.

Imagine you have worked throughout your career to create a welcoming, friendly experience for your guests, and then all of a sudden you start receiving negative feedback. It’s not that you’ve done anything wrong. It’s not that you’ve changed. It’s that your guests have changed. Their needs and requests have changed, and the foods and conversations that used to make them feel welcomed and comfortable are now different.

So what happened? The world’s food service customers are quickly changing, with the biggest culinary trend in 2018 and 2019 being vegan dining. Plant-based requests, along with a shift toward ethical and sustainable food sourcing and customizable, allergy-friendly meals are a recipe for disaster for restaurants and hotels that haven’t been able to respond quickly to their customers’ changing needs. Dining out in 2019 is not only a pleasurable and entertaining experience, but also an expression of the customer’s deepest values and health requirements.The same customers you were serving just a few years ago may be returning with new diet preferences and feel disappointed that your restaurant can no longer serve them.

The best step you can take to ensure that your business can serve any guest is to make sure your business is vegan friendly. Vegan dining options satisfy all modern guests: Vegans, vegetarians, those with the major food allergies (lactose/dairy, meat, and seafood), reducitarians, flexitarians as well as returning guests who are excited to try something new. When I work with my clients, I help them prepare for gluten-free guests as well by developing menus with plenty of (or entirely) gluten free options. Once you’ve got this covered, you can confidently serve any guest!

How do you know if your business is vegan friendly? I’ve created this handy checklist for you!

You may be thinking, what if my chef can make vegan options but they’re not on the menu? Ask yourself, why aren’t these options on the menu? It is more efficient to have the products in stock and have the process streamlined. What message does this send to guests when they look at a menu that doesn’t include them? When they need to order menu items “without” this or that? How will guests find you if they look at your menu online and see nothing for them? And how will your servers confidently explain ingredients to guests with allergies when the vegan option is always a surprise based on the chef’s interests and product availability? How will it feel as the one vegan at the table when their family orders chocolate cake from a dessert menu of several decadent options, and they are stuck eating fruit?

If your business is a hotel, consider a step further: Is your non-F&B staff knowledgeable about the vegan lifestyle and vegan options your restaurants offer? Will they send guests to your in-house restaurants or refer restaurants outside of the hotel? Will they know how to discern the different needs of vegan, vegetarian, and gluten free guests?

It’s certainly a big job for managers and chefs to bring their staff into the new era of sustainable and allergy-friendly guest services. That’s why I’ve created training and certification programs to help you get there, so that you don’t have to do it alone. I make sure my clients check off ALL of the boxes so they don’t need to think twice about whether they are truly living up to the hospitality standard of being friendly toward every guest that walks through their door. Vegan guests may be strangers to you now, but sooner or later they’ll come knocking on your door, and you’ll want to be ready to answer with open arms.