many such cases
Always grinds my gears that there’s no discount for asking no meat when that’s generally the most expensive ingredient.
Friend works as a chef and explained that they started having salads and other vegan meals at appropriate prices but people rarely ordered them. They actually overheard people say things in the line of “it can’t be good if it’s that cheap”. After raising prices people ordered way more.
Thats fucking depressing
Some chain restaurants seem to adopt some sort of “slight discount for the vegan option” variable, I assume due to this, which I’m sure they make even more margins on than the meat versions if only because a lot of vegan substitute meat keeps a lot better than it’s meat-meat counterparts and you have less write-off to compensate for.
I think for anything non-chain it’s mostly small business tyrant ideology where they either add a sin tax to vegan food because they’re mad as fuck at having to do it to stay in business or, and I think this is the majority of them, all price and cost calculations are entirely vibes based anyhow and since we all know vegan is expensive, surcharge it is. I base this entirely on the fact that whenever you find vegan food that isn’t purposefully vegan, because the dish just is, they never charge extra and this translates across all cuisines I’ve ever tried in a gastro establishment.
Small carveout here for people who realize vegans are shit-outta-luck some places and then charge extra, which I think is shitty, but at least makes economical sense. Feels more honest.
On the other hand, sometimes I stumble across a vegan option at a restaurant I would never expect to have them and they seem to take some sort of “we keep some packets of vegan protein in the freezer and whenever somebody actually orders this we just dump the whole package in” approach which leads to things like getting 25 falafels on your bowl.
Yeah the ones that stick out in my mind are the items listed as veggie but they do wild things like putting broccoli and cauliflower in the burrito, like they’re either openly antagonistic or gave it so little thought they just spend 5 seconds thinking “What do these people enjoy? Yeah just grab whatever is green idk and then charge them .50 cents less.”
No I don’t want a cauliflower beet quinoa burrito, just give me the same shit you make for all the carnists but with beans or seitan or smth instead of the animal products c’mon. There are 50 billion substitutes that would actually taste good and aren’t randomly selected vegetables
Guess it’s one of the hazards inherent in eating at “white people taco” places. I’m actually jealous that they charge you less wherever you are, vegan or general veg options are often the same price or more expensive here…
I’m guessing regional difference here, never had that. Every time an item was clearly “what do those dang vegans like!?” it was bean sprouts with imported quinoa salad coupled with a sourdough rye bread made in a kiln that has my grandmas ashes in it with avocado on top for 3x the price of anything else when all I wanted is the slop trough of of ketchup, fries and meat everybody else is getting except replace that one bratwurst you throw in there with a vegan option you make in the same deep fryer
I knew one person who justified additional cost for vegan options because the volume of sales was relatively low but he felt it added a bunch of complexity because he made efforts in the back of house to respect that vegan options stayed “sterile” (separate vegan cookware, one fryer solely for vegan options, etc)
I dunno how realistic that is on impact of bottom line but I did appreciate that he did that. I think vibes based is the right thing to call it, I’m sure he didn’t run an analysis of the cost of having all fryers universal vs decreased stock costs. Of course lacking creativity and loading your “vegan” options with expensive shit like impossible and beyond that costs more than meat doesn’t help (and is also technically not vegan even if it is labeled as such because it relied on animal testing to quickly get soy leghemoglobin approved for human consumption)
I know it’s pretty nitpicky but I’m sure a lot of restaurants that serve cauliflower “wings” just throw them in the same fryer as the chicken wings. then people make them at home and wonder why they don’t taste the same? Because you didn’t fry them in oil flavored with chicken fat
I’m much more inclined to believe a bunch of added labour and complexity contributes to the price of food compared to cheaper ingredients that last longer. Also when I’m talking vibe based that person’d be far ahead of the course here, most of the restaurant owners I’m aware of literally just feel their way into it. I mean I’d still rather just have “plant based” meals like Burger King does instead of true vegan and a surcharge but it’s hard to fault them for it.
I know it’s pretty nitpicky but I’m sure a lot of restaurants that serve cauliflower “wings” just throw them in the same fryer as the chicken wings. then people make them at home and wonder why they don’t taste the same? Because you didn’t fry them in oil flavored with chicken fat
I’d wager a guess it’s less this and more, like with everything else, the amount of fat and salt they put in there you’d feel uncomfortable doing at home, looking at yourself pouring 300ml of straight oil into the marinade and then adding 2 tablespoons of salt. If you ever made restaurant style food at home it really takes the fun out of it as you are painfully aware every bite is like at least half a teaspoon of fat. Tastes great tho.
The vegan hotdogs at IKEA (at least in Spain) are about half the price of the meat ones, feels good
But you can’t get enough protein without meat! It’s literally impossible. B12 tho.
Listen here, buddy, I’m not talking daily B12 pills like some sort of sickly person or drug addict. No Sir! I demand the animals I eat take them
Has anyone else noticed a weird uptick in people claiming to have a “carnivore” diet? I’d only read about it online before but now I’ve had two people tell me they’ve switched over to it.
actually terrifying, my dad gets all his nutrition advice from YouTube and has severe heart issues. Luckily I got through to him and now he brags about making vegan meals (still working on this, he sometimes forgets dairy isn’t vegan…) and asks about tofu.
Small victory at least. The way I see it, even if he is just doing it for health reasons that’s less climate impact and less animals dying. But there’s loads of influencers peddling this carnivore shit despite terrible health outcomes (to say nothing of all the other ethical issues)
