Be part of Roc Vegan Guide!
Do you want to provide options that your customers are looking for? The vegan market is growing nationally and here in Rochester, NY. We at Roc Vegan Guide would like to help you tap into the 36% of consumers who are looking for vegan options, by helping you create a vegan menu and then promoting it. Here are the facts:
- “Recent research suggests 36% of U.S. consumers either prefer milk alternatives or use meat alternatives, which is substantially more than those who claim to be vegan.” [http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Markets/Vegan-is-going-mainstream-trend-data-suggests]
- The “market for non-dairy products is skyrocketing; meat alternatives sales are expected to reach $5 Billion by 2020; and more than one third of consumers are open to plant-based products.” [http://latestvegannews.com/plant-based-food-named-top-trend-2016/#]
- “The past few years have seen the dairy alternative sector increasing its share of the overall market to now account for 20% of the industry up from barely 14% in 2010.” [http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/packaged-facts-dairy-alternative-segment-does-milk-market-good-300084953.html]
- “Thirty seven percent of the population always or sometimes eats vegetarian meals when eating out.” [http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/Polls/2016_adults_veg.htm]
- “The market for meat alternatives…is expected to grow at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 6.4% between 2015 and 2020.” [http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/meat-substitutes-market-979.html]
In addition, over a thousand people attended Rochester VegFest on September 16th, 2017, and over 1,500 attended in September 2018.
The evidence suggests that food businesses are wise to include plant-based options on their menu. To fail to do so is to miss a tremendous growth opportunity at little risk.
Roc Vegan Guide would like to help your business succeed in this effort. We began working with several restaurants in the summer of 2017 including Balsam Bagels and Sol Burrito. Both already had plant-based offerings, but they assembled them onto a vegan menu which we promoted to our audience: members of Rochester Area Vegan Society, Animal Rights Rochester, Rochester VegFest, and Rochester Vegan Facebook Group. In all, this represents well over two thousand people who are very interested in plant-based diets. Both menus were received enthusiastically in social media, and Balsam Bagels told us that their plant-based sales increased substantially after they put out their menu. Over a year later, they are still very happy.
How can we help?
We can:
- find items on your menu that are already vegan or are easily veganizable
- help you with ideas about what vegan menu items could be added
- create the menu image file. We’ll even photocopy it for you if you need us to.
- publicize your new vegan menu through Happy Cow and the above groups (websites, social media, and emails as applicable)
What we require:
- We are a vegan organization. The menu we publicize must be 100% vegan with no nonvegan options. This includes honey, whey, meat broth, gelatin, etc.
- We will be telling people to ask for the vegan menu when they come in. It should be available but can be a signboard, a photocopy kept behind the counter, or a partial page (or multiple pages) in an otherwise nonvegan menu. If people can ask for and see a list of only-vegan items, we are flexible about what it looks like.
How much does it cost? Nothing! This is a project of Rochester VegFest under Animal Rights Rochester and the Rochester Area Vegan Society, which are both nonprofit 501c3’s.
We want to help you!