Suitable for vegetarians? Guide to making a plant based profit.
Michelin starred chef, John Wood, offers his advice for making your menu suitable for vegetarians, vegans and other specialised diets. He also investigates the growth of the the vegan and vegetarian market and how F+B businesses can offer transparency, without being buried in admin at a time when resources are more stretched than ever before….
A growing desire for plant-based food has brought with it an opportunity for operators to capitalise on a new revenue stream, to be creative in their ‘free-from’ offering and to appeal to a wider customer base. However, this desire is coupled with a consumer requirement for information; customers want choice and quality, but they also want reassurance and transparency about the food that they are eating, and what it contains.
According to recent research, vegans and vegetarians look set to make up a quarter of the British population by 2025, and just under half of all UK consumers will be flexitarians. With close to half of all vegans between the ages of 15 and 34, this growth is likely to continue for many years to come. Vegan and vegetarian food is big business and in the current climate, it’s a revenue stream that we should be cultivating.
Suitable for vegetarians or vegans or lacto-ovo vegetarians? One size doesn’t fit all.
Not everyone sits neatly in either the vegan, vegetarian or meat eater profile. Therefore, it’s important that your menus aren’t just suitable for vegetarians. There are a range of dietary requirements that the hospitality industry needs to be aware of in order to satisfy customer demand and generate increased profits. By making the information you provide to customers as transparent as possible, they can be confident and reassured that what they are eating fits with their requirements, whether based on provenance, sustainability, ethics, health or nutrition.
- Vegans – do not eat any animal or animal produced products, which includes eggs, dairy, honey, beeswax or gelatin.
- Lacto Vegetarians – do not eat any meat, fish, fowl or eggs, however they do eat dairy products, such as milk. Cream, butter and cheese.
- Ovo Vegetarians – do not eat any meat, fish or fowl, however they do eat eggs
- Lacto-ovo vegetarians – do not consume red meat, white meat, fish or fowl. However, lacto-ovo vegetarians do consume dairy products and egg products. This is the most common type of vegetarian.
- Pescatarians – restrict their meat consumption to fish only.
- Pollotarians – restrict their meat consumption to poultry and fowl ONLY.
- Flexitarians – predominantly eat a plant-based diet but occasionally eat meat, poultry and fish.
Striking the balance
The key things to consider when looking at your menu offering are:
- Balance: Offer between 10-20% meat free vegan and/or vegetarian dishes.
- Creativity: looking at different cuisine types, spices and alternative products such as pulses and grains to make dishes more interesting.
- Variety: offering a selection of dishes for people to choose from with different textures and elements to them.
- Flavour: packing these dishes full of flavour as customers will not tolerate a bland vegetable cutlet or some boiled vegetables with new potatoes anymore!
- Flexibility: offer your customers flexibility by removing particular items (dairy or gluten-based products) from some of your dish selection.
Providing transparency, efficiency and accuracy.
With time and cashflow a huge challenge, the most effective way to keep track of your recipes and to manage your profit margins is through technology. Post lockdown, with restrictions on cover, serving hours and a skeleton staff, your resources are likely to be stretched to capacity. Manually updating menus and recipes will not only take valuable time, but could also be prone to human error. Even with the best intentions, a change in supplier or swapping an ingredient can make it all too easy for a vegan item to contain a trace of animal product.
Ingredient tracking from supplier to menu
In order for information to be completely accurate, the chain of ingredient information should start with the supplier. Back of house technology allows these ingredients to be available in your recipe management system – your chefs can be as creative as they like in the confidence that recipe contents are traced all the way from ingredient level through to every sub recipe, dish and menu you create. Everything is tracked accurately and automatically updated for you.
Digital Menus
The same software also automatically creates easy-to-view allergen tables and embeddable menus in your website so that customers can browse and filter to see which dishes they can eat based on their preferences/allergies. Giving customers and staff this information to view gives provides that you are diligent in your management of ingredients. Knowing that you use accurate, efficient software to manage your vegetarian and vegan offering also builds confidence that the information is live and up to date and not an out-dated printout from a few weeks ago.
Customers can access the menus via website, QR code or link on social media and can then filter dishes, based on their dietary preference for complete transparency at all times. As dishes and ingredients change, so too does the menu, so there’s no risk of a client ordering from an out of date menu with incorrect information.
Suitable for vegetarians, vegans and other dietary requirements.
Kitchen CUT has the functionality to easily and quickly label recipes and menu items clearly when they are suitable for Vegan or Vegetarian customers. This ensures that both back and front of house teams as well as customers, have quick and easy access to dish information.
Find out more
Find out more about Kitchen CUT or get a free online demo. Email sales@kitchencut.com or call +44 (0) 330 113 0050
You can register for a free trial here.