If everyone was vegan would restaurants survive

[meepmoop]

I was reading about a protest at a steakhouse and wondered if everyone became vegan would many restaurants/eateries survive?

Obviously there are vegan restaurants but would there be enough variety to keep others going?

I'm not vegan myself or against it the thought just popped in my head

If everyone became vegan then restaurants would just change to selling vegan food, wouldn't they?

I would imagine so. You would just get Vegan Italian, vegan Indian, vegan Chinese etc.

I suppose they would but surely they couldn't all sell the same food, some would have to shut.

In my town there are Chinese restaurants, kfc, mc Donald's, pubs, steakhouse, fish restaurants. Would there be enough demand for all of them to convert. Surely only the best would keep going

If all their customers become vegan, then that's the same number of people going out to eat, they're just eating different food now. So there'd be the same level of demand for restaurants.

Another question is: if everyone ate as much meat as people in the West, would the human race survive?

Restaurants would be different, that's all.

Yes of course - they wouldn’t all sell the same food, there are more plants that meats! We’d have at least as much variety as we do now. I can’t think of many things that can’t be fairly easily converted in to a vegan meal. Even a steak a chips could be replaced with seitan, jackfruit, tofu, cauliflower etc.

I eat a plant based diet (code for "vegan but not a wanker") and if more people became vegan I'd be delighted!
The more restaurants serving great whole food options, creating really imaginative meals to satisfy the palate of the most hardened of meat eaters, the better!
I know, up until a couple months back I was a hardened meat eater.
I'm lucky that even on the tiny island I live on, there are a multitude of vegan restaurants and options.

Many meat eaters fear a "vegan" option because they think it's all tofu, broccoli, hairy armpits and throwing paint at fur coats.
But introduce someone to a whole food plant based option and they'll be eating "vegan" without even knowing it...

But there would still be a demand for all those stores you have listed if everyone was vegan, those places would still exist but vegan. Vegan not just one food item.

KFC - ok wouldnt be fried chicken, but fried other option like tofu with chips still , coleslaw and beans

Chinese - loads of options

macdonalds - would do vegan nuggets, with alternative food options in buns, with chips, and fizzy drinks

steakhouse - would stay with the concept of grilled food item, with sides.

pubs - they generally offer british classics. would do the same ie vegan cottage pie

bakeries would still exist, coffee shops already do many vegan milk options

ok a fish resaurant, that would go i presume. But yes, the same number of people would still be eating out.

@Nedzilla Perhaps fish restaurants would become chip restaurants. I often pop into a local fish place just to get chips and mushy peas!

Yes maybe. I think sit down proper seafood restaurants and fish would go. But your local fish and chip shop would just become battered anything else and chips, with like you say mussy peas, gherkins and whatever other things they have floating around in a jar

This thought is quite depressing - I've just booked Miller and Carter to stave off the meat craving

entire region of the world are vegetarian (maybe even vegan) and they work just fine, I think

I am not vegan but would welcome vegan restaurants, I love a good vegan salad, soup or curry

There is a vegan fish and chip shop in Bristol which does 'tofish' and chips, among other chip shop favourites but vegan versions. Even my fish loving partner said the battered tofish was delicious and if we lived closer to a place that sold it he'd have it every time instead of cod and chips.

There's also a lot of vegan fried 'chicken' places popping up, most notably Temple of Seitan which has a couple of places now in London, has rave reviews and is always packed, queues out the door.

In fact you can get vegan versions of pretty much everything these days including steaks ( I do 'steak' peppercorn sauce, home made chips and veg quite often at home as a treat, all vegan), burgers, kebabs etc.

We'd have exactly the same amount of variety. These times, they are a changin'.

place marking

I hate vegan versions of meat things. I'd hope they wouldn't make fake meat the default option for everyone. I haven't eaten meat for decades, and I'm all for plant based dishes. The only vegan restaurant I've ever been to didn't serve any main courses that weren't based on the idea of replacing meat and fish with something intended to look meaty. I've seen lots of menus like that; for example a traditional Mexican restaurant that has lots of delicious-looking vegetarian dishes featuring vegetables, lentils, beans, cheese and so on, yet the vegan Mexican takeaway a couple of streets away has a (to me) deeply depressing range of mock meaty items and nothing for the vegetable fan at all. Which to me implies reduced variety, not more of it.

but surely they couldn't all sell the same food

You're implying that there is only a small amount of non-meat/dairy food and so without meat/dairy, everything would be the same.

In reality, much more food is non-meat/dairy than is. So variety would not be an issue.

Mock meats in restaurants is certainly not the default option, when and where it's available is usually seen as different and rare. The demand is there for both mock meat based meals and meals focusing on experimenting with vegetables, the best known vegan restaurants concentrate on the latter, I was merely pointing out that there are those fish/steak alternatives out there so nothing need be missed.

I imagine they would do very well.
The vegan restaurants I've been to seem to charge more for meals in which the raw ingredients are much cheaper than meat based meals.

Well, of course restaurants would survive as the same number of people would be eating. It's factually incorrect to say there would be just as much choice because of course there would be no meat, fish, eggs or dairy, so while there might be broadly the same types of restaurant as there are now, there would be lots of popular dishes and foods that wouldn't be served. At the moment all those vegan alternatives are available in addition to the meat and dairy choices. I don't imagine most steakhouses would survive, though similar grill or barbecue type restaurants might emerge.

Steakhouse would change to Nuthouse.

You might argue more people would eat out as it's difficult and time consuming to create a gourmet vegan meal (am on 100% plant based diet myself and not the greatest of cooks). It takes minutes to fry a steak and whack a bit of salad on a plate, hey presto, "posh" dining at home. It takes longer to create the same out of seitan or tofu, so you'd be more likely to pay someone else to do it.

Never understood why vegans want some of their products to taste like meat... Chicken flavoured escalopes or something similar

I've never seen tofu flavoured beef, or egg plant flavoured bacon etc

You've really never understood that? I mean, it seems quite obvious. You wouldn't make tofu flavoured beef, because people who eat beef can also eat tofu.

But you might make beef flavoured tofu, because there are people who like the taste of beef, but don't want to eat animals.

You do realise that all kinds of food can be made vegan right? Vegan isn’t a cuisine. You can have vegan burgers, vegan Italian, vegan Chinese, vegan shushi etc