To feel that restaurants should provide more vegetarian options ?

[Lovelybangers]

Maybe to some people I am BU - but since quitting meat I have noticed that many menus have a very limited selection of non meat/fish options.

I was out this weekend for a family meal ( restaurant chosen by someone else) and the menu had 6 starters, 6 mains to choose from Only 2 starters were suitable and 1 main course.

I am certain that it can't be so difficult to add another choice - the main course option was very mushroomy - so if I didn't like mushrooms then I would have been going hungry.

DH was happy as he got to eat a big plate of roast beef - despite him being happy to share my veggie offerings at home.

I was just perusing a few local eateries' christmas menus -and many of them don't have ANY option for non flesh eaters.

I work on a food business with over 500 customers a day. 1/3 of menu is vegetarian yet only 7% of turnover is vegetarian food. I can see why it's not a priority to businesses.

yes another veggie here, I have found this to the extent that I don't really want to eat out anymore. Indian restaurants more often than not have the best options for veggies I've found

My own wedding was all veggie. About 90% of the guests were fine with this, and the rest are still grumbling about it years later.

For most people being vegetarian is a choice and there is usually something in the menu that you can eat even if the choice is very limited.
Try being allergic to wheat and dairy which isn't a choice and often there is nothing on the menu that you can safely eat.

I've moved to Vancouver from the UK and, although I'm not a vegetarian, I have been eating a lot less meat here because most restaurants seem so have several nice vegetarian options. It's a shame that UK menus are often so restrictive. Hard to tell if it's supply and demand in the UK when most places don't seem to make any real effort in the first place.

bugger - What I said was that of the top 10 meals I've ever had, 9 have been in restaurants that also serve meat. The category 'top 10' is naturally one that tends towards the elite. I'm not going to be shoving some rubbish options in there just for variety.

It's not that I expect every meal I have to taste like L'Enclume - I love a good curry, done really well. I love Mexican street food. I love a nice pie with cracking pastry. They're not 'fine' in the same way, but they're just as enjoyable.

I don't like anaemic British food with no imagination or invention, and I find that I am served that disproportionately often in restaurants where the only things on the menu are pork, beef and lamb. It says to me that the chef literally doesn't have the first clue outside of some very narrow limits. I went to a restaurant like that a few months ago and was served something called 'tastes of allium' which turned out to be a third of a leek that had been blowtorched, some pickled onions and (if I am recalling correctly) a spring onion salad. To say it was dreadful is an understatement.

If you can cook, you can cook vegetables as well as meat. End of.

And re. places that don't serve any vegetarians; you're not only losing those potential customers that are veggie, but those with a veggie in their group too. If you're doing well, great, but it seems odd not to offer at least one veggie option.

you're not only losing those potential customers that are veggie, but those with a veggie in their group too.

Indeed. When I eat out with my family, everyone but me eats meat but we still don't go to places with no good veggie options.

WyfOfBathe

I don't know what kind of cooks you have, but even I can cook an Indian meal

Excellent ones. The kind which know their limits. An av. main is around £40. There's a difference between "cooking an Indian meal" and making one worth that kind of figure. For the same reason it wouldn't be a variation 'out of the freezer', if you can't do something properly, don't pretend you can. You'll be judged on the worst dish served, in my experience and we don't want to be somewhere with an excellent reputation with a veg. afterthought.

The maximum table is 6. It isn't really a 'work do' kind of place. I've no doubt it loses some customers but it's nearly fully booked.

shovetheholly

"'tastes of allium'", if I remember, was what looked like an amazing dish on Great British Menu.

I don't pretend to be any kind of gastronome as you do. I'm a silent partner in a successful but fairly small restaurant. I explained why we don't have vegan dishes (and maybe a single veg. starter). Others have explained the issues too: "1/3 of menu is vegetarian yet only 7% of turnover is vegetarian food".

Shouting down the skills of the chefs isn't going to help you.

I'll maintain that like some other aspects of cooking (such as Indian: a great example)*, veggie food is niche, both in terms of being commercially viable as well as the staff required to produce the food.

*which is why there are Indian restaurants. It's a speciality that needs specialists.

I'm not a veggie but I agree with you OP. Veggie food done with a small amount of care and imagination can be so much better than so many meat dishes.

"1/3 of menu is vegetarian yet only 7% of turnover is vegetarian food".
This might be true, but a restaurant will also gain or lose turnover from non-vegetarians with vegetarians in their party, depending on whether or not they provide decent veggie food.

My mother and partner are both veggie so, even though I'm not, I can't remember the last time I went to a restaurant that did not cater adequately to vegetarians. Probably the same for all the other meat-eaters in my family.

I'm not shouting down the skills of chefs! I'm praising really good chefs (who are versatile and for whose craft I have the utmost respect) and dissing bad ones (i.e. the ones who served me raw charred leek).

Tastes of allium, as I'm sure you know, can just mean something onioney or garlicky done several ways. It's not a set dish or technique. I've had great onion dishes at great restaurants. This, I assure you, wasn't one of them.

As far as your restaurant is concerned, it's your business, your choice, your food. You can serve steak and smarties if you feel like it! I just suspect that without a veggie main or two, you may lose custom. As others have explained, you can't calculate the 'value' of offering one by the value of those sold because it's about bookings, not just covers. I regularly eat out with a bunch of 5 friends - so table of 6 - and I might be the only veggie, but the others won't go somewhere where I can't get a decent meal. So that's not one cover the restaurant is losing by not offering that, it's 6!

I'm sure it's possible to run a successful business with a massive reputation without offering vegetarian options, though. Maybe your meat is so good you are raking it in and don't need to bother! There are many ways of running a successful restaurant. It's a hard trade, though.

I feel like I'm really stressing the importance point, but it's just popped into my head that I'm going for a pre-Xmas meal with over 20 member since of my family next week. There's one veggie in our group so we won't go anywhere without a veggie option. That's potentially a lot of customers to lose for somewhere not affording a veggie option (that said, not many places don't offer any veggie mains).

Plus, more than 7% of the UK population is vegetarian/vegan (with another chunk who try not to eat much meat), so if only 7% of your orders are vegetarian it suggests you're not generally offering what they want to buy. Which is fine for you if you're doing well anyway, but you can't really use it as evidence vegetarians in general won't buy enough for the catering industry to be worth bothering with.

Plus, more than 7% of the UK population is vegetarian/vegan (with another chunk who try not to eat much meat), so if only 7% of your orders are vegetarian it suggests you're not generally offering what they want to buy.

No it doesn't! That would only be the case if vegetarians ate out at the same rate as meat eaters, which I doubt they do for a variety of reasons, including ethnicity
Anecdotally, there is a much higher prevalence of vegetarianism and veganism among my friends with eating disorders, and they are far less inclined to eat out, let alone at fancy restaurants

Actually only about 2% of the population is veggie and 1% vegan.

So taking the 2% that are veggie, if a restaurant doesn't offer veggie food, then if an individual is going for lunch on their own, there is a 1 in 50 chance that they'll have to avoid that restaurant.

If 2 people are going out together for food, then it's a 1 in 25 chance they'll have to avoid.

For a group of 4, it's about 1 in 6.

The bigger the group, the more likely it is that one individual will be a veggie and they'll have to swerve that restaurant.

We have just cancelled a big birthday family meal and chosen another restaurant for this very reason.

There will be two vegetarians and when I looked at the menu there was one veggie choice for starter and one for mains, garlic mushroom followed by mushroom risotto . This isn't a chain and is pretty expensive place. I told them why I was cancelling in the hope they get the message, though they sounded like they didn't give a shit[gein]

We're going to an Indian now which has numerous veggie options.

I do think restaurants will have to start providing more veggie options, I know so many people who eating less and less meat.

It's up to a restaurant to decide what they have on the menu. Your choice as a vegetarian is to refuse to go there because you don't like what they have decided upon.

Would you go to a Halal restaurant and complain there was nothing with bacon? Or for that matter, how would you feel if you went to a vegetarian restaurant and the person at the next table endlessly moaned that there was no meat on offer?

It's supply and demand. If there was demand for there to be more options for vegetarians, then restaurants would supply them.

12% of UK people now follow vegan or vegetarian diets: www.globalagriculture.org/whats-new/news/news/en/29809.html

That would only be the case if vegetarians ate out at the same rate as meat eaters, which I doubt they do for a variety of reasons, including ethnicity

From the anecdotal evidence of me and every other vegetarian/vegan I know, the lack of decent veggie options is the main reason for not eating out. Eating disorders, not so much of a factor!

shovetheholly

It's going into it's ninth year (opened in Nov '07). We've done well on the investment. My brother of course has done better drawing a salary etc.

We may well have lost custom but are near capacity most nights (not open for lunch Mon - Fri) so have made it up elsewhere.

It was you who had 'tastes of allium' in inverted commas.

It isn't about cooking veg as well as meat, it's about creating a complete dish without the fish or meat element.

Sybys

Selfish of that single person, isn't it!

You're right though, most places who will accommodate a group of 20 will have a veggie dish or two.

*Sybys

Selfish of that single person, isn't it!

You're right though, most places who will accommodate a group of 20 will have a veggie dish or two.*
I don't think it is selfish. It's not that rare a dietary restriction (1 in 50 people) and honestly I've only encountered a handful of restaurants in my life that don't offer a veggie option (I would assume less than 1 percent of restaurants in the UK), so finding somewhere that does (so that everyone in the group can eat there) is easy enough.

Well I agree with you OP. I'm not veggie, but I'm wheat-free so I'm always scrutinising menus and I often think how boring and restrictive they are if you don't eat meat/fish/dairy/gluten. There is often only one option available and it's often something really boring.

I was veggie for years during the era of fecking goat's cheese on everything. I hate goat cheese (it tastes like goat), so I'd ask 'Do you have anything veggie' and they'd say 'Yes, we have a love goat's cheese tart'. Bleurgh! And good luck to anyone who's a wheat-free veggie - there is never anything suitable. It's always either pasta or some pastry thing.

We may well have lost custom but are near capacity most nights (not open for lunch Mon - Fri) so have made it up elsewhere.
To be fair, if you are at capacity most nights, then you can afford to not be particularly inclusive of dietary restrictions, such as vegetarianism.

For a restaurant that wasn't doing such good business, not offering a veggie option would be a bit dumb.

I did go to a restaurant recently where the vegetarian option was a (very nice) fish based dish, with tofu instead of the fish. I'm not veggie but opted for the tofu and enjoyed it. I don't think it's absolutely necessary to build a whole meal from scratch.

It isn't juse a case of vegetarians though, people are eating less meat, restaurants who don't adapt to this are missing a trick and missing out on custom.

yanbu. I have similar issue with cafes. Where are the vegetables in general and not all kids want chicken nuggets. Its harder to find veggie food for kids.