Vegan diners and restaurant owners push for more inclusive menus
By: Easton Penner
Karly Troschuck could only eat two burgers out of 145 offered at this year’s Le Burger Week event.
Troschuk has been a part of the Vegan Winnipeg Facebook group since she began her vegan diet six years ago. The group has 1,100 members.
She said it’s hard to find restaurants that accommodate her diet in Winnipeg, especially during Le Burger Week.
“The vegan community is huge in this city,” said Troschuk. “I think it’s a major missed opportunity for restaurants to not accommodate us.”
Le Burger Week is a yearly event from Sept. 1 to 7 where restaurants in Manitoba create a limited time burger.
Two restaurants had vegan options and four spots offered a vegetarian burger this year.
“If there were more vegan options, we would be piling up and going to those places,” said Troschuk. “Veganism isn’t going away, it’s only getting bigger and bigger, and I’m sad places won’t give it a chance.”
Veganism is a diet of eating and drinking only plant based foods.
She said word of mouth in the vegan community travels fast, and places offering vegan alternatives draw in more customers because they can accommodate their diet.
Mark Turner, owner of Amsterdam Tea Room, wanted to have a vegan burger on his menu because he saw the lack of options for customers.
He and Garret Call, head chef, decided to have a vegan Portobello mushroom burger for this year’s Le Burger Week.
“We ended up selling out on Sunday,” Turner said. “We expected to do half of last year’s sales because ours was meatless, but we matched them.”
The restaurant sold 350 Portobello mushroom burgers on Sunday, Sept. 7.
Kevin Ramberran, owner of Dreamland Diner, was the second restaurant to have a vegan option.
“The whole idea was just trying to be able to open ourselves up to a market that is underserved,” said Ramberran. “We saw an influx of people coming to our restaurant because the option was there.”
Turner and Ramberran paid $350 to register their burger on the event’s site.
There were also $500 and $1,000 options for more marketing opportunities such as a collaborative post with the Le Burger Week Instagram page and professional photos of their burgers, which were both sold out.
Winnipeg has 31 restaurants serving vegan-friendly dishes, according to the Tourism Winnipeg website.
Good article. Surprising to know there are so few non meat options in today’s society.