Why is it hard to find great plant-based food, and how to fix it!

In 2022 I joined HappyCow to make vegan food easier to find. I still remembered my first year as a vegan – eating vegan food that was sometimes great but sometimes really made me question my life choices. HappyCow was essential for me in identifying vegan options, but rarely did the top recommended places serve the best food.

I talked to the users and the community, and learned that this is a common experience. Also confirmed by Faunalytics study showing how most new vegans quit within the first year, often due to bad food experiences and general dissatisfaction.

But fantastic vegan food exists. I ate a lot of it, and now I can reliably find it almost anywhere I go.

I came to the conclusion that there are 3 main drivers behind this issue:

1. The Gratitude Effect
2. The Gatekeeping
3. The Needle in a Haystack

The Gratitude Effect is simply vegans saying "thank you for being vegan" with their 5 stars reviews. I am often one of them – because it just does not feel right to give anything less to someone who's on our team.

The Gatekeeping. This is a problem that HappyCow produces – by preventing Omnivore places from receiving 5 star reviews. This is supposed to protect purely vegan places from omnivore competition. Good in theory, but second order consequences are what's really hurting the market. In time the feedback loop breaks – the great vegan options get ignored, while mediocre ones in purely vegan places get rewarded.

The Needle in a Haystack. Essentially the problem of finding good vegan food via google maps. It works ok for 100% vegan places (except when hindered by 1.). For omnivore places it really requires a meta skill of knowing how to search. You have to read reviews to see which ones are actually about vegan options. A good example of that is Youmiko in Krakow, Poland. One of the best vegan sushis in the world. The place is rated 4.8, but so are 4 other top places with "vegan options", rated 4.9, 4.8, 4.7. But the difference is really night and day. Youmiko has one of a kind offering, full omakase with more than 20 different options (that I know of!). Some of the others don't even have vegan rolls on the menu – you have to customise them. And you get sad rice with avocado rolls.

Long term effects. I think the long term effects of this are that vegan food is not evolving fast enough. The mediocre food gets the praise, and some fantastic vegan options get ignored. It's hard to grow in a warm embrace of positive echo chamber. But then we see vegan places vanish, and we hear that vegan food is associated with lesser quality. We are also loosing a lot of new vegans, who have lower motivation.

The fix that I work on is basically doing the meta work I do for myself when I'm looking for good food, but do it at scale.

I've built a system that understands the signals for what they are: food quality, vs vegan-friendliness rating (like how many options, are there vegan proteins, is the staff friendly), vs vegan gratitude. It also understand what food it refers to, so it's easy to see what is the best vegan pizza in town, and what are the top rated dishes in each city.

I'd love to hear your take on this. Have you had similar experience, and does this sound like a good way to solve this?

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Full disclosure: In late 2024 I left HappyCow and I am building a product that solves this (https://spinach.guide ). I want to see if you're facing the same issues I am trying to solve!