Thu, Feb-01-24, 01:30
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Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: UK
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Vegan restaurant starts serving meat in bid to keep afloat
Quote:
Vegan restaurant starts serving meat in bid to keep afloat
Nomas Gastrobar, in Macclesfield, Cheshire, said putting meat on the menu was the last option after a range of other efforts to keep its doors open
Plant-based restaurants are putting meat back on the menu as a growing number of Britons are turning off tofu and leaving behind the Veganuary trend.
In the latest sign that plant-based dining is in decline, a vegan restaurant in Cheshire has been forced to introduce meat options to prevent customers from walking out.
Adonis Norouznia, the owner of Nomas Gastrobar, said the restaurant had begun offering meat in order to attract more customers.
“I feed my family from this business; if I’m not making money ,what am I going to do? I would rather change something on my menu to be able to stay open,” Norouznia, who is vegan, said.
The restaurant is based in Macclesfield, Cheshire, where competition for customers is fierce with perhaps a dozen other cafés, pubs and restaurants located on the same street.
Norouznia estimated that by remaining a vegan restaurant he was appealing to just 5 per cent of his potential customers and he had seen diners walk out after noticing that he sold only plant-based food.
“If four people come in, maybe one of them is vegan and the other does not mind eating something vegan but the rest don’t want to eat something that is not meat and then they just walk out,” he said.
“We knew that was going to happen but we did not know that it would be such a high level.”
Norouznia said including meat on the menu was the “last option” after a range of other efforts to boost sales, including holding the prices of drinks the same for three years and offering discounts on food.
The restaurant’s other efforts to attract customers had not worked, Norouznia said. “For three years now we have been losing customers because it is vegan,” he said.
“When I’m exclusively vegan I’m only attracting a very small customer base. But those vegans are happy to go to other cafés because they all have vegan options.”
The restaurant will launch a new menu in the coming weeks with the majority of the food remaining plant-based but the big change will be the addition of a few meat options for customers to order.
“My ethics and beliefs on veganism are not going to change but the restaurant has to,” Norouznia said.
A growing number of vegan restaurants across the country have shut down in recent years. In Manchester, vegan restaurant V Rev closed in September 2022 after 12 years of trading , while in London meat-free Kalifornia Kitchen said it had shut its doors in January 2020.
Even star-studded vegan restaurants are at risk with Neat Burger, a plant-based burger chain backed by Sir Lewis Hamilton and Leonardo DiCaprio, announced the closure of four of its restaurants in November. Two branches of Clean Kitchen Club, vegan eateries co-founded by the Made in Chelsea star Verity Bowditch, were shut down in February last year.
“I am the third vegan restaurant that decided to put meat on the menu in this area — I am not the first,” Norouznia said.
Similarly, Mango Tree, a restaurant which opened offering plant-based food in Taunton, Somerset, announced that it had begun to offer meat options to attract more customers.
The boom in plant-based diets peaked in 2021 with around 10 per cent of Britons describing themselves as vegan or vegetarian. By 2023 this had dropped to just 7 per cent, according to YouGov polling.
Larger companies have also rolled back their plant-based alternatives. Last year, the coffee chain Pret a Manger announced that it had closed half of its vegan-only and vegetarian stores while the dairy-free brand Oatly discontinued its range of vegan ice cream.
In a similar move, Innocent Drinks removed its dairy-free smoothies from shelves and Nestlé announced that it had discontinued two of its vegan brands. Furthermore, VBites, a vegan food business which supplied plant-based products to McDonald’s, fell into administration in December amid declining demand.
Norouznia advised anyone who was hoping to open their own café or restaurant to “consider the current market and come up with a business plan”.
Britain’s hospitality sector has struggled in recent months, with bosses reporting rising costs and staff shortages.
Some café and restaurant owners in the area are considering closing down, according to Norouznia. He added that sales at his restaurant had declined by about 40 per cent compared with the same time last year.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...float-j20rlq52m
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