Encourage Restaurants to Add More Vegan Options to Their Menus

Restaurants across the country are tapping into the demand for vegetarian menu items by serving more cruelty-free foods. Major national chains like Burger King and Ruby Tuesday now have veggie burgers on their menus, and delicious faux meat dishes and other tasty vegan entrées are beginning to appear on other menus everywhere.

The next time you're in a restaurant that lacks animal-friendly choices, politely ask the manager if he or she would consider offering vegetarian foods. Be sure to mention why offering pure vegetarian or vegan foods is important: A vegan option is a good way to reach out to health-conscious diners, people with dairy allergies, or anyone with religious dietary restrictions. Also be sure to suggest VegCooking.com for recipes and tips on how to work with vegan products.

In Washington, D.C., local volunteers have worked with more that a dozen restaurants to add vegan items to their menus. Faux chicken sandwiches, spaghetti with soy meatballs, burritos with veggie-burger crumbles, faux chicken marsala, soft-serve vegan ice cream, soy cheese pizzas, veggie “chicken” teriyaki, veggie dogs, and burgers are just a few of the new vegan items seen on these menus!

If you know a restaurant that you think may be interested in increasing its vegetarian offerings, please send us an e-mail message with the name and contact information of the restaurant manager. Please remember to always be polite and friendly when speaking with restaurant managers (or anyone else, for that matter) about vegetarianism.

If you’re looking for delicious, healthy recipes, you should head to VegCooking.com, where you’ll find hundreds of tasty and humane dishes—there are options for every occasion!

Request Vegan Foods at the Grocery Store

Your local grocery store manager can’t read your mind—tell the manager that you want more humane options in the grocery aisles. Whether you want faux chicken nuggets or Tofutti Cuties, just ask! Check out some of the new cruelty-free products that you can ask your local grocery store to carry.

Everyone is switching to soy—if your local coffee shop doesn’t offer it, ask to speak with the manager. Mention that people are switching to soy milk because it’s good for human health, and it’s good for animals. Point out that even Starbucks promotes soy milk as a healthy, Earth-friendly, and delicious choice.

Do you have friends who still believe that cow’s milk is good for people? If so, your friends apparently haven’t heard about the studies that show a link between dairy products and breast cancer, prostate cancer, and diabetes. As if that weren’t bad enough, the dairy industry is notoriously cruel to the cows it exploits. Order “What’s Wrong With Dairy?” leaflets and distribute them to your friends and relatives. Find out why drinking soy milk is so much healthier than drinking cow’s milk.

Learn more about how Starbucks promotes soy milk.

Are you addicted to e-mail? Consider using this in your e-mail signature: “Receive a FREE vegetarian starter kit and a FREE DVD at VegetarianStarterKit.com.”

You can also display our “Free Vegetarian Starter Kit” banner on your Web site! To download the banner on your PC, just position your mouse over the image, right click on it, and select the “Save image as” option. On a Macintosh computer, position your mouse over the image, click and hold the image, and then select the “Save as” option. Please encourage all your friends to place this banner on their Web sites, too!

View all of PETA's vegetarian Web banners.

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