Vegan Cuisine Month (February) is a great time for vegans to come together and to introduce others to vegan food and life. Throwing events with family, friends, or your community is a great way to show people that vegans are just like everyone else.
If you want to be a local vegan hero with a bigger event, we have some tips below to help you out. It’s okay if you don’t host the big event during February, but use Vegan Cuisine Month as a great reason to get local restaurants aware of the demand for vegan food and interested in a future BIG event.
Organizing a Vegan Event:
1. Contact restaurant, culinary school, or other venue* and find out options (size of group that can be accommodated, dates available, price, reservation deadline).
2. Provide information: American Vegan Society’s Catering Guide (includes vegan substitutions).
3. Work with the chefs to develop an acceptable and enticing vegan menu.
4. Add optional event features: live music, dancing, speaker, or documentary film.
5. Publicize the event and invite local media to attend.
6. Reservations may be taken by the restaurant or the host.
7. Enjoy the event!
8. Encourage the venue to utilize vegan options regularly, especially include vegan on the regular menu.
9. Send the story and photos to American Vegan and other media outlets.
10. Repeat the successful event.
*For cafeterias (schools, hospitals, nursing homes, etc.), adjust the above guidelines: you might not need to get prices and make reservations. You may want to emphasize creativity such as having chefs do a vegan cooking competition. Maybe invite a cookbook author to speak and feature recipes from the book.
Visit Vegan Cuisine Month for more information and inspiration such as
Six Tips for Negotiations with Restaurants or Easy Recipe Suggestions for a Diner or Restaurant and much more!
For those of you in Philadelphia or South Jersey, follow us on social media for our local February events: 5-Minute Cooking Demos on February 2 (American Vegan Center) and Valentine’s Dinner on February 15 at Careme’s (Academy of Culinary Arts, Mays Landing NJ).
