On a busy Saturday morning inside Plant City food hall in Providence, owner Kimberley Anderson found time to strike up conversations with customers who caught her eye. A couple with a tiny baby, an older man with dark sunglasses, another couple she discovered are from Portland, Maine.
She asked what brought them and offered suggestions and generous samples.
Many customers don’t consistently adhere to plant-based diets but come out of curiosity about the meat- and dairy-free menu, on friends’ recommendations or in search of healthier food options, she says.
Anderson didn’t know what to expect when she opened in June.
“Any business is a risk,” she said, “but we’ve been just overwhelmed at the response.”
Plant City is a vegan hub, teeming with both products and customers, where guests can order coffee drinks, customize lunch bowls, grab sandwiches to go or sit down to an animal-product-free Mexican or Italian meal.
It has been called the world’s first plant-based food hall by Anderson and many others, and it is a celebrated headliner in a city where plant-based roots already run deep.
Eateries such as The Grange, Garden Grille and Like No Udder have maintained a loyal clientele for nearly a decade or more. Now, with the arrival of Plant City, along with last month’s Vegan Restaurant Week and the upcoming RI VegFest early next year, Providence is also bolstering its reputation as a foodie magnet by nurturing meatless eateries, city officials say.
“Certainly this growing interest in plant-based foods is bringing in a whole new set of visitors,” said Stephanie Fortunato, director of the Providence Department of Art, Culture and Tourism.
Based on the growing number of vegetarian and vegan options, Fortunato predicts that tourism specialists will sense an opportunity to cater to people who travel to the Capital City to eat.
“This trend reflects an interest in getting out and exploring many different areas of the city where you can find plant-based offerings,” she said. “As there are more and more options, I can see really curated itineraries being created around this.”
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DIGGING IN: Garden Grille on East Avenue in Pawtucket is a vegan and vegetarian restaurant. Owner Rob Yaffe, left, samples some veggie dishes with Jim Nellis, founder of social media platform RI Food Fights, which hosts a series of fun, friendly competitions between restaurants. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
WHETTING APPETITES
While there is clear growth in what used to be a niche market, long-established businesses are influencing other restaurants by demonstrating that the demand for such food is real.
Will more eateries dedicated to vegetarian or vegan fare pop up in Rhode Island? Many expect so, but also pinpoint another source of change.
“I see growth, but not necessarily with as many new [restaurants],” said Rob Yaffe, who owns The Grange, Garden Grille and Wildflour Bakery with his wife, Uschi Yaffe. “I think the growth is going to come with restaurants that are existing, by evolving their menus to be more plant-based.”
Rhode Island mirrors much of the rest of the country when it comes to residents viewing plant-based foods in a new light, as public opinion evolves about the meat industry’s impact on climate change. Add to that a growing number of “flexitarians,” or people who eat meat occasionally, and a number of those in the restaurant industry say the time is right to be serving food free of animal ingredients.
“What’s new is more the receptivity,” Anderson said. “People will come to a new place and then they’ll love the food and tell their friends.”
Events such as the recent Vegan Restaurant Week, a first for Rhode Island, are also helping to push more plant-based food onto plates at restaurants where meat is a menu staple.
“I would have been happy if no vegan or vegetarian places had participated [in Vegan Restaurant Week],” said Chris Belanger, the event’s organizer. “Ultimately this was about giving the vegan and vegetarian community more options, but also to show the nonvegan community that there’s a demand for innovative dishes.”
RI VegFest, another inaugural event set for February at the WaterFire Arts Center in Providence, also aims for wide appeal.
Ideally, the daylong spotlight on vegan businesses in Rhode Island will catalyze interest and awareness about plant-based eating and lifestyles for those who are not already vegan or vegetarian, said Jim Nellis, one of the event’s organizers.
Vegan food, clothes and books are among the items that businesses plan to offer visitors at the event.
“The biggest benefit to plant-based businesses is not going to be by preaching to the choir, but by getting their brands in front of a larger audience,” he said. “If I’m interested in [a plant-based lifestyle] as a nonvegetarian, then I’m guessing there are going to be a whole lot more people interested in it as well. … I’m hoping to bring the plant-based concept to people who are aware of it but haven’t indulged it.”
Nellis, who is also the founder of the social media-based marketing platform RI Food Fights, and co-organizer Robin Dionne hope to attract about 80 businesses and upward of 1,000 attendees.
The Providence-based Vegan Restaurant Week wound up with a list of more than 30 restaurants, extending south to Narragansett and north into Attleboro. The lineup even included a few surprises, such as Pizzeria Uno, a chain not necessarily known for vegetarian fare.
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VEGAN VENTURE: Chris Belanger, left, and Karen Krinsky are the owners of Like No Udder, a vegan ice cream shop in Providence. The venture began as a vegan ice cream food truck before expanding to add the shop. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
Several participants added vegan dishes created for the week to their permanent menus, said Belanger, who operates Like No Udder, a vegan ice cream truck and shop in Providence, along with his wife, Karen Krinsky.
“I told the restaurants this was your time to shine, and they took that to heart,” said Belanger, who is already thinking about improvements for next year’s event.
Vegan Restaurant Week pulled in new customers and sparked sales increases for a number of participants, Belanger said.
During the week, the sale of vegan items at Rebelle Artisan Bagels LLC in Providence was 16% higher than other food, and a significant number of new customers said they were vegan, Rebelle reported.
Menu changes resulted, and now the bagel shop said the number of regular vegan customers has increased five-fold in recent weeks. That’s compared with early 2018, when about 2% of its sales were vegan.
Demand for plant-based food, as well as responsible practices such as use of local produce and ingredients, is palpable in the tourism, meeting and convention industries in Rhode Island, many say.
Travel aimed at supplementing healthy lifestyles is gaining strength, and the Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau is using plant-based growth in the restaurant industry to offer experiences that appeal to a growing number of visitors.
“We’re on this trajectory of being able to offer more choices in terms of restaurant offerings,” said PWCVB CEO and President Kristen Adamo. “I think most restaurants already do a really good job of locally sourcing ingredients, and this is almost the next step.”
Adamo added that wellness tourism, or travel focused on the well-being of the traveler along with the natural environment, is “one of the hottest segments of the tourism industry. It’s a broad umbrella term … part of that is the maintaining of a healthy lifestyle. It all goes back to a sense of mindfulness.”
As tourism continues to gravitate toward niche markets, vegan and vegetarian eateries in Providence may well be the base for future marketing plans to draw in more groups that are seeking meatless fare, Adamo added.
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Customers fill the seats in the Make Out dining area on Plant City’s first floor. / PBN PHOTOS/MIKE SKORSKI[/caption]
FEEDING DEMAND
Plant City’s ambitious model and innovative recipes by chef Matthew Kenney have caught the notice of Style Blueprint, Food Business News, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, among others.
Its 13,000-square-foot building, once the site of a steakhouse and nightclub on South Water Street, is now home to two levels of vegan dining options. Sit-down restaurants Bar Verde and Double Zero are upstairs, and the market, coffee bar and Make Out, a build-your-own-bowl station, occupy the first floor.
Speakers and programs touting the benefits of plant-based eating are hosted in the basement.
About 13,000 people poured into Plant City in the first few weeks, Anderson said. Six months later, weekends still see 1,000 or more customers, she said.
“We’ve served 200,000 [people] in our first five months,” Anderson said.
Staffed with 90 workers when it opened in June, employment has risen to more than 200. Business is so good that Anderson created a 4,000-foot annex next door to house bakery and catering operations along with an event space.
Plant City has even drawn Rhode Islanders who don’t often make the drive to Providence.
“I live in Narragansett. I don’t go north of the tower,” said customer Sharon Pavignano in reference to the walkup wooden tower at Route 1 and Route 138 in South Kingstown. “But I’ve been here twice in a week.”
Pavignano recently brought her friend Ellen Borden, of Westerly. Both women said they do eat meat but are considering making the jump to a plant-based diet.
The two friends are the type of visitors who excite Anderson.
“I’d love to educate as many people as possible that you can eat this way, and it can be beautiful and fun,” she said.
ROOTS RUN DEEP
Embracing plant-based menu options has proven to be a good business decision for restaurants across the country.
Beyond Meat sausage sandwiches arrived at Dunkin’ in Rhode Island last month after a rollout in New York City exceeded expectations, speeding up the national launch by two months.
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Garden Grille on East Avenue in Pawtucket. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
Impossible Burgers sold so well in a monthlong test at Burger King that the fast-food chain added the faux-meat Impossible Whopper to its menus nationwide in August. And Taco Bell has a number of items on the menu that it labels as certified vegetarian.
According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2019 State of the Industry report, plant-based or vegetable-forward dishes are a top culinary and restaurant trend.
But in Providence, plant-based menus have been on the table for years.
Yaffe, of The Grange, ran The Golden Sheaf Natural Food Market in Providence until 1990. The business was started by his mother in 1971 and was a landmark on North Main Street, until Yaffe moved it to Wickenden Street and added a café and juice bar.
The market was eventually squeezed out by larger stores, such as the emerging Whole Foods, but six years later Yaffe opened the Garden Grille, a vegetarian restaurant.
He and his wife opened the vegan Wildflour Bakery in 2010 in Pawtucket and added The Grange, another vegetarian restaurant, next door to the bakery in 2013.
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COLD TREAT: Pictured is a triple-scoop bowl of Tai iced tea, Rocky Rhode, and mint chocolate chip ice creams with salted caramel sauce from Like No Udder, a vegan ice cream shop in Providence. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
Krinsky created what she calls a worldwide first with the Like No Udder vegan ice cream truck in 2010 and opened a shop by the same name four years ago. She’d made her debut into the vegan food industry about 15 years ago by opening The Screaming Vegan, a baking business in Providence that eventually closed.
To Yaffe, the surging interest in meatless options appears at least partly media-driven.
“Today, the core is still there and there’s a very loyal base, but now we’re getting this larger mass-market attention on something that’s actually very old and that’s been here for decades,” he said.“It’s what we’ve been doing for 47 years. There are places that open up that are riding the wave of a trend, and that’s different from what we do.”
Still, Krinsky predicted, the move toward plant-based food is not going to lose much momentum.
“It’s definitely a call to action for places that have been resistant to researching [plant-based] products that they can offer,” she said. “They can’t deny that they’re going to be losing money and losing customers if they don’t offer vegetarian or vegan options.”
VARIED TASTES
The Ocean State also falls in line with much of the rest of the country when it comes to metropolitan tastes versus what many people eat outside of urban areas.
Brian Casey, owner of pub-style restaurant Oak Hill Tavern in North Kingstown and Company Picnic Co., a catering company, said that while black-bean burgers, portobello wraps and a portobello salad are on his menu, vegan food makes up only about 1% of his sales.
“In this day and age, you cannot have a menu without having at least a few vegan items,” said Casey, who is slated to become chairman of the National Restaurant Association by 2021. “When you get a group of 10, there’s usually going to be one vegan.”
Many eateries owned by the Newport Restaurant Group, which has nine locations in Rhode Island and three in neighboring states, also find that plant-based dishes aren’t top sellers, said Casey Riley, the group’s chief operating officer.
Member restaurants in areas frequented by tourists often find that customers tend to favor meat and fish dishes, but Riley does acknowledge a trend toward other options.
“We definitely pay a lot more attention to our vegetarian dishes than we did 20 years ago,” said Riley.
Elizabeth Graham is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Graham@PBN.com.
