Dining Alliance, the USA’s largest group purchasing organization for restaurants, has released new data related to sales of meat alternatives in the restaurant industry, comparing present data to that of 2017 and 2018. The surprising results reveal that sales of meat alternatives rose by 21.66% from 2017 to 2018, then by an incredible 268% between 2018 and 2019.
Since the beginning of this year, which the Economist had already termed the Year of the Vegan by January, the number of restaurant chains around the world launching vegan options on their menus has been continually rising on a trajectory the likes of which have not been seen before. At this point, the vegan trend can no longer be seen as a trend. It’s a movement, a quickly developing one at that, and one which no business has been able to ignore.
According to the Dining Alliance data, the number of restaurants serving some kind of meat alternative jumped 26.4% from 2017 to 2019. Another interesting figure is that 50% of all meat alternatives purchased this year have been “veggie burgers with some kind of bean in it (Spicy Black Bean Veggie Burger, Chipotle Black Bean Burger, etc.) it’s a growing category and one that restaurants should look to take advantage of.”
