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Owners of the Big Apple’s vegan restaurants are battling for survival as they face high costs and a shrinking customer base because of congestion pricing, Side Dish has learned.
Several popular haunts have shuttered, including Modern Love this month and Seasoned Vegan earlier this year. That followed last year’s closures of Greedi Vegan and Blossom, while Slutty Vegan shut down two of its three New York locations – despite substantial investment from Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer’s Enlightened Hospitality Investments.
“It’s very hard to operate a restaurant in New York and when you have a niche market like vegan, it just makes it 10 times harder,” said famed restaurateur and nightlife veteran Richie Romero, who shut down his popular Upper East Side vegan bakery, Innocent Yesterday, last year.
Romero and his fellow health-food advocates have had to find creative ways to expand their customer base – while battling post-pandemic inflation, tariffs, high rents and congestion pricing that are taking a bite out of the bottom line for both vegan and traditional restaurant owners alike.
He came up with a profit-sharing deal with a landlord in an “under-utilized” hotel space to help another vegan venture, Omakaseed, survive.
The restaurant operates its vegan omakase speed-eatery as a “ticketed experience in an under-utilized space” at the Sanctuary Hotel in Midtown from Wednesdays to Sundays.
“We found a way to make it work,” Romero told Side Dish.
Nat Milner, founder and CEO Of Plant Junkie, upended his business by relocating from Midtown, where the office lunch crowd has still not fully returned in an economically viable way, to the South Street Seaport.
A year-and-a-half into his new location at 226 Front St., Milner has found a loyal customer base of locals as well as tourists and others who trek downtown.
“If you are in Midtown, the lunch time crowd isn’t there anymore, unless you are a big fancy place like Capital Grille where deals get done. But if you are in Brooklyn, where people work from home, they can’t wait to get out of their apartments at 5 p.m. for happy hour,” Milner said.
Plant-based survival for many restaurateurs also depends on being welcoming to all and not preachy, said The Butcher’s Daughter’s CFO Sam Goldfinger.
“People are eating steak one night and a plant-based meal the next. It’s part of a healthy body-mind equation,” he told Side Dish. “We’re not trying to convert you to be vegetarian or vegan but to complement your life.
The Butcher’s Daughter has spots in Nolita and WIlliamsburg, as well as in California in West Hollywood and Venice. It is also planning to open in Austin, Texas.
“Congestion pricing and food costs and tariffs are affecting everyone — and people are going out less and spending less.” said Christophe Caron, who has owned Delice & Sarrasin in the West Village for 13 years.
Despite the many challenges, vegan restaurants continue to sprout in the Big Apple.
Reverie, at 135 Metropolitan Ave. in Williamsburg, recently opened, and serves savory dishes, plant-based desserts and signature cocktails from Beyond Sushi’s executive chef Guy Vaknin.
Brooklyn Roots Collective – an approximately 10,300 square-foot vegan food, cultural and music space in a former warehouse at 255 Randolph St. in East Williamsburg – is slated to open July 11.
It will be the largest space for plant-based restaurateurs, urban farmers, vintage sellers, sustainable artisans, educators and small businesses in the city, founder and CEO Jennifer Juliano said.
The space includes plant-based offerings from food trucks, pop-up restaurants and culinary classes in the kitchen.
Oko Farms is anchoring the space, teaching people how to start their urban gardens and more.
“Brooklyn Roots Collective was designed to help solve some of the factors forcing restaurants to close,” Juliano told Side Dish. “By creating a shared space that hosts multiple vegan food vendors alongside markets, events, and workshops, we’re making it more affordable and accessible for plant-based entrepreneurs to succeed.”
WE HEAR: The Pridwin Hotel & Cottages on Shelter Island is launching a Summer Mondays campaign to lure guests into extending their Hamptons getaway. From July 13 to Sept. 1, guests who stay the extra night will enjoy cruising on Fred’s Folly, the Pridwin’s boat, with lobster rolls and rose at sunset, or mimosas and scones for morning sunrise. They’ve also launched through Sept. 1 a pop-up with Onda, the celeb-fave Tribeca spa founded by Larissa Thomson, to bring their signature facials and products to the waterfront property.
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