If you identify as being vegan, then you can’t profit from animal cruelty. As vegan people, for us, it’s a no-brainer that we would have a cruelty free business. Obviously, you have to think about the business landscape too, and we did a lot of research into veganism and food trends…
The growth of vegan products worldwide has been steadily increasing and is set to rise further. This is due to a mass of medical research indicating the dangers of over-consuming meat and dairy products (such as Cancer, diabetes and heart disease according to Dr T. Colin Campbell in The China Study) and the health benefits of plant-strong diets.
This trend is also expected to continue since people under 36 years of age are three times more likely to be vegetarian or vegan, as reported in national newspapers. Whistler is a young demographic and has a thriving vegetarian community.
Health-based organisations are pushing to actually eliminate dairy from the new Canada Food Guide and drastically reduce the recommended amount of meat.
Not only this, but “reducing [your] environmental footprint, concern over animal welfare and the industrialization of agriculture” (Ibid.) are also important factors for people choosing plant-based diets.
In Canada, the most noticeable increase has been right here in British Columbia. “In British Columbia, just over 8.5 percent of respondents said they have vegetarian diets while just under 4 percent are vegans. British Columbians were three times more likely to have plant-based diets than Canadians in the Prairies or Atlantic region”. Even local coffee shop, Mount Currie Coffee, say they are asked for plant-based options every day.
Everybody eats plants. We wish to promote inclusiveness at the bread shop and attract all types of customer and do not put our ethical values on our packaging, or in people’s faces. We just display our policy on the menu with a simple strap line, “Everything is 100% plant-based”. The people who need to know find us. We “wow” people with our products before they even realise our offerings are vegan!
There’s an ever-increasing number of places that have opened up in Vancouver (and all around the world) that are vegan. Most restaurants now have vegan options, cafes everywhere are serving up milk substitutes, and celebrities are endorsing veganism. There’s so much media coverage for veganism that it just seems like it’s a ‘trend’ (perhaps the word ‘movement’ is better) that’s growing.
Whistler has a lot of athletic people that are connected to nature. They care about their health. They care about the environment: They want to eat healthily and plant-based is seen as healthy. We found that there was no other bakery in Whistler, or even the Sea to Sky Corridor that was plant-based. It was easy for us to open a vegan bakery. Hopefully, there will be more in the future – we would like to see a vegan future everywhere! If there every is another vegan bakery in the Sea to Sky Corridor then, we will be have been the first, the original vegan bakery.
