Not so long ago, things were surprisingly simple in many restaurants: if you wanted to eat vegan, you got vegetables, salad or an improvised side dish. Today, the choice is broader. But that does not mean plant-based cooking feels like a natural part of the menu everywhere.
Sometimes the problem is not on the plate at all, but on the menu. A dish is announced in capital letters as “VEGAN”, pushed into a separate section, or described in a way that makes it sound like the sensible option for people who would really rather be eating something else.
But perhaps the more interesting question is: why should it be an alternative at all?
Restaurants do not need to become vegan. They need to learn how to integrate vegan dishes so well and so naturally that they appeal to as many guests as possible.
The relevant market has long extended beyond people who avoid animal products entirely. According to the German government’s 2025 Nutrition Report, 37 percent of respondents describe themselves as flexitarian, seven percent as vegetarian and two percent as vegan. The categories were surveyed separately and should be read that way. Still, they show that plant-based cooking is not aimed at a tiny niche. Plenty of people who eat meat are also cutting back or making different choices depending on the occasion.
The hospitality industry is noticing that shift too. In a ProVeg survey of 123 businesses in the out-of-home market, 77 percent expected demand for plant-based alternatives to rise. However, 82 percent of the participating businesses came from contract and institutional catering, so the results cannot simply be applied to every restaurant. They do, however, point in a clear direction.
Stefanie Heutling, Senior Specialist Food Services at ProVeg, sees the mainstream as the most relevant target group. Plant-based dishes that spark curiosity and taste good can appeal to far more people than vegan guests alone. At the same time, they can be an important door opener for groups with mixed diets.
That is something percentages alone do not always capture.
Four people eat everything, one is vegetarian and one is vegan. Where do they book? Usually somewhere that does not leave one person feeling as though they have been fobbed off with a side salad and fries.
Sometimes it is not the largest dietary group that determines which restaurant gets the booking, but the person with the fewest choices.
No longer a special case
The Naturhotel Forsthofgut in Leogang shows how naturally this kind of integration can work. Plant-based cooking is not treated as a separate solution alongside the real offering. It is part of the culinary concept and is developed with the same standards of product quality, seasonality, creativity and craftsmanship as the rest of the menu.
What matters most is the attitude behind it: the dietary label should help guests find their way around the menu, but it should not de fine the value of the dish.
This is where restaurants surprisingly often get plant-based food wrong.
A separate vegan menu may be well intentioned, but it can fail to reach exactly those people who might otherwise be open to choosing a plant-based dish. From her consulting work, Heutling describes this kind of separation as an avoidable communication mistake. An isolated section can easily be perceived as something akin to a diet menu and ignored by the broader range of guests.
Research points in the same direction. Studies on the naming of vegetarian and plant-based dishes suggest that strongly emphasising the dietary category does not automatically encourage more people to choose them. More recent research into menu design in casual and fine dining has also found that offering more plant-based options can reduce the selection of meat dishes, while visually highlighting plant-based choices does not necessarily make them more appealing.
That does not mean the word vegan should disappear.
People who eat vegan need to be able to see quickly and clearly which dishes are suitable. But information and sales appeal are two different things.
A small V, a leaf or another simple, recognisable symbol can provide that guidance. The rest of the description should simply make people hungry.
“Vegan mushroom dish” describes a dietary category.
“Crispy king oyster mushrooms with rosemary onions and hazelnut” describes something you might actually want to order.
The label provides orientation. The culinary description sells the dish.
Practical experience points in the same direction. At Einfach FiTZ, some plant-based options are not prominently labelled as vegan, but simply carry a discreet note saying “can be made vegan”. According to the business, these dishes tend to appeal to a broader range of guests when the dietary label is not turned into the main selling point.
Leaving out the meat is not a recipe
The next problem begins in the kitchen.
There are dishes where the vegan version looks like the original after a bad break-up: meat gone, cheese gone, sauce gone. What is left is vegetables and hope.
That is not product development. It is subtraction.
Heutling sees this mistake regularly. If an animal-based component is removed without considering a plant-based source of protein, the dish may not only feel incomplete in terms of flavour. It may also fail to satisfy.
I saw how much more interesting things become when chefs stop thinking in terms of substitutes altogether during a visit to Michelin-starred chef Peter Fankhauser in the Zillertal valley.
One dish on the menu had the simple name “Sunflower, bilberries, porcini”. First came the acidity of the berries, then the earthiness of the mushrooms, followed by the nuttiness of the sunflower. Petals, base and seeds all had a place on the plate. Nothing about it felt like a plant-based version of something that should really have contained meat.
Depth of flavour did not come from trying to imitate animal products either. Fankhauser works with fermented leek ash, for example. In his permaculture garden he even grows Käsekraut, a herb whose aroma is strikingly reminiscent of Camembert.
That is where plant-based cooking differs from simple substitution.
The interesting question is not: what can I use instead of butter, cheese or meat?
It is: which ingredients, flavours and techniques make this a good dish in its own right?
The answer might involve pulses, grains, mushrooms, nuts or seeds. Roasting, rich vegetable stocks, searing and fermentation can all build depth without an industrial substitute having to appear on every plate.
Not every kitchen needs to work like a Michelin-starred restaurant. What is transferable is the way of thinking: create a dish that stands on its own rather than a copy of something else.
And it still has to suit the restaurant. A traditional inn does not need a bowl just because bowls happen to be vegan. A fine-dining restaurant does not need a meat substitute simply because one exists.
The better question is:
Which plant-based dishes genuinely belong in our kitchen?
Vegan by nature
I found one possible answer in my own work. In a business I supported in developing plant-based dishes, the starting point was fairly typical: the team wanted to expand the offering, but had two concerns. One was the additional workload in the kitchen. The other was the regulars. Nobody wanted to give the impression that the business was suddenly changing its identity.
The solution was surprisingly simple. Instead of creating a separate set of vegan dishes, existing base recipes were reworked to be plant-based. On the menu, there was only a discreet note: *can be made vegan.
The change caused no noticeable reaction among regular guests. At the same time, the costing showed that in this particular case the plant-based recipes were cheaper and had a longer shelf life. What stayed with me most, though, was the reaction from the kitchen: “Why didn’t we think of this ourselves?”
I think the answer lies in exactly the kind of mental category this article is about. Vegan is often understood as an extra task rather than a different way of thinking about what is already there. Whether it really creates more work depends less on the dietary category than on how the kitchen is organised.
Of course, this does not work equally well everywhere. It tends to become more difficult when animal ingredients carry a large part of the flavour, as they often do in sauces and other key components. For kitchens that do not want to rely on products such as vegan butter, a high-quality alternative such as good olive oil can quickly alter the costing.
Often, the answer is not to buy more specialist products but to do more in-house and rely less on convenience. Many ready-made sauces and stocks contain animal ingredients, while a sauce made from scratch can quite naturally be plant-based. That still takes time and skill, and there is no single solution that works for every kitchen.
A more realistic approach is therefore not to convert the entire menu, but to start where it makes culinary and financial sense. Vegetables do not automatically need butter, and many basic ingredients are plant-based already. Look closely enough and almost every culinary tradition contains dishes and components that are vegan by nature.
Starting with a plant-based foundation
What developed in that business through practice is similar to what ProVeg describes as a modular approach: the base of a dish is plant-based, with meat or fish added if the guest wants it.
That turns the usual logic around.
Instead of taking a meat dish apart to accommodate different diets, the versatile plant-based foundation comes first.
For kitchens, that can make a lot of sense. It means less separate mise en place, fewer duplicate components and more ingredients that can be used across several dishes, while guests still retain their freedom of choice.
The World Resources Institute has also spent years looking at how food-service businesses can integrate more plant-rich dishes into existing concepts. Its work focuses not only on the products themselves, but also on menu design, appealing dish names and cooperation between kitchen and front of house.
At that point, plant-based cooking becomes less of a debate about diet and more a question of how a kitchen plans its foundations.
Does vegan cost more?
When it comes to food costs, two opposing assumptions persist.
One says that plant-based food is automatically cheaper.
The other says vegan food is expensive.
Both are too simplistic.
Pulses such as chickpeas and lentils, as well as grains, potatoes and rice, can be remarkably inexpensive staples. They store well, are versatile and can be used across several dishes.
The calculation can look very different when specialist alternative products enter the picture.
In ProVeg’s 2025 needs survey, food-service businesses were particularly critical of the prices and pack sizes of various plant-based alternatives. Only 17.2 percent of respondents were satisfied with the pricing of dairy alternatives, and just 14.8 percent with that of meat and sausage substitutes. More than half of the businesses surveyed wanted key product groups to be available in larger pack sizes.
Replacing every animal product one for one with a specialised substitute can therefore create an expensive parallel kitchen.
Working with plant-based staples and using components across several dishes produces a very different costing structure.
That does not mean, however, that a plant-based dish automatically has to be sold more cheaply.
Craftsmanship, product development, staff, energy and service do not suddenly cost less because there is no butter in the recipe.
At the same time, an automatic surcharge for plant milk, cheese alternatives or a vegan option can feel like a small penalty for choosing differently.
The price should reflect the product, quality and work involved, not the word vegan.
The best dish is useless if nobody can explain it
Plant-based cooking does not end at the pass.
Front-of-house staff need to know what is on the plate, which adjustments are possible and which ingredients have been used.
“Is this really vegan?”
“I think so.”
Sometimes that is all it takes to lose a guest’s trust.
At the Forsthofgut, plant-based dishes are not presented as substitutes or compromises in the dining room either. The hotel’s experience is that guests with mixed diets will also choose plant-based dishes when the food itself is convincing. That requires product knowledge and close cooperation between kitchen and service.
Language matters here too.
“That would be our vegan alternative” sounds like plan B.
A description of roasted flavours, acidity, creamy elements or crisp textures sounds like dinner.
If you want to sell pleasure, talk about pleasure.
The vegan corner at the breakfast buffet
The issue becomes particularly obvious in one hotel classic: the separate vegan section at the breakfast buffet.
It is usually well meant.
But it still sends a message: this is for a particular group.
People who might happily order a schnitzel at lunchtime still eat hummus, fruit, nut butter and plant-based spreads. Oat milk does not need to be hidden away with the specialist products for someone to try it.
ProVeg therefore recommends an integrated presentation with clear labelling at buffets too.
In a way, that is the entire article in miniature.
Plant-based cooking becomes normal when we stop constantly separating it, physically and linguistically, from everything else.
Visible without constantly shouting vegan
Still, the word vegan cannot disappear entirely.
The situation changes as soon as the guest leaves the restaurant and the search moves online.
Anyone who needs a particular diet to be taken into account will often check the website, menu, Google or relevant platforms beforehand. If it is not clear there that a restaurant offers plant-based dishes, the visit may never happen.
The apparent contradiction is actually quite easy to resolve:
Online, vegan has to be findable. On the menu, the dish has to sound appetising.
One is about being found. The other is about making people want to order.
Limited-time promotions can also be useful for making new dishes visible and testing them without immediately giving them a permanent place on the menu. But successful dishes should not disappear again after a few weeks simply because the promotion has ended. ProVeg points out that guests need time to discover a dish, order it again and build confidence in the offering.
New dishes do not need several permanent slots on the menu from day one. But if something works, a restaurant should be willing to make it part of the regular offering.
In the end, it is not about vegan
Perhaps this is the point at which the whole discussion can become a little more relaxed.
A restaurant does not have to change its identity in order to serve good plant-based food.
A traditional inn can remain a traditional inn. A family hotel does not have to become a vegan retreat. Fine dining does not need an ideological statement on the first page of the menu.
What businesses need are dishes that suit them, are sensibly costed and are taken just as seriously by kitchen and service as everything else.
Plant-based cooking becomes interesting when it does not taste like an obligation, but stands on its own and feels like a natural part of the restaurant.
And perhaps the most successful vegan cooking is not the kind where the guest is delighted to discover that the dish is vegan.
It is the kind where they first say:
“I’ll have that.”
And only afterwards realise there is nothing animal in it.
Sources and interviewees
For the professional context, this article draws on written responses from Stefanie Heutling, Senior Specialist Food Services at ProVeg. ProVeg has agreed to the use of her answers. Her comments are based, among other sources, on the German government’s 2025 Nutrition Report, the ProVeg 2025 needs survey, the 2026 ranking of German restaurant chains, and research by the World Resources Institute and Hielkema and Lund.
The information about Naturhotel Forsthofgut comes from a written interview conducted for this article. The hotel describes its plant-based cooking as an equal part of its culinary offering and particularly emphasises flavour, product knowledge and cooperation between kitchen and service.
The observations about Peter Fankhauser come from my visit to him in the Zillertal valley and the resulting portrait, A Garden Full of Flavour.
Current research on menu design in hospitality was also used to provide context on labelling and menu presentation.
