I emailed Waitrose to complain about their lack of bakery goods in the cafe when they do in fact have plenty of vegan options on the shelf for example, hot cross buns and vegan croissants and anything else that is accidentally vegan.
I got a response today saying that they do realise that the options for vegans are very limited and that you are free to buy anything off of the shelf and have it with a coffee in the cafe and staff are told to offer this as an option. They said it’s all due to lack of space and very strict and separate production areas being required.
Anyway I just thought I’d pass it on in case anyone is interested and I would imagine this would apply to other supermarkets as well.
When I am out and about I often ask for a vegan cake or option when I know there obviously isn’t one and even if I don’t even want it as I think it’s what helps to keep it in retailer minds that they need to cater for vegans.
Enjoy your day!
Ali 🙂🌱
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Agoodenough
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Great Job Ali, it is a great Idea to ask for Vegan food/cakes, if they think there is a market I am sure they will find some space especially with the markup that can be applied.
I wonder if you purchased a pack of there vegan croissants and started eating them in the cafe if you would get told off, I can see some jobsworth storming over : >
Thanks Debs....No I think it would be fine. They seem to realise that they are not catering well for vegans and for some reason can’t meet the legal requirements of segregation so this is their way around it. Staff are apparently told to offer a vegan item off the shelf and to be fair that did happen when I asked last time. Remember the other day I said to you our local tea room (which is attached to a farm shop) no longer does vegan cakes but they used to. I said to them it was really bad and the owner said there was no problem from buying one of the vegan options from their farm shop and eating it there so maybe this is the new thing? I think it’s quite interesting.
Well done Ali. It took Waitrose ages to catch up with other supermarkets offering vegan options on the shelf. I got fed up writing and phoning them. Good to know
Too right. I said in my email to them that it’s quite embarrassing for them as a store to go to great lengths in the media with advertising etc to say they have a vegan Aisle (albeit a bit small) and then to offer nothing in the coffee shop!
Bless you for being proactive/ persistent. 😌 Thank you. 🙏
The more (& more) customers politely request a service, the more the frontline sellers will get these persistent requests back to management (‘decision makers’). 👍👍
[Management is in business to ‘make money’ (& they want to keep making money) by providing customers what they want.]
When there’s a growing number of customer voices 🗣💬 . . 🗣💬 . . 🗣💬 (ground swell 🌋 ) consistently requesting vegan options (if we all keep asking) companies will eventually take notice & come round to providing what we request. 👍👍
[There’s no more powerful force on a company 🏬 than customers ‘walking away’ & spending our money elsewhere. If enough people politely request & learn to ‘walk away’ (when requests can’t be fulfilled), companies will eventually come round to fulfilling customer requests. Steady persistence over time by many, many united voices. 🗣💬 . . 🗣💬 . . 🗣💬 ]
Ah, Thank you Kai. You’re right and I do always ask politely and expectantly. I thought the response I got from them was polite and understanding too so a good result.😁
Well done Ali for asking and putting this on their radar, I couldn't agree more re Vegan options. Near where I work there are two hotels and one of them doesn't have any plant milk whatsoever and no Vegan options for food and the other one has soya milk but no suitable chocolate powder to make a mocha, although this one does have some Vegan options for lunch albeit not many. There is loads of food out there that are Vegan, these places do need to 'wake up' to the fact that there are quite a few Vegans now.
Hi Alicia, The annoying thing is that it seemed as though they were and now I feel as though there is a slump as though they think that fad is over so I hope I’m wrong!
I really do hope you are wrong, people need to know how much better it is being Vegan for your health. Someone said to me the other day 'what do you eat?', I replied and said Vegans probably have a more varied diet than you as there are so many choices, so many things you can make.
On another note, it annoys me when people think it's a fad, it's not, it's much better for your health. We need Simon Cowell, who has just become Vegan, to spread the message.
Haha I know what you mean. Only yesterday some woman in the farmers market tried to get me to try the meat on her stall and I said no thank you the first time and the second I said I was vegan and she said, God what on earth do you eat? So I told her and then she started saying in an aggressive way, well you can’t kill slugs you know. I said well I don’t want to kill slugs so that’s okay isn’t it. She looked really annoyed! 😂
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