Small plant-based food businesses don’t get as much attention as flashy protests or nationally recognizable plant-based brands, yet they play an important role in the broader vegan movement. Using taste and texture, these forward-thinking businesses invite people to enter a small pocket of the world where animal-free food is readily available, socially legitimate, and seriously delicious.

This study considers how small plant-based food businesses in Sydney, Australia, influence the broader vegan movement. According to the authors, the broader vegan movement includes the “activities, materials, skills, and knowledge [that] contribute meaningfully to broaden vegan goals of creating a less exploitative world for human and non-human animals.” They gathered information on plant-based restaurants with an online presence between 2017 and 2022, noting variations in their cuisines and locations. Additionally, they analyzed the websites of 18 civil society organizations that promote plant-based food and conducted 12 in-depth interviews with a mix of small plant-based business owners and civil society organization employees.

The findings revealed that most plant-based food business owners in Sydney express passion about ending animal exploitation and self-identify as vegan. Though the authors refer to their contributions to the broader vegan movement as “quiet activism,” they generally don’t consider themselves activists. In fact, some of the business owners criticized activists who rely on shame and arguments to convert non-vegans rather than using positive incentives like good food.

The analysis also showed how the cuisines and locations of Sydney’s plant-based food businesses have shifted over time. Between 1992 and 2011, plant-based businesses were primarily located in lower-income, predominantly Asian neighborhoods in the western suburbs. As the authors note, Asian religious traditions — such as Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and Hare Krishna — have a long history of encouraging plant-forward diets. From 2012 on, however, Western-style plant-based businesses increasingly began popping up in higher-income, predominantly white neighborhoods in the inner city and eastern suburbs. The authors highlight how these demographic shifts may contribute to the public perception of veganism as inaccessible to people of color or low-income communities.

Finally, the study found that Sydney’s plant-based food businesses are continually balancing their social and political goals with staying afloat financially. The authors discovered a strong sense of community and solidarity among the city’s plant-based businesses, civil society organizations, and vegans. Even though these businesses are competitors in the economic sense, their shared social and political goal of encouraging vegan ways of living lead them to frequently collaborate and share their skills and resources. For example, Maker, a small commercial vegan kitchen, provides a shared space for member businesses to learn from each other, take cooking classes together, and exchange business advice. Additionally, loyal customers go above and beyond to support local businesses — for example, by responding to calls for crowdfunding campaigns to purchase equipment or requests to buy particular products to encourage grocery stores to keep them in stock.

Despite these positives, the authors note that all interviewees were concerned about their finances. Financial pressure contributed to major business decisions, from making more imitation meat products to attract more male and non-vegan customers to calling their products “plant-based” rather than “vegan.”

In conclusion, Sydney has a small but collaborative network of plant-based businesses and civil society organizations dedicated to promoting the broader goals of the vegan movement. Despite living in a meat-centric society where politicians fail to challenge the meat industry head on, Australians can live out vegan-aligned ideals thanks in part to the efforts of these small plant-based businesses. However, the authors also urge greater efforts to uplift plant-based businesses that serve multicultural and socioeconomically diverse communities. Likewise, they encourage greater engagement with Indigenous understandings of human-animal relations and food cultures to build bridges rather than imposing Western-style veganism.

Advocates can use this study to better understand the pressures faced by small plant-based food businesses and to cultivate a deeper appreciation for the role these businesses play in creating pockets of veganism in a non-vegan world. They can support small plant-based businesses in their own communities in a number of ways:

• Organizing group outings or events
• Shouting out local businesses on social media
• Leaving public reviews and ratings to boost restaurant visibility
• Contributing to HappyCow, an app that helps people find vegan food options
• Directly expressing their gratitude to plant-based businesses owners

Advocates may even be inspired to create their own plant-based businesses, volunteer skills like website design to help out small plant-based businesses, or financially invest in up-and-coming plant-based businesses if they have the means to do so.