Why Spinach exists
Spinach exists to fix vegan-restaurant discovery. Two problems kept nagging at me. First, vegan restaurants are rated unreliably — more than half sit at a flat 5.0, so the genuinely great places get no proportional reward and good ones quietly close. Second, some of the best vegan dishes are buried inside non-vegan restaurants, invisible to anyone searching.
Better discovery rewards the restaurants doing vegan food well — which gives more of them a reason to. The long-term goal is simple: every restaurant in the world with great vegan options.
How venues are evaluated
I grade venues instead of starring them, because 4.7 versus 4.8 tells you nothing, while an A versus a C tells you whether a place actually works for a vegan. The Vegan Friendliness Index weighs what matters to plant-based diners — how clearly the menu is labelled, how many real options there are, the quality of the protein, and how staff handle dietary questions — ahead of raw popularity.
The detailed methodology and grade definitions live on the Vegan Friendliness Index page, and the ranking process is documented in How we rank.
Contact
For corrections, venue submissions, or press, email [email protected].
And if you want to help build Spinach — engineering, data, writing, or just a real obsession with plant-based food — I'd love to hear from you. Same address: [email protected].