How much friction will you hit ordering vegan here?
Every venue on Spinach gets a single letter — A through E — that answers one specific question: how easy is it to actually order a vegan meal here? It is not a food-quality score. The Spinach Rating is. Vegan Friendliness sits next to it and answers a different question — navigation difficulty, not how good the food is.
What the letters mean
- A Outstanding for vegans
- B Very vegan-friendly
- C Good vegan options
- D Limited vegan options
- E Poor vegan options
How the score works
Every venue starts at 100. We deduct points for friction — anything that makes ordering a vegan meal harder. The letter is the leftover score. The cost for each signal is product judgment, not a percentile fit: "no labeling" is structurally harder to navigate than "staff didn't know," so no labeling costs more. Same scale everywhere on the network.
- Menu labellingAre vegan items clearly marked? Unlabelled menus are the biggest single deduction — a great kitchen you cannot navigate is still hard to order from.
- Vegan optionsHow many dishes you can order without modifying. Cafés, bars, and bakeries get judged on a softer scale than restaurants.
- StaffDo they know what is in the sauce? A friendly server who has to check loses fewer points than one who answers wrong.
- ProteinTofu, tempeh, seitan, legumes, or just vegetables? Restaurants only — cafés, bakeries, and bars skip this entirely.
Three rules that override the score
If the kitchen is 100% plant-based, navigation difficulty is zero by definition. Score doesn't matter — the venue gets an A regardless of any other signal.
Cross-contamination, hidden animal ingredients, mislabelled vegan dishes — these are not the same as a confusing menu. One severe warning caps a venue at B; two or more force E, no matter how high the underlying score.
A venue only drops to E if there are zero vegan options or active warnings. Otherwise the worst grade is D. "We have not been told anything good about this place" is not the same as "this place is hostile to vegans," and the grade should not pretend they are.
And if all three primary signals are missing — no labelling data, no staff knowledge, no options scale — score and grade are both blank. The page just says check on arrival. We don't guess.
Why letters, not numbers?
A 7.8 out of 10 sounds precise but is not a decision. An A means order anything you want. A C means check the menu first. That is the call you actually make before sitting down.
Score and grade are computed inside Supabase from structured review signals plus menu analysis, and stored as columns on each venue. The mobile app and this site read the same calculated value — one source of truth, same letter everywhere. Cost tables and grade thresholds are tunable via SQL without an app release.