The
Vegan Gratitude
Paradox

My first year as a vegan was hard.

Eating out was sometimes great, but often quite disappointing. I went to the “best” spots and was quietly let down. My determination was strong, but if I could be determined and well-fed, I would.

I knew not all vegan food is bad — on the contrary — it could be fantastic. But finding it required a particular set of skills. Searching, reading reviews and multiple blogs for each city I went to. I ended up with a spreadsheet before visiting every new location.

In 2022 I joined HappyCow to fix this. This is where I learned that my first year experience is not uncommon, but actually the standard. It is hard, and in fact 54% of new vegans quit within the first year, and food dissatisfaction is a leading cause.

But why? Fantastic vegan food exists. It's just hard to find. I got a closer look at two phenomena behind this problem.

The Gratitude Effect

When you find a place that's 100% plant-based you feel so much gratitude. You don't have to worry about hidden animal products, everything in the menu is for you! Even if the food is just OK, we either leave a review that's just a “thank you for being vegan” note, or leave no review at all if it was really disappointing.

It just doesn't feel right to give anything less to someone who's on our team.

This is well intended, but we end up in a world where more than half of all vegan restaurants have a perfect score. Almost all of the rest are rated 4.5.

That leaves just 3% rated below 4.0. It doesn't help that HappyCow only shows ratings in half-star steps — 4.0, 4.5, or 5.0. Three buckets for thousands of restaurants. Are they really all that perfect?

If everything is just the best, nothing really is. And so the truly best dishes and venues get lost in the gratitude soup.

The Gatekeeping

HappyCow caps omnivore restaurant ratings at a maximum of 4.0 stars. It's a platform rule, not a community behavior. No matter how extraordinary the vegan food is at an omnivore restaurant, it cannot score above 4.0.

The intention is noble — protect vegan restaurants from competition and help them grow. But is that really needed? It's like saying that vegan food is worse, so it needs a boost. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

Some of the best vegan food can often be found in omnivore places, and we should celebrate and reward it. Someone eating there might have an “I can't believe this is vegan” moment. That matters. It matters for normalisation and visibility. It matters for setting the bar higher for the vegan cuisine.

Long-Term Side Effects

In the short term, this makes great plant-based food hard to find. Especially hard if you are a newbie vegan.

In the long term, the consequences are even more damaging. The feedback loop is broken. When everyone is best, nobody is.

The best vegan food is not rewarded with more traffic. Perfect is literally the average score for a vegan restaurant. That's where we set the bar. Actually being better than this is a waste of resources in an economic sense — the benefits are diminishing quickly. Why put all this extra effort if you get the same recognition as the average place.

On the other hand we see places that should evolve but don't. They don't get the message that things need to improve. Even being in the lower half and still getting 4.5 does not seem bad at all. The ones that are amazing disappear suddenly, never getting enough traction.

The effect on omnivore restaurants is different. Their sometimes fantastic offerings get lost. They should be known and celebrated. They should be copied and evolved.

This isn't just vegan restaurants. The pattern holds across every category.

The Fix

One approach is to rate more rigorously. But that would need the majority to change, and gratitude is hard to argue against.

The other way is to redefine the ratings. That's what I'm building with Spinach.

Spinach understands the signals for what they are: food quality, vs vegan-friendliness (how many options, are there vegan proteins, is the staff friendly), vs vegan gratitude. It also understands what food it refers to, so it's easy to see what's the best vegan pizza in town, or what are the top rated dishes in each city.

The AI is basically doing what I learned to do after my first harsh year of being a vegan. It does the deep research for you.