SAN ANTONIO – When you think of the San Antonio culinary scene, you might envision a plate of cheesy enchiladas, smoked brisket or chicken fried steak, but a new effort is aiming to broaden the options at restaurants to include items that are more healthy and environmentally friendly.
The mindset of the people behind the Plant Based for the Planet initiative is one of diversity and availability when it comes to food choices. While their movement is based on the tenets of veganism, it’s not targeted at converting people to flip their diets. Rather, the program encourages restaurants to explore creative food options that happen to be plant-based: from loaded “queso” fries to faux chicken fried rice.
Food that is considered vegan avoids products derived directly from animals, including eggs, dairy and meat.
Planted Society, based in Austin, is the nonprofit that hosts the monthly food challenge. What started as hangouts in vegan restaurants in the capital city eventually grew into working closely with a range of restaurants to encourage them to try their hands at preparing vegan dishes.
Britty Mann, a local organizer from Austin, founded the group in 2016.
“We want to create access and opportunity for people to enjoy food that happens to be vegan because it helps the planet,” Mann said.
Simply put, the group was formed to provide more plant-based menu items in Austin, focusing on both consumers and chefs.
Eventually, interest from restaurants and the public grew, and soon, it was time to take the show on the road — down Interstate 35.
San Antonio a ‘compelling partner’
In October, Planted Society partnered with 12 restaurants in the San Antonio area, including pizza joints, Vietnamese and even a food truck. Those restaurants were:
- Bilia Eatery
- Black Laboratory Brewing
- Kulture Kafe
- MAAR’s Pizza
- Margarita’s Tortilla Factory
- Meadow Neighborhood Eatery + Bar
- Pharm Table
- Sweet Yams
- The Cove
- The Jerk Shack
- The Station Cafe
- Vietnam Gardens
The month-long partnership between local governments, businesses and community organizations raised awareness of how food choices can affect climate change.
As preparations to populate the 12 restaurants across San Antonio were underway, key partnerships needed to be established to ensure a precise, community-driven vision, Mann said.
“San Antonio stood out as a compelling partner. The city’s Office of Sustainability was enthusiastic about supporting a pro-climate initiative, making it a perfect fit for our third city partnership,” according to a report Planted Society recently released about the impact of its October challenge.
The group also partnered with the Vegan in San Antonio Instagram page, which has more than 7,000 followers, and the ¡Por Vida! Program that highlights local restaurant’s efforts to prioritize health and well-being in San Antonio.
Mann said the partnerships were “absolutely essential.”
“We reach out to who we think could be a really good champion of the event itself,” Mann said. “People who can share with their existing audience so that we don’t have to spend a lot of resources and time making that audience from scratch.”
Part of the goal for the initiative was to shoulder some of the lift for already strapped restaurants — like marketing and planning — to allow them to be creative with their food choices.
“Our hope with these initiatives is that we inspire the restaurants we work with, the chefs we work with, the city and community members … to make small changes and reap the benefits,” Mann said. “I think a lot of chefs are energized by the idea of creating new things.”
Before landing in San Antonio in October, the Plant Based for the Planet challenge was hosted in other cities, such as Austin and Montclair, NJ.
What does the data say?
The campaign reached more than 55,000 people in restaurants and racked up nearly 750,000 impressions on digital platforms, according to the impact report Planted Society released last month.
Three out of four people who interacted with the program were not vegans and restaurants pulled in about $13,400 in sales, according to the report.
In terms of the environmental impact, the San Antonio restaurants and consumers saved 42,064 pounds of CO2 equivalents, primarily in the form of carbon dioxide and methane, the report said. More than 530,000 gallons of water were saved, equivalent to hydrating 3,000 people for one year.
To measure the environmental impact, the team created a spreadsheet calculator that incorporated several community surveys and studies, including a 2018 study that measured the climate impact of a range of food products from 40,000 farms in 119 counties.
Using those numbers as a baseline, the team calculated the estimated lowered impact from choosing each plant-based dish, multiplied by servings and the amount sold.
The team measured when a non-plant-based ingredient was switched for something such as faux meat or a vegetable. The calculator would give a specific climate number based on their source data, which would add to the overall impact measurements in the report.
According to the impact report, 41% of people who interacted with the initiative discovered it while dining at one of the 12 restaurants.
“We got a really good … percentage of people who found out about the initiative at the restaurant (where) they were already dining,” Mann said.
Impact Report by Mason on Scribd
Looking to the future: ‘A food extravaganza’
While the conversation around climate change and the future can be overwhelming, Mann says that food choices are just one of several small steps one can take to combat climate change.
“I really want this initiative to reach people in a positive way because a lot of the news around sustainability and climate change is negative, as it should be,” Mann said. “Because we’re looking at a bleak future if we don’t change things.”
As the project prepares for the future — a second city challenge will take place in Austin in January — Mann said that one goal is to provide cities with a model and allow them to build on it.
“Our plan really is to create a blueprint of how to do this initiative and be able to train people to just take (and) make it exactly what (their) city needs,” Mann said.
However, Mann stresses that the task would need to be placed into the right hands; the Planted Society wants to prevent future initiatives from falling under the grasp of rebuke and proselytism.
“I don’t want anyone who experiences this initiative to think that we’re shaming them, their dietary habits or their choices, like that’s certainly not what this is [about],” Mann said. “We are here only to provide opportunity. So I what I really want to make sure, as this grows, is that people are properly trained ... so that it’s not predatory.”
Part of the future-proofing efforts includes handing the blueprint off to people who are culturally aware of how their city should best interact with this kind of programming.
“Some cities might have more of a health angle; some might go a little harder on the data than others [and] some might be purely culinary,” Mann said. “Like, let’s just make this a food extravaganza. We really just want people to make it their own; that’s really, I think, where the program is going.”