Introduction and Background:

Plant-based eating and veganism has been on the rise in recent years and continues to do so at a fairly fast rate. What used to be a niche dietary trend reserved for a select few in certain parts of the world has become a worldwide shift in how we eat and the access to the foods we have. These foods are also no longer targeted strictly to those who follow vegan or vegetarian diets, but are geared towards an inclusive audience who are looking to simply incorporate more plant based food items into their diets. The food market has seen an increase in recent years in the production and sales of meat and dairy replacements with more options than ever to swap out typical animal products for those made entirely of plants. While it may appear that going to the supermarket and buying vegan foods and replacements is as easy as ever, what about going out to eat? Are people as interested in seeking out plant based food when not cooking at home? Are these options even available to most of the public in the U.S.? That is what I aim to look at in this report.

The idea and inspiration as well as the data I use come from a report put together by Dave Peterson titled Vegan Restaurant Trends by State, which can be found here on data.world as well as his corresponding article. In his analysis, Peterson explores the search frequency of the key word “vegan restaurants” for the years 2015-2017 that was gatehered from Google Trends and compares that to the availability of vegan restaurants by state per 100k residents in the U.S. I would like to expand on this analysis in a few ways. For one, Peterson does not explicitly state what constitutes a “vegan restaurant” in the data he got from Happy Cow, a website created to make finding vegan and vegetarian restaurants easier. The website gives an option to select “vegan”, “vegetarian”, or “veg friendly” to filter the results, though Peterson does not describe which ones he selected. For the purpose of my analysis, I selected all three options to gather data on the number of restaurants per state that not only offer strictly vegan food, but also veggie friendly options. I decided to do this because I also wanted to look at the trend of more common restaurants adding more plant-forward options to their menu. It’s possible that people searching for vegan restaurants in their area are searching for a nearby restaurant that isn’t labeled as vegan, but offers vegan or vegetarian options to accommodate their dietary preferences. I feel as though this allows for a more thorough analysis on the interest and trend of veganism since many people may choose to incorporate more plant foods into their life but not label themselves a vegan or vegetarian. For this reason I will also be looking at the search term “vegan friendly restaurants” as well as “vegan restaurants”, since some areas may be more difficult to find strictly vegan food. Peterson’s report is also 3 years old, so I will take a look at both the past 12 months as well as the past 5 years for this analysis to see if there have been any changes since 2017 and beyond, especially in 2020 with the pandemic.

To complete this analysis, I will be using R to create overall trend graphs and Tableau to create visualizations based on geospatial data to look at the data on a state-by-state basis.

Hypothesis:

There has been an increase in both the interest of people searching out vegan/plant friendly restaurants as well as the number of these kinds of establishments available throughout the U.S.

The Analysis:

To begin, I first will load the neccessary packages and the library where I stored the data.

I first want to take a look at the search frequency of some key terms people may search when looking for vegan/plant-based food in their area. The two terms I used for this analysis are “vegan restaurants” and “vegan friendly restaurants”. I will visualize both of them separately and analyze the popularity of each by state in the U.S. and overall. This will be done for both the last 5 years as well as the last 12 months.

Vegan Restaurants

The first piece I will take a look at is the search frequency of the term “vegan restaurants” for the U.S. as a whole over the last 12 months. This is primarily to get a sense of what this trend has looked like amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

What is most interesting about this trend is the big dip we see happening from March into April of 2020. This comes as no surprise as this is when the U.S. went into quarantine to stay safe amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Restaurants all over the country were shut down and people were asked to not leave their homes, so dining out was no longer an option. With no restaurants to go to, people would not be searching for vegan restaurants in their area. Outside of this dip, though, we still see some interesting trends. There is a small spike towards the end of 2019 and early 2020, which could be attributed to New Year’s resolutions and the common dietary changes that often accompany this time of year. Towards the summer, as restaurants began opening up with more restrictions, searches increased. While the pandemic is still very much alive in October 2020, the search trend is only about half of what it was earlier this year. Even so, we’ve seen an increase in searches for vegan restaurants over the last few months, indicating an increase in interest for this type of food. Now to ask the question, what does this look like on a state-by-state basis?

Zooming in on the map above depicting relative search frequency over the last 12 months, Washington D.C. comes in first place with a score of 100 followed by Nevada with an 87. Other states not far behind belong to either coast, with the middle states of the country seeming to lack similar interest in finding vegan restaurants. What may be surprising is the search frequency for the southern states, or as Peterson calls them in his report, the “Barbecue Belt”. Georgia stands out among these typically meat-eating states as looking to incorporate more plant-based food into their diets. To determine if these are new trends or have been building over the last few years, I also want to take a look at the same two visualizations for the last 5 years. This will also serve as a better comparison for the analysis done previously by Peterson.

First is the graph showing search frequency for the U.S. as a whole since October 2015.

Over the last 5 years, there has been a fairly slow but steady growth in the search frequency for vegan restaurants. There are two noticeable spikes, one in the upward direction and one in the downward direction. The first major peak occurs in the latter portion of 2017. Earlier that same year, the documentary film “What the Health” was released which shined a light on the health benefits of a vegan diet. While it’s possible the popularity of this movie contributed to this specific spike, it’s tough to say for sure. What we do know is that from 2014 to 2017, there was a 600% increase in the number of people in the U.S. who identified as vegan. This was generally a big time for the plant-forward movement and from there on out, the search frequency for vegan restaurants maintained at a level slightly higher than it was pre-2017. Peterson’s report indicates that at the time of his analysis, searches for “vegan restaurants” were peaking in July 2017. 3 years later, we can see that peak and how it eventually died down in the following years. The next spike we see is what we looked at earlier, with mid 2020 showing a drastic drop off of search frequency. Again, this no doubt relates to COVID-19 and the associated quarantine mandate that saw restaurants all over the country having to close their doors, many for good. Overall, though, the last 5 years have shown growth in the general interest for vegan restaurants. Now let’s look at this on a state-by-state basis.

Over the last 5 years, Nevada has seen the largest relative search frequency for vegan restaurants, followed closely by D.C. and Oregon. We see similar trends to what we’ve seen over the last 12 months, with the majority of plant-food interested consumers residing on either coast. It’s also possible these states have more availability to such foods, so the interest is higher. Though, we will take a look at that later on. Georgia still stands out as having the most interest out of the southern states. These findings generally coincide with Peterson’s, except for a few states inching ahead of others. Whereas Oregon and California were close seconds to Nevada as of 2017, Washington D.C. has appeared to be on the hunt for vegan restaurants over the last few years and has made its way into the number two spot.

Vegan Friendly Restaurants

ven restaurants who don’t label themselves as entirely vegan have included plant-based or vegetarian friendly options on their menus. With the rise of people opting for these types of foods, it only makes sense that restaurants accommodate what they offer to meet these demands and shifts in their consumers. Major chains and fast food joints have even found themselves putting veggie options on their menu, making it easier than ever to eat a meat-free meal while out and about. This next section will look at the search trend “vegan friendly restaurants” because consumers may have more luck finding these nearby than entirely vegan eateries. This may be especially true in smaller cities and less populated areas of the country. This is also of interest because it is possible that people who don’t follow a vegan diet but want to incorporate more plant-based foods may search this term instead. I will explore this the same way I did previously, by looking at these trends over the last 12 months and 5 years as well as by each state. This will also allow me to look at the number of vegan/veggie friendly restaurants available throughout the country, rather than only vegan ones.

From October of last year to now, we see pretty much the same trend as we did for “vegan restaurants”. The same dip in interest occurs around March into April as quarantine was at its peak and the pandemic was just beginning. It has seen a less steady trend ever since, though, as there have been ups and downs in search frequency when compared to the general upward trend we saw previously for those searching for vegan restaurants in their area. The past month has appeared to be the beginning of another spike as people may be looking to reintroduce dining out and incorporating more animal-free foods into their diets. Whether this trend continues into the winter and the holiday season will be interesting to keep up with.

What I was hoping to see in accordance with my hypothesis would be more interest in vegan friendly restaurants, especially in less populated states. This does not seem to be the case, though, as Google Trends actually only has data on 20 states for this search term, indicating that the other 30 are not searching for this term much at all. Some states are what would be expected based on what we saw for “vegan restaurants”, such as Oregon and Colorado, while others, such as Tennessee and Arizona, make more of a stark appearance for this particular query.

The same thing will be looked at over the past 5 years.

The trend for the search of “vegan friendly restaurants” is a lot more up and down and less stable than the searches for “vegan restaurants”. We no longer see that big spike towards the end of 2017, rather a slow overall increase happening since 2015. As we saw in the 12 month graph, mid 2020 saw a major dropoff in searches for this term, but even amid the ongoing pandemic, the interest is gaining traction again.

Google Trends still only gives data on 20 states for this search term over the last 5 years. This is overall a less popular search term, so it’s not a big surprise that there are only two prominent states that stand out, Oregon and Colorado. Otherwise, the search frequency is fairly low which could indicate that it’s simply not as popular a search term and people are already aware that when they search for vegan restaurants, non-vegan establishments with veggie options will show up.

The Availability of Vegan/Vegetarian Restaurants by State

Now that we’ve established the overall and state-by-state interest in vegan/plant-based dining out options, what does the availability look like for these states? The next visualization shows the number of vegan/vegan friendly restaurants by state per 100k residents. I calculated this data on my own after grabbing the most updated number of vegan/vegetarian/veggie friendly restaurants per state from Happy Cow and the estimated 2020 population of each state. This allows for a fair comparison among all of the states in the U.S. to get a sense of which are most veggie friendly.

Based on the map above, we see that some states come into the picture that we didn’t previously consider due to their low search interest. Such states include Alaska, Maine, Vermont, and Hawaii. This map shows that these states have a high number of vegan restaurants per 100k residents. Other states more reflect what we saw when looking at their search frequency, such as Oregon and Washington D.C. who appear to have availability that aligns with the high interest we saw earlier. To get a better picture of availability vs. search frequency, I generated the two visualizations below. The first displays the top 10 states ordered by restaurants per 100k residents and the second shows the top 10 states ordered by search frequency for vegan restaurants, both over the last 5 years.

Both of the graphs show different states falling into the top 10 depending on which measure is used to order them. This indicates that the states with the most available for this dietary preference are not the states with the highest search frequency for vegan restaurants. The same can be said for the reverse, in that the states with the highest search frequency don’t always have the number of restaurants available to match this trend. The states that we see fall into both top 10 categories are Oregon, D.C., and Colorado. All three of these states already proved to have high search frequencies for vegan restaurants, so it would appear they have the number of restaurants available to match. Other states have more of a difference between the two. Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, and Alaska all have a higher proportion of restaurants compared to their relative search frequency. The second graph tells us that the states with the most interest in vegan restaurants don’t have the availability to match. These disparities are interesting to see and could indicate that either the trend is growing faster than restaurants can keep up in some states or maybe there was once a surge in the trend in some states and it has since died down. Either way we look at it, there generally does not appear to be alignment among the two measures.

Conclusion

The trend of veganism and following a more plant-based diet does not appear to be a trend that will die down anytime soon. The search frequency for vegan restaurants has seen a steady increase over the last 5 years, save for the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic that hit the restaurant industry hard. The search trend for vegan friendly restaurants provides less information, but nonetheless was important to include in this analysis to get a sense of how people find plant-forward options when dining out and to be able to look at both vegan and vegan/vegetarian friendly restaurants throughout the country. It would appear that with this growing trend has come more availability across the U.S., though how much depends on the state. While some states have enough restaurants to match their relative search frequency, some either have too much or not enough. Many of these findings align with that of Peterson in his 2017 report with a lot of the same states standing out among each visualization. Nevada appears to be staying steady in their interest for seeking out vegan restaurants while other states are coming out of the woodwork. Georgia, for example, may be an up and coming vegan-turned state to watch as since 2017, it has climbed in the top 10 states for search frequency of vegan restaurants. Their availability has also increased slightly, which could indicate that restaurants are responding to this trend. Other states, such as Alaska, Maine, and Vermont, were once not very keen on searching for vegan restaurants. This must have shifted in the last 3 years, though, as their search frequency has increased and could one day match the high availability of vegan options available in their respective states.

Overall, this analysis has provided further insight into what was introduced by Peterson and how the trend of vegan eating is not going anywhere. Even in the last three years alone, more people are seeking out vegan food when dining out and restaurants are trying to meet this demand. The same states remain prominent at the forefront of this trend, such as Nevada, Oregon, D.C., and Colorado, but others may soon see a shift in the food they are looking to order at restaurants, such as Georgia. Whether you live in the deep south or the Pacific Northwest, there are plant-based options available and only more to come in the near future.