Owner & Manager FAQ
For current and future business admins:
- Adding Your Listing
- Creating & Managing an Account
- Claiming Your Listing
- Managing Your Listing
- Partner Program
Information for non-business users:
General User FAQ1. Adding Your Listing
Visit www.happycow.net/add-listing to submit your business.
No, we list all businesses on HappyCow for free.
We offer additional advertising exposure inside the HappyCow Partner Program.
New listing submissions are typically approved within 1-2 weeks.
Listing approval time is influenced by three factors: the volume of recent submissions, the type of business submitted, and the business information provided.
Our submission queue fluctuates seasonally depending on dining, travel and global spending trends.
We prioritize fully vegan businesses in-queue, but always work to review all as quickly as possible.
Every listing submission is reviewed manually by a real person on our editing team to ensure top quality, accuracy, and consistency. We verify the location, hours, and menu items offered, so that the next diner can enjoy a top-tier search experience.
If you’ve been waiting more than 4 weeks for your listing to be approved, and concerned about its pending status, please reach out to us and we’ll look into it for you.
- From inside your Owner’s Dashboard. You need to have claimed your listing in order to access the Owner’s Dashboard. Learn how to claim here.
- From the “Update This” button at the bottom of your listing page.
- Vegan: Food businesses with a permanent location that serve fully vegan food. There are no animal products whatsoever used in the kitchen.
- Vegetarian: Food businesses with a permanent location where some of the food is made 100% from plants, but where dairy and/or egg and/or honey are used in some food preparations.
- Options: Food businesses with a permanent location where some of the food is made 100% from plants, while meat, dairy, and/or egg is used in other menu items. The menu must include 3 or more fully plant-based options in order to qualify to be listed on HappyCow.
- Stores & More: This includes stores, veg-shops, bakeries, coffee & tea, ice cream, food trucks, juice bars, delivery, catering, market vendors, B&Bs, organizations, spas, or other vegan-related businesses where at least some of the food items or products are made 100% from plants – but where meat, dairy, and/or egg may also be used in food preparation.
Points to be aware of:
Vegan alcohol options will always be noted if this information has been made available to HappyCow.
Please connect directly with businesses if you require additional clarification on dietary or ethical concerns regarding their operations, such as materials used in venue furnishings or ingredient cross-contamination at vegetarian, veg-option or gluten-free businesses.
2. Creating & Managing an Account
In order to claim and manage a business on HappyCow, you must first have a member account. If you do not already, please create one here.
User and business accounts on HappyCow are connected. You must first create a member account. Then, as an owner/manager, you are entitled to claim your listing for free, which adds your business dashboard onto your existing member account.
Please reset your password here. If you are having difficulties receiving a password reset, please try a validation resend. Don't forget to check your spam folder and inbox filters for the reset email!
If you are unable to access the email address associated with your account, you will unfortunately have to create a new account.
3. Claiming Your Listing
You can submit a claim request at the same time you apply to list your business on HappyCow.
If you’re already listed but still need to claim, visit
www.happycow.net/claim-listingUsually within 5 business days.
- Track the views your business receives on HappyCow
- Manage your business info (such as opening hours or holiday hours)
- Add photos
- Respond to reviews
- Post announcement banners
Member accounts are not differentiated between personal and business. They may be customized to represent an individual or a business, but are not categorized differently. Any account may be associated with a business if claimed via that account. When you respond to customer reviews, this profile will be associated with your comments.
As a business owner, you may wish to separate your personal HappyCow use from business use by creating an account specifically to represent your business. Conversely, if you’d like to personally be associated with your business, you may wish to only have one account. It’s up to you!
Yes, more than one user profile can claim and manage a listing. Please email us if you would like to assign more than one account.
Yes. If a chain, please indicate in your first claim request that you would like to submit a claim for all branches under this chain.
If multiple, unrelated businesses, please submit a claim request for each business individually.
4. Managing Your Listing
You can expand your reach to new customers, build credibility, and stand out by becoming a HappyCow Partner. Learn more about the Partner program here.
You can request a window decal from inside your Owner's Dashboard. Under the “Request a window decal” section on the mid-right side of your Dashboard page, click the purple request button, share your address, and our team will work on getting those out to you
Yes! From the Owner's Dashboard, just scroll down to your featured photos and you'll see the option to add your own photos to your listing.
This feature is only available to HappyCow Partners. From the Owner's Dashboard, navigate to the Photos tab. There, you'll see every photo associated with your listing. Select the best three, but don't forget to save your choices! These will then be featured on your listing.
Currently only the top 3 photos can be rearranged. These are the 3 feature images that users see at the top when viewing your listing.
At this time, you cannot delete photos from your listing. However, you can report a photo and tell us why you’d like it to be removed. Our team of editors will handle it from there! To do this, select the photo you would like to have removed, click on the three dots under its caption, and select “Report Photo”. We are not always able to approve image removals, but some common reasons for approval include: very outdated menu items, images of people, and images that are not easily distinguishable.
We encourage you to invite your customers to give an honest review of their experience on HappyCow. However, attempts to manipulate ratings are prohibited and against our terms of use (e.g. offering rewards or benefits in exchange for a 5-star review, posting fraudulent reviews). We reserve the right to remove any reviews that violate this policy.
First, log in to the member account associated with your claimed business. If you haven’t claimed your business yet, do so here. Then, navigate to your Owner’s Dashboard, and select “Feature & Reply to Reviews.”
HappyCow’s goal is to support vegan and vegetarian restaurants worldwide. Simultaneously, we have an obligation to our site users to remain unbiased, and allow democratic sharing of personal opinions and experiences. Here’s what we recommend to owners and managers responding to customer feedback:
We Recommned
- Post a response to the review. From within your Owner’s Dashboard, select “Feature and Reply to Reviews” (if you haven’t already, claim your listing here to access your dashboard). We recommend addressing the complaint directly, expressing thanks for any feedback provided, and providing a customer support solution where possible.
- Direct message the reviewer to address their complaint privately. We recommend trying to find common ground on the complaint, while exploring a solution which might invite them back to your business.
- Respond to reviews with professionalism, empathy, and objectivity.
- Remember that each review is just one single opinion, and it’s the entire set of HappyCow reviews together that matter most.
We Don't Recommend
- Don’t forget that it’s normal for all businesses to receive mixed or negative feedback. It happens to even the best and most popular businesses. In fact, negative reviews intermingled with favorable reviews often act to enhance the credibility of the reviews by illustrating the honesty and openness of the HappyCow environment.
- Don’t ignore negative reviews. Every piece of feedback is a chance to either win a customer back, or show new customers that your professional reputation is not determined by a single review.
- Don’t try to influence your rating by writing reviews for your business anonymously or through secondary accounts.
- Don’t lash out at the people who wrote negative reviews about you.
We remove reviews only if they violate our terms of use or review policy. If you would like to report a review, please open a ticket and we will have a look to determine whether it qualifies as being extremely unfair or negative. If so, we will remove it.
HappyCow's goal is to support vegan & vegetarian restaurants worldwide and help to promote businesses like yours. We also have an unbiased obligation to our site users - to allow for a fair and democratic system for sharing their personal opinions and experiences.
HappyCow is legally protected against claims regarding content written by participants. A United States Federal law called the Communications Decency Act ("CDA") does not allow a direct action against sites such as HappyCow for the comments of third parties.
HappyCow and our reviewers/participants are also legally protected by SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) which grants every person petition and free speech rights to speak freely on public issues and issues of public interest, and facilitates the recovery by SLAPP victims of their damages through a SLAPPback (malicious prosecution action) against the SLAPP filters and their attorneys after the underlying SLAPP has been dismissed.
HappyCow publishes business listing information so that consumers can find vegetarian and vegan restaurants and share their experiences. While we understand that some business owners might prefer not to publicize their business for whatever reason, it is important for consumers to be able to find and share their experiences. Therefore, we are not able to remove such information from the site.
If you need to update or change the information on your business page, please submit any changes by clicking the “Update this” button at the bottom of your listing’s page and submitting a detailed note with any relevant information.
If your business has ceased to operate, send us an update by clicking the “Update this” button and selecting “Closed” under “Status”. We’ll then mark it closed.
5. HappyCow Partner Program
The Partner program is HappyCow’s promotional plan, giving increased visibility, credibility, and listing control to member businesses. It’s offered in 3 tiers: Premium, Essentials, and Lite. The Essentials plan is just US$5 a day. Explore all the benefits and pricing here.
You can upgrade to the Partner program inside the Owner’s Dashboard. Claim your listing to access the Owner’s Dashboard if you haven’t already. We’re happy to chat with you directly, any time. Please email our team partner@happycow.net or book a call to speak with us here. We’re here to help!
There are 3 tier plans available in the Partner program: Lite, Essentials and Premium. Learn about them here.
Lite is for small businesses wanting to stand out and gain full control of their listing. Essentials is for established businesses looking to maintain high-quality, returning customers. Premium is for businesses ready to go to the next level by being unmissable through maximum exposure. If you’re unsure which is the right fit for your business, email us or book a call.
The Partner program is priced at US$49 per month for Lite, US$149 per month for Essentials and US $299 per month for Premium. We do offer package discounts for chains and multiple venues.
You can manage your business information, billing information and plan from inside your Owner’s Dashboard.
No, there is no contract for the Partner program. It’s billed month-to-month, and you can cancel your subscription, upgrade or roll back to another plan at any time.
ROI is measured in two ways. First, by the increased number of views your listing receives on a daily and monthly basis. This is viewable in two-week increments inside your Owner’s Dashboard, enabling you to see the gain that Partner program provides, and observe it over time. Secondly, by posting an announcement on your listing page (from “My Dashboard,” go to “Post an Announcement”), you have a clearly definable way to measure conversion of customers from HappyCow to your actual business. We recommend offering a promo or discount code via the banner for customers to redeem in-house.
We want to help! Please email us or book a call to talk.