How to find vegan products

Question

Even living in France, I know little where to find animal friendly products like croissants without butter, frozen vegan burgers, non-leather belts or even a non-lethal mouse trap. Happycow has helped tremendously finding restaurants, but if I needed a lunch pack for a train trip in a foreign country, its health food stores finder presents very limited choices.

E.g. it doesn't appreciate the amazing growth of the vegan food sections in some supermarkets of some countries. It ignores the bakeries, which offer croissants without butter. How much would you, as a non-French speaking tourist, know about Parisian croissants anyway, so you can make an informed choice? 

Could Happycow have an introductory section for each country or city, providing some hints? This needs motivated and informed writers to set up and keep updated.

Or could Happycow have a product finder, somehow? E.g. an addition to the Happycow mobile app, where someone can enter the name of a store and the name of a product, and send it to the website without a further comment? So this would appear on a dedicated page for the respective country or city?

Can Happycow make vegan products in general more accessible and create incentives for non-vegan business to offer them?

herwin · Answer

First of all, this is not an official HappyCow response. ;-)
you mean you are suggesting a "vegan product finder", right?
it might be a good idea. but i think bc of limited volunteers, limited time, and bc HappyCow is a Veg Restaurant Guide Online, its not something HappyCow can or should develop. I am glad that HappCow stays focused on veg restaurants and doesnt get bloated.
But it seems a nice and practical idea. Maybe somebody picks it up. 
And until that day, be active, and find out yourself where the vegan croissants are.

eric · Answer

Hi zungi, we've been considering this for many years. As Herwin suggests, managing a database of products is a major undertaking. Keeping track of products from all over the world is a massive task. It's still on our radar, but making sure everything we already have going on is the best on the net is higher priority. Thanks for asking / suggesting though.

Suz · Answer

Who doesn't love croissants? Vegan croissants?? Yes, please!!

Agree with Eric, herwin and zungi. GREAT idea. Certainly a need to be fulfilled... *someplace*!! If we get too scattered here at HC, we'll sacrifice quality. Sooo where else?

What if you started such a website/info exchange service, zungi? Where to find other vegan-friendly products, too? Yes! Sounds like an excellent project.

Crito · Answer

What if we start a little more basic than that. In the frame of how the forum runs and the recipe submissions. 

Submit a vegan product you like (abs with a recipe) with photo, where you buy it, link, description and maybe even a rating. 

I don’t think it has to be an intensive SKU database. You can create a new section and put the burden on users to share what they like and where to get it. Then see what it evolves to. 

Or convince some plantbased food companies to fund the development of a product database on HC since you already have the traffic. They already have a coalition of sorts. It ends up being advertising for them.

herwin · Answer

when i said its a nice idea, i just was being nice. 
the practical dificulties of such a vegan product data base are simply complex.
first of all, what do we mean with "vegan products"? nonleather items? what does that include? plastic slippers? veganfood? it means products from vegan companies, or just any vegan foods? oreo cookies? fruit? ordinary processed food items that dont contain animal ingredients?
Also, how many ppl actually need such a vegan product app? dont we already know where most vegan products are sold? 
and also practical, apps like that are only valuable when they are actually updated so we wont go to that supermarket at the other end of the city just to find out they stopped selling it.

zungi · Answer

I very much appreciate each of these comments and agree: The focus of Happycow on restaurants has been key to its success. And keeping a product database up-to-date would require a lot of work, with dubious usefulness.

But maybe there are unconventional ways to increase market transparency for vegans online.

E.g. imagine a page for the United Kingdom, where the top 5 supermarket chains, the top 3 fast food chains, the professional association of retailers and the one of bakeries are offered to each list their top ten vegan products (by brand or category). Would marketing departments of these organisations simply think that's not worth their time, when asked by a website like HC? Would this not work at least in some countries? Or would such a HC page create resentment by the published health food stores, which often tended to be more sympathetic to vegetarianism in the past and want this to be recognised?

Or imagine a world map on a single page, where users can post tags to countries that are then shown on these countries (which one can zoom in). A tag would need to be composed of a brand name, a product type (from a pre-defined list) and the name of one of the top 20 retailers or fast food businesses (also from a pre-defined list). There would be no guarantee of up-to-dateness. Instead tags could be made to automatically fade with time, if they're not re-posted - or increasingly fade, if they are found to be untrue by other users. If I found such a map online, it would at least give me some ideas.

Any ideas anyone? I'm still unconvinced I need to go to a vegan meet-up to stay informed. Vegans constantly describe their shopping experience in terms of exploring uncharted territory - a nightmare for someone adverse to shopping like me.

eric · Answer

Cool ideas Zungi, we'll consider this more.

herwin · Answer

"Or would such a HC page create resentment by the published health food stores, which often tended to be more sympathetic to vegetarianism in the past and want this to be recognised?"

yes. i fully and utterly detest the idea of promoting the vegan products of the top food industry bc it leaves out the small guys.  
But than again, its a great idea to earn some serious bucks, right?

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