La Porchetta has responded to the rise of veganism by introducing a new vegan-friendly menu across restaurants in Australia and New Zealand.
“We review our menu every year and this year, we added a range of vegan options,” said La Porchetta CEO Sara Pantaleo. “That came about because one of our restaurants introduced vegan dishes to their specials board and we received a lot of feedback, both instore and online about how much people liked and appreciated these dishes. Our customers were asking us if other restaurants were also planning to introduce these dishes.”
Creating a vegan menu was no mean feat – there were challenges in formulating recipes that would taste as good as the original and then making sure that all franchisees were making the meals up to standard. The company filmed a series of educational videos and recipe demonstrations to maintain consistency.
“Our introduction of vegan dishes is in line with the growing trend to vegetarianism, veganism and ‘flexitarianism’, where people want to eat vegetarian or vegan once or twice a week. It’s what our customers are telling us they want. Before we introduced our new menu, a section of our clientele was coming in and not being acknowledged and now they are.”
A spokesperson for La Porchetta said that while the vegan menu is available across New Zealand, it does not offer all the options available in Australia.
