Executive Chef: “Pay attention to vegans”

Creating a recipe for success: Q & A with Erik Blauberg, Chief executive of EKB Consulting

This interview with the former executive chef at the ‘21′ Club is interesting for this bit (emphasis added):

What’s the first thing you look at when you work on a failing restaurant?

I walk into a place and assess the damage. First of all, the food, the menu. Engineering of menus is very important. They have to have diversity: chicken, fish, vegetables. It has to please a vast majority of people with different tastes. Vegan dishes are becoming especially important.

Vegan? Really?

It seems more and more, if there is a vegan at the table, they will dictate the order. So you need to be prepared.

I can’t say I feel like the vegan Mussolini (Get it?  Order dictator?  Har!), but I was really happy to see vegans being talked about as an actual target market and not “a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.”

(via SuperVegan’s twitter feed)