Vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian – a trend or a new basic requirement in hospitality?

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Fried cheese is no longer a vegetarian concept - is the hospitality industry prepared for new dietary needs?

Meat-free options are no longer a gesture, but a minimum service. But a few grilled vegetables, a dry salad, and an overpriced veggie burger don't represent a real choice.

When a guest asks for a meatless dish, the same reflex still works in some parts of Hungarian hospitality: fried cheese, fried mushrooms, grilled vegetables or some kind of salad. If the guest is vegan, the cheese is omitted, the sour cream sauce is removed, the parmesan is left on the pasta, and the “vegan version” of the dish is ready. The price does not change, of course, but more and more ingredients disappear from the plate.

However, this is not a vegetarian or vegan offering, but a poorly established gastronomic escape route and not a concept, but a forced solution that sends a message to the guest that although the restaurant is willing to feed them, it is not actually prepared for their arrival.

The question today is not whether veganism is fashionable, nor whether everyone will give up meat in a few years. It is much more important whether the hospitality industry can serve increasingly differentiated dietary needs in a way that the food remains enjoyable, nutritionally valuable, economically produced, and, if possible, sustainable.

Because the guest doesn't care if it's more complicated for the kitchen. They come for the same reason everyone else does: they want to eat well.

It's not the number of vegans that matters

For years, the plant-based diet has been plagued by conflicting claims. One week we hear that the vegan revolution has arrived, the next we hear that the plant-based meat substitute market has collapsed. Both approaches simplify the reality.

82 percent of experts surveyed in the Nutrition Hub and EIT Food 2025 Nutrition Trends Report believe that plant-based and flexitarian diets will continue to grow. The change is not driven by a single motivation: health awareness, environmental protection, animal welfare and curiosity about new flavors are all present.

However, from a hospitality perspective, the most important target group is not necessarily the strictly vegan guest, but the flexitarian. They haven't given up meat completely, they don't necessarily look for an exclusively vegan restaurant, and they don't want to eat meat substitutes at all costs. They simply consciously reduce their consumption of animal-based foods and regularly choose plant-based dishes – provided they are truly good.

According to a 2025 study in Germany by the Good Food Institute Europe, 39 percent of German adults can be considered flexitarian, while only 5 percent follow a vegetarian or vegan diet. In both Germany and the UK, 51 percent of respondents would like to eat more plant-based foods and less meat and dairy.

From a business perspective, this is much more important than exactly how many guests call themselves vegan. The potential market is not a narrow, ideologically unified group, but rather all those who, on any given day, would rather choose a well-prepared vegetable-based dish than another chicken breast or burger.

The market is growing, but it's much more complex than the grandiose announcements

According to Circana’s analysis published in April 2026, retail sales of plant-based food and beverages in six major European markets – the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands – reached €16.3 billion in 2025. This represented an annual growth of 5.1 percent, while the category still represented only 2.4 percent of total food and beverage sales.

The numbers belie both the collapse of the plant-based diet and the all-encompassing vegan revolution. The market is growing, but it still accounts for a relatively small share of total food consumption. Moreover, the growth is less and less related to plant-based products disguised as meat, and more and more to more natural, everyday and functional plant-based foods.

Therefore, catering should not necessarily look for another “vegan product” in the wholesaler’s catalog. Rather, it should relearn how to cook vegetables, legumes, grains, mushrooms, seeds, and fermented ingredients.

A plant-based dish will not be good because it imitates meat as closely as possible, but because it has its own flavor, texture, character, and gastronomic justification.

Conceptual chaos is not only embarrassing, it can also be dangerous.

A vegetarian does not eat meat or fish, but usually consumes eggs and dairy products. Vegan food does not intentionally contain any animal ingredients. The term “plant-based” can be a more flexible gastronomic term, indicating that the dish is centered around plant-based ingredients. A flexitarian does not exclude, but reduces and consciously selects.

These categories are often confused in catering. A lactose-free dish is not necessarily dairy-free. A dairy-free dish is not automatically vegan. A gluten-free dish is not necessarily meat-free. And a vegan dish is not automatically allergen-free.

The UK's official food labelling guidelines specifically warn that the vegan label does not guarantee the complete absence of allergens such as milk, eggs, fish, crustaceans or molluscs. Vegan foods may be prepared in environments where cross-contamination may occur, while allergen-free or "free-from" claims require significantly more stringent processes.

This is not a linguistic debate, but a food safety issue. If the server doesn't know whether the vegetable soup is made with meat stock, whether there is butter in the risotto, eggs in the fresh pasta, fish sauce in the Asian dressing, or animal gelatin in the dessert, then they will not inform the guest, but will have to guess.

The problem is even more complex in international hotels and restaurants due to the different cultural, religious and eating habits. As we have shown in the article “Speaking a Common Language” by Szalloda.blog , food is not just a product, but also an identity, a family memory, a religious rule and a community experience. Therefore, it is not enough for the employee to memorize a few categories: he or she must understand that the guest’s request may be based on a lifestyle choice, a health risk, a religious requirement or a combination of these.

Vegan food is not a subtractive version of meat food.

Bad plant-based menu development usually starts with an existing dish and then starts removing ingredients. We take the patty and cheese out of a burger, we leave the chicken out of a salad, we remove the butter and Parmesan from a risotto, and we remove the eggs and cold cuts from a breakfast plate. The end result may be formally vegan, but it will remain gastronomically incomplete.

A well-constructed plant-based main course needs protein, fat, acidity, texture, umami, temperature contrast, and appropriate portion size just like any other dish. Beans, lentils, chickpeas, tofu, tempeh, mushrooms, buckwheat, millet, nuts, and seeds are not decorative elements, but part of the structure of the dish.

One of the biggest mistakes in plant-based cuisine can be to constantly try to prove that you can copy meat. Your guest may not want a “beef patty” made from soy protein. They may be much happier with a dish made with smoked eggplant, fermented cabbage, fried mushrooms, peanuts, or distinctively seasoned lentils.

Plates London was awarded a Michelin star in 2025 as the first all-plant-based restaurant in the UK and Ireland. Not because they managed to hide the fact that there is no meat in the dish, but because they treat plant-based ingredients as a gastronomic language in their own right.

Of course, not every restaurant needs to create a Michelin-starred plant-based tasting menu. The lesson is not to copy fine dining, but to make plant-based dishes not a punishment, a makeshift solution, or a second-rate substitute, but a desirable choice in their own right.

One vegan main course is not enough in a hotel

A stand-alone restaurant might say it has solved the problem with two plant-based main courses. However, a hotel is responsible for the guest’s entire stay, so it needs to consider plant-based offerings not just on the dinner menu, but throughout the entire guest journey.

It's not enough to put a jug of oatmeal next to cow's milk at breakfast. Is there an appropriate plant-based protein source, a hot dish, vegan pastries, bread toppings and clear labeling? Do employees know which bread, margarine, muesli or granola may contain milk powder, honey, eggs or other animal-derived ingredients? Is the plant-based drink a natural part of the offer or a luxury item with an additional cost?

A banquet is even more complex. A conference guest may not have chosen the venue or the menu themselves. If the meat menu consists of three carefully constructed courses and the vegan attendee gets grilled vegetables with rice, the hotel has not provided an alternative, but has made a visible distinction between the guests.

The same goes for coffee breaks, cocktail receptions, minibars, breakfast packages, and room service. It’s easy to offer a plant-based meal at 6 p.m. when the entire kitchen team is working. It’s much more telling what a guest can order at 11 p.m., what they get for an early departure, or what they’ll be served at a gala dinner for two hundred people.

So preparedness is not a green leaf icon on the menu, but rather procurement, documented recipes, allergen management, mise en place, staff training, sales and quality assurance.

Moreover, all this would have to be achieved by a sector that already operates with significant labor shortages, turnover, and an increasingly international staff. In our previous analysis , Who Will Serve the Guests Tomorrow?, we wrote that even the most basic service level cannot be maintained without properly trained and motivated staff. The introduction of a new diet offer therefore does not end with the chef's recipe: the purchaser, the breakfast server, the banquet server, and the night shift also need to understand it.

It may be more sustainable, but not automatically.

One of the strongest arguments for a plant-based diet is the reduction in environmental impact. A study by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek, based on data from nearly 38,000 farms and published in the journal Science , showed that plant-based protein sources generally have a significantly lower environmental impact than animal-based products. The study took into account, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water pollution and eutrophication, among other factors. However, this does not mean that all vegan dishes are automatically sustainable.

A highly processed, multi-packaged, and long-distance meat substitute is not necessarily a better catering decision than a dish based on local, seasonal, less-processed ingredients. Vegetables flown in during the winter, wasteful portioning, single-use packaging, high-energy processing, or ingredients thrown away in the kitchen do not make it sustainable just because it does not contain meat.

Veganism, health, and sustainability are three overlapping but not identical categories. A plant-based burger can be vegan while still being high in salt and fat. An avocado entree can be meat-free while still being neither local nor seasonal. An imported vegan dessert can be free of animal ingredients while arriving at the hotel in multiple layers of plastic packaging.

As we stated in the article "A paper straw is not yet a sustainability strategy" on Szalloda.blog , sustainability is not a single spectacular measure, but an operational culture that appears simultaneously in purchasing, menu planning, energy use, waste management, employee appreciation, and economic decisions.

We examined the same system logic in the analysis titled What makes a city hotel sustainable – and when is it just greenwashing? The operation of a hotel cannot be separated into separate energy, procurement, hospitality, transportation, and labor chapters, because these are parts of the same operating system.

Sustainable plant-based cuisine therefore does not simply replace, but thinks systemically: with seasonal offerings, local suppliers, a shorter menu, ingredients that can be used in more dishes, more precise inventory management, less waste, and recipes in which vegetables are a full-fledged ingredient, not a decoration.

When the hotel chain builds a system, not a campaign

Some international hotel groups are no longer trying to tick off the task with a single vegan dish or a periodic campaign, but are linking measurable commitments to purchasing, recipe development, and staff training.

Accor aims to have 35 percent of its restaurant and catering offerings plant-forward by 2030. The program is not just about vegan and vegetarian dishes, but also about putting plant-based ingredients at the center of the plate. Novotel is also working with the Culinary Institute of America to train employees to develop plant-forward cuisine.

Scandic Hotels aims to increase the proportion of plant-based food to 60 percent by 2030 and is providing digital training to chefs and restaurant staff to achieve this. This is especially important because without the right knowledge, a 1 percent commitment can easily degenerate into a purchasing or administrative exercise.

Hilton has already introduced the carbon footprint labeling of individual dishes in nearly thirty British hotels in 2023. The joint program with Klimato did not moralize, but provided comparable information: the guest could see the dishes as having a low, medium or high environmental impact. According to the initial experiences of the program, the popularity of dishes with a lower carbon footprint has increased, and more than 85 percent of the dishes on the new menu fell into the low or medium category.

These examples are important because they go beyond “we have a vegan option” type of communication. They connect sourcing, recipe development, measurement, training, and guest outreach.

Technology can help, but it won't cook for us.

For a plant-based offering to be successful in business, you need to know which dishes are ordered, what waste is generated, which ingredients can be used in multiple dishes, how demand changes depending on guest mix, event, weather or season, and which recipes have become unprofitable.

In the article titled Artificial Intelligence Doesn't Take Away Hotel Jobs, But It Does Take Away Poorly Organized Work, Szalloda.blog wrote in detail about how AI can help with purchasing, controlling food costs, recognizing inventory losses, reducing food waste, and analyzing menu profitability based on past sales, reservations, guest mix, and current inventory.

But that doesn’t mean an algorithm should write the menu. Data may show that diners aren’t ordering the dry vegan burger, but the chef, restaurant manager, and servers still need to understand why. It could be that the taste is bad, the price is too high, the name is weak, the presentation is wrong, or simply that every other dish sounds more desirable.

Technology can recognize the problem, but it is no substitute for gastronomic and managerial knowledge.

The most common bad practices

The first is the subtractive method: the restaurant removes the meat, cheese, and sauce but doesn't put anything in their place. The guest gets less, often at the same price.

The second is the obligatory plant-based burger, which appears in bistros, hotel lobby bars, Italian restaurants, and sometimes even places that refer to regional cuisine, regardless of the style of the restaurant. It is on the menu not because it fits the concept, but because it is easy to take out of the freezer.

The third is the pricing penalty. A plant-based drink is charged extra, a main course with a few vegetables costs more than a more complex meat dish, or the guest pays the same amount for a dish from which several ingredients have simply been omitted. A good plant-based dish may of course have high labor and ingredient costs, but the price should be determined not by the word “vegan” but by the actual value.

The fourth is staff uncertainty: “I don’t think it has any milk in it,” “I understand the chef doesn’t add butter,” “it’s vegan except for the broth.” These sentences are not only professionally embarrassing, but can also pose a serious risk in the case of allergies or religious diets.

The fifth is the banishment of plant-based dishes to a narrow “healthy” or “vegan” block. This suggests that these dishes are exclusively designed for a specific target group. It is much more effective if they are naturally integrated into the structure of the menu, and the omnivorous guest also orders them because they are appetizing.

The sixth is overemphasizing sustainability communication. If the food is tasteless, the guest will not be comforted by the carbon footprint. Taste is not a competitor to sustainability, but a prerequisite for it. What the guest does not order again will not become a lasting change.

The exclusively vegan model is not an automatic business success either

The rise of plant-based eating does not mean that every vegan-only restaurant will be successful. Operating costs, labor requirements, price sensitivity, location, size of the clientele, and quality of dishes will determine operations just as they would with any other restaurant.

Eleven Madison Park in New York switched to an all-plant-based menu in 2021 and was awarded three Michelin stars in 2022 for its animal-free offerings. However, Daniel Humm announced in August 2025 that, starting October 14, 2025, the plant-based menu would once again include meat and fish options. The chef argues that while the all-plant approach has created a new culinary language, it has also inadvertently excluded some guests, and that giving back choice will allow more people to sit at the table.

This is an important business and hospitality philosophy lesson. The restaurant should not win an ideological purity contest, but rather create an offering in which guests following different diets can feel comfortable together, without anyone having to accept compromised or inferior food.

For most hotels and restaurants, a plant-forward model is not a realistic option, but rather a completely vegan one. In this model, vegetables are not a side dish, plant-based dishes are not a must-have, and meat does not necessarily disappear, but it automatically loses its main role.

Excellent professional performance alone does not guarantee economic sustainability. We wrote about this in detail in our analysis entitled The Michelin Star Doesn't Pay the Bills : the restaurant concept must be viable not only professionally, but also in terms of location, solvent demand, operating costs and the destination as a whole.

Hungarian cuisine shouldn't learn everything from abroad

Hungarian gastronomy is rich in ingredients and types of food that can be used to create a modern vegetarian or vegan menu. Beans, lentils, peas, cabbage, potatoes, mushrooms, peppers, eggplant, buckwheat, millet, poppy seeds, walnuts, plums, apples and many fermented or pickled products are available.

It is not necessary to always include avocado, quinoa and imported meat substitutes on the menu. Vegetable dishes, lecsó, mushroom paprikash, stuffed vegetables, casseroles, dödölle or various legume dishes can be transformed into exciting, regional and economically produced offerings with appropriate kitchen technology, modern serving and distinctive flavouring.

However, this requires abandoning the view that anything without meat is enough for a vegetarian guest. The challenge is not primarily a lack of ingredients, but rather a lack of imagination, knowledge, a consistent recipe, and in many cases, a lack of real intention.

A simple hotel stress test

A hotel or restaurant can consider itself truly prepared if it can not only offer at least two different, fully-fledged plant-based main courses at lunch and dinner, but also has a real choice at breakfast, banquets, coffee breaks and room service.

If the recipe and allergen content of the dishes are documented; the server does not try to find out the ingredients in the kitchen afterwards; the vegan guest's portion and gastronomic experience are not inferior to the others; the plant-based drink is not a luxury specialty with an extra charge; and the kitchen measures what is ordered, what waste is generated, and which food is regularly left on the plate.

So the real question is not whether a leaf-shaped pictogram is on the menu. It's whether the dish behind it is taken as seriously by the chef, the server, and the operator as all the others.

The vegan guest is not the problem

Today, a meat-free offering is no longer a nice gesture towards a small, special group of guests. It is a minimum service, a business opportunity, and increasingly a sustainability requirement.

A single vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian or food-sensitive guest can determine the restaurant choices of an entire family, group of friends or conference group. If they can't find the right dish, it's easy to see not just one guest leaving, but the entire table moving elsewhere.

Therefore, the hospitality industry should not ask whether it is worth preparing a special dish for a minority. It should recognize that diverse dietary needs are no longer an exception, but part of everyday operations.

A vegan guest is not a challenge. An unprepared kitchen, an uninformed staff, an unimaginative menu, and a "this will be good for him" attitude are. And fried cheese can be a lovable dish, just don't call it a vegetarian concept.

About the author:

Tamás Pakuts has been actively involved in aviation and tourism for almost 35 years, and in the hotel industry and catering for more than 25 years.

As a manager and consultant, he had insight into the operations of several airlines, as well as hotels, hotel chains, and shipping companies, successfully taking on a role in their operational management, crisis management, and development.

He is currently present in many countries around the world with his colleagues as an expert, consultant, and trainer in the hotel industry and aviation, and he and his colleagues are working on the development of numerous new, internationally noteworthy projects.