When building a vegan community snowballs into international partnerships

This is the last of my blogs on contributors/examples from Vegan Marketing Success Stories. I’m almost going to miss this!

Very similar to Meredith Marin at Vegan Hospitality‘s story is Diana Edelman, Founder and CEO of Vegans, Baby. Those of you reading from Las Vegas are likely no stranger to Diana, who’s grown the vegan community there over the course of the last six years.

Growing vegan communities, one city at a time

When Diana first started Vegans, Baby, she held monthly meetups at a Las Vegas restaurant to get people out and offered them a free cocktail. Her business then expanded into food tours and included restaurants as part of Vegan Dining Month. “I started Vegan Dining Month because Restaurant Week in Vegas had no vegan options,” she said. “The vegan audience was being ignored. I started Vegan Dining Month because if you give a population of vegans a restaurant week, the restaurants will cannibalize each other and compete to the point where it’s going to hurt the restaurants to participate. So, I decided I would do a month instead, and make it open to vegan restaurants and non-vegan restaurants, throw in a charity component, and make it something that people from all over the city—whether they’re vegan or not—could support and try new dishes. And it really grew.”

Upon the suggestion of a friend, Diana launched the Vegans, Baby Las Vegas food tour in 2018 and a year later, it was named one of the nine best vegan food tours by Travel + Leisure. She also started Vegan Dining Month in Las Vegas, began partnering with and consulting for restaurants and events, and is now curating vegan tours internationally.

“Any idea I’ve had, I’ve tried, and they’ve all pretty much worked, which I’m so grateful for,” Diana said. “I’ve never had a business plan. I wake up one morning, say, ‘I’m going to try this.’ And then I just do it and see how it goes. That’s how I’ve operated.” So, if there isn’t yet a thriving vegan community where you live, you might have a new career waiting for you!

When the James Beard Foundation calls, you answer

A few years after growing the Vegans, Baby community in Las Vegas, restaurants began reaching out to Diana to consult on their menus. James Beard Foundation contacted her to curate dinners at the James Beard House Restaurant in New York City, and she partnered with Life is Beautiful to curate vegan food at one of their music festivals in Las Vegas. “I was the first person at the James Beard House Restaurant to curate a lineup of chefs representing a city,” Diana said proudly. “And it was plant-based. So that was a real career high for me.” Below are some of her Instagram posts from 2021 talking about these partnerships.

Nurturing a vegan community with digital marketing

Up to 75% of the traffic to the website comes organically from search engines. Considering that much of Diana’s services rely on in-person events, good SEO and a thriving social media community are extremely important.

She has a Facebook Page and a few Facebook groups, and her events sell out simply by promoting on social media and in a newsletter. “I’ve paid for ads maybe twice in my whole time on social media,” Diana said.

You can read more about how Diana pivoted her company during the pandemic in my book (I promise it has a happy ending!).

Vegan Marketing Success Stories is now available in ebook, paperback, and audio on Audible. Visit my products page for all the links.