Veggie Bite
“It was pretty depressing,” says Watycha. “But after we were in the neighborhood for a while, a lot of those same people started coming back,” albeit cautiously: “People ordered, like, the smallest thing on the menu.”
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Now, though, Watycha and her fiance, Moshe Shalom, say they’ve made some larger inroads in the traditionally Irish Catholic area. Some of the neighborhood traffic comes from people trying to lose weight–a veggie burger here has about 120 calories, compared to a Big Mac’s 560–while others, initially dragged in by vegan or vegetarian friends, seem to have developed a taste for the veggie dogs, “chick-free” nuggets, and other menu items, none of which contain dairy, meat, or other animal products and all of which are meant to appeal to carnivores. “We’re catering to the meat eater, you understand?” Watycha says. “We’ve had a lot of converts. That’s what we want.” One of the restaurant’s promotional posters declares, “Meat has met its match.”
Passionate as Veggie Bite’s owners are about the vegan lifestyle, they’re sympathetic to the difficulties of giving up meat, particularly given the ubiquity of McDonald’s, Burger King, and the like. “If you’re driving 15 miles, how many junky fast-food places do you pass?” Watycha says. “Your stomach is growling, and you’re going, ‘I’m gonna be good, I’m gonna be good,’ and then you pull up at a stoplight and you go, ‘OK, just this once.’” If convenient vegan food were widely available, she and Shalom say, more people would eat it. That’s why they’re envisioning an entire Veggie Bite chain.
