New Research Reveals The Best Australian Cities For Vegan Food, And It’s Not What We Expected
I’ve been vegetarian (not vegan) for over 20 years now. During that time, my options have changed from salad or some form of a spinach and feta-filled pastry, to entire cafes and restaurants dedicated to non-meat dishes. It makes my dining life a hell of a lot more interesting, I tell you what.
Not being the world’s biggest foodie, I can’t say I’ve ever travelled specifically for food, yet my trip is always elevated when I have a delicious option — so I can only imagine how important the presence of good vegan cafes would be to my plant-based foodies out there.
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Luckily, Myprotein Australia took the guesswork (and excessive googling) out of it for all of us, finding Australia’s top 10 most vegan-friendly cities based on the number of vegan-friendly cafes and restaurants per 10,000 people. They also included vegan-related web search traffic in the area, but we’re just going to focus on the combined number of actual restaurants and cafes (so the ranking here may be in a slightly different order to their own published results).
The results, frankly, surprised me — mainly because Queensland dominated (sorry for doubting you Queensland).
Overall ranking:
- Sunshine Coast, QLD (12.7 vegan cafes and restaurants/ 10,000 people)
- Gold Coast/ Tweed Heads, QLD (8.9 vegan cafes and restaurants/ 10,000 people)
- Cairns, QLD (8.3 vegan cafes and restaurants/ 10,000 people)
- Hobart, TAS (6.9 vegan cafes and restaurants/ 10,000 people)
- Darwin, NT (6.6 vegan cafes and restaurants/ 10,000 people)
- Ballarat, VIC (6.4 vegan cafes and restaurants/ 10,000 people)
- Bendigo, VIC (5.9 vegan cafes and restaurants/ 10,000 people)
- Brisbane, QLD (2.6 vegan cafes and restaurants/ 10,000 people)
- Sydney, NSW (2 vegan cafes and restaurants/ 10,000 people)
- Melbourne, VIC (1.3 vegan cafes and restaurants/ 10,000 people)
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The breakdown:
In top spot was the Sunshine Coast, QLD, with 305 restaurants, 128 cafes and a population of just under 350,000 people. That means they had 8.9 vegan restaurant and 3.8 vegan cafes per 10,000 people.
The Gold Coast/ Tweed Heads area came in second with 6.6 vegan restaurant and 2.3 vegan cafes per 10,000 people. Cairns ranked in third with 6.0 vegan restaurant and 2.3 vegan cafes per 10,000 people.
Then we move over to Hobart in Tassie, coming fourth with 5.7 vegan restaurant and 1.2 vegan cafes per 10,000 people. Followed by Darwin with 4.7 vegan restaurant and 1.9 vegan cafes per 10,000 people.
What really surprised me is Sydney and Melbourne ranking so low, but I guess they also have a higher population so there’s more of us trying to book into the same veggie restaurants.
Either way, you go Queensland.
(Lead Image: Facebook / Soul Kitchen Bakery)
