Food: Why plants take centre plate at Tipsy Vegan

Bringing vibrant vegan sharing plates and an unrivalled drinks list - which includes one-of-a-kind ferment-based cocktails - The Tipsy Vegan has fast found a following on Cambridge’s Quayside. Founders Michelle McCabe and Cheryl Mullenger tell Alice Ryan how the business came to be

Firstly, for those not familiar with Tipsy Vegan, give us a flavour. . . What makes the menus and venues one of a kind?

Our focus is on sharing small plates and social drinks for a casual and fun dining experience. The sharing aspect creates a great environment for celebratory meals, catching up with friends and loved ones and small plates allows for a great variety in what you order. We also take inspiration from all over the world for our food and drink so that we have something enticing for all palettes and cuisine preferences.

To rewind right to the beginning, tell us how you both came to vegan eating - and cooking - in the first place?

Michelle switched to a vegan diet after watching a documentary that highlighted some of the inhumane practices on animals in our food chain. She hadn’t fully realised previously that cows produced milk following a pregnancy and that it was being produced to feed their baby calves. Of course their baby calves never see or touch this milk and it prompted more thorough research into where our food comes from, which didn’t make for nice reading.

Cheryl is the talent behind the majority of the dishes at The Tipsy Vegan - now in collaboration with our incredible head chefs. She started experimenting with vegan cooking while still a meat-eater, as a way to create meals that her and Michelle could enjoy together rather than always eating separate meals when at home. She was mainly veganising typically non-vegan dishes and the idea was born from there to start a business showcasing how varied and delicious vegan dishes could actually be. This was not the main perception at the time, back in 2015.

What made you want to turn your personal passion for vegan food into a professional venture? And when did you first open doors?

Michelle has always worked in hospitality and had long-term aspirations of opening her own venue that paid homage to the types of restaurants and style of service she received when living in the US. Once she switched to a vegan diet this seemed like a less likely outcome, but Cheryl was a teacher at the time and looking to change careers.

She was enjoying creating the exciting vegan dishes she was experimenting with and so we decided to take the leap and start our own food truck business, attending fairs and events selling on-the-go food items such as burritos and burgers. This progressed to a permanent food stall on Norwich Market – Bia Vegan Diner – and then in 2017 we opened a bricks and mortar venue in the heart of Norwich Lanes, and so The Tipsy Vegan was born.

How quickly, having opened your Norwich site, did you think ‘Yes, this is it: we’re on to something’?

We already had a pretty good customer base via our street food business by the time we opened Tipsy Vegan and so the plan had been from the get-go to really perfect our service style and food offering with the long-term plan that we would eventually open further sites.

What are the biggest hitters on your menu?

Arancini for sure – is there anything better than deep-fried rice balls dipped in a moreish sauce? We’ve had them on our menu since street food days but regularly change the flavouring. It’s a thing amongst our customer base and staff to have a favourite version of the arancini and we will often bring back the most popular ones at various times.

We know you source your ingredients with care. Can you tell us about some of your suppliers and why you chose them?

We try to use local suppliers at each location as much as possible and then will use specialist suppliers for some of the ‘very vegan’ ingredients. We use Stir Bakery for all our bread needs in Cambridge and Greengrocer in Norwich; Barsby for our fruit and veg in Cambridge and Easters in Norwich. Cambridge Juice Company provides our soft drinks and then we get our kombucha from Norfolk supplier Oichi. Some of our draught and bottle beer is from local brewer Wylde Sky. We will aim to have the same types of drinks on menus to ensure consistency, but these will often be a local version at each location.

We also introduced brand new items onto our menu in January from sustainable, zero-waste brand Symplicity. These items include ‘nduja’ sauce, ‘chorizo’ mince, cumin ‘lamb’ mince and a truffle and black pepper sauce. Incredibly, they’re made from fermented vegetables and are absolutely delicious.

What sparked the move to Cambridge and how’s the reception been?

We had visited Cambridge a few times just for days out and totally loved the vibe here and obviously the huge student population works well with our food offering too. There aren’t a huge number of vegan restaurants or eateries in Cambridge and so we felt we were bringing something that wasn’t being done elsewhere.

The reception that we have had so far has been phenomenal. The site is huge, three times the size of Norwich, but we are often fully booked through the weekends and have a really solid return rate which is the most important thing for us.

We’ll be introducing student and NHS discount in March, which we know will be really popular with customers across both sites – but especially so in Cambridge where there are a lot of students and NHS workers.

Going back 10 years, even five, vegan food was niche; today, it’s mainstream. What are your thoughts on that shift and the drivers behind it?

The main driver is, we think, ease of access to information. The narrative that milk, eggs and meat are essential to a healthy body have been completely dismantled. Then there’s the links between climate change and animal agriculture that cannot be ignored and we are experiencing real-time disruption from the effects of this. It is only a matter of time before the scales shift and there are more vegan/veggies than not.

If we were going to order one thing from the Tipsy Vegan menu, to introduce us to the menu, what should it be?

Well, as we offer small plates designed for sharing, we would be doing the menu an injustice by not recommending several! Coconut Crusted Bao Buns, Cacio e Pepe Arancini, Batata Harra and Mac n Cheese all washed down with a Strawberry & Hibiscus Alcohol-free Margarita would be our perfect order.

Visit thetipsyvegan.co.uk and follow @thetipsyvegangroup for more.