From the category archives:

Living With Meat Eaters

Winning the Grocery Game

by Jason on March 5, 2010

I can’t remember the last time I talked with another vegan about this and they didn’t admit to playing the grocery game. It’s one of those instinctive things that we just do, maybe as humans, maybe just as vegans, but hey, it’s a fun way to pass the time.

What’s the grocery game? Simple: when you’re waiting in line at the cashier, look at the purchases of the person in front of you. If everything on the belt is vegan, it’s a win!

For me, it doesn’t really matter if they’re just buying a bottle of soda; I like to win so I make the rules easy. Some people have higher standards, so they’ll work out elaborate bonus point scoring systems incorporating raw foods, unprocessed items, etc. You probably have your own guidelines, and today’s post isn’t about how to play the grocery game, it’s how to really win.

“Winning” the grocery game is a missed opportunity

Nobody likes to talk about this, but there aren’t a lot of vegans out there. I hear from lots of you (via replies to the newsletter, mostly) that you don’t even know a single other vegan in your city or town. And yet, I’m sure some of you have “won” the grocery game and then went on with your lives wondering why you can’t meet more vegans.

It’d be awesome if we could turn those chance victories into lasting friendships, wouldn’t it?

There are lots of reasons why this doesn’t happen. Starting a conversation with a stranger is outside of a lot of our comfort zones. We worry that it can come off a bit stalker-y. The other person might not even be vegan. The other person might be insane. Maybe it’d make veganism look bad. And so on.

For those reasons, this isn’t a post about how to talk to strangers (in all honesty, pickup guides are probably the best resource for that – as I’ve said before, I recommend The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (affiliate link); it’s not a how-to guide but it’s an entertaining story and I got a lot of outreach ideas from it, believe it or not.)

Instead, I’m recommending that you be open to being approached when you’re shopping. Remember, the person behind you might be playing the grocery game too! Here are a few ways to create opportunities:

If you’re with someone else, mention veganism in your conversation while you’re waiting. Position yourself as best as you can (I know, it’s a narrow aisle, but be aware of your surroundings) so the person behind you can interrupt your conversation. Try talking specifically about a particular product, and how you’re wondering what it’ll be like, or how you like to serve it.

If you’re by yourself, please don’t talk to yourself in lieu of option one Instead, try standing sideways, facing the belt, so your back isn’t to the person behind or in front of you. Relax. Smile a little. Now’s not the time to check your email or read one of the magazines or any of those things that means someone will have to interrupt you to start a conversation.

If you decide you want to start the conversation, try asking about a product the other person is buying. It’s easy, relevant, and gives the other person a chance to decide if they want to talk to you. If they’re a grocery game player too, they’ll be able to scan your purchases at this point and then you’ll have done them a favour of creating the opening.

This is the kind of thing that might come up in your lives once or twice in a year, or maybe a decade, but it’d be a shame to miss out on. It’s a simple thing to be aware of, so next time you’re shopping and you’re playing the grocery game, remember that the people around you might be doing the same thing.

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Vegan grocery shopping: be brave

by Jason on March 3, 2010

Amazingly, there's more than cereal for vegans beyond the produce section

This week we’re going to look at vegan grocery shopping with some practical tips and fun things you can do to make the most of your shopping experience – the majority of you don’t have access to an all-vegan grocery store, which means you’re stuck in a shop with the usual dairy, egg, fish and butcher sections. Here’s the first installment of your survival guide:

Be brave; assume nothing

I don’t know about you, but have a hard time going near the rows of refrigerated and frozen animal parts in the butcher section. Most of the time the animal’s been cut up well beyond recognition, which is usually a little better than looking at a severed head, for instance, but sometimes it can get disturbing.

The interesting thing is that sometimes grocery stockers get… creative. There are often hidden gems (or just basic supplies) in the store that you’d never see if you stick entirely to the produce, bread, and canned foods sections.

The 3 “secret spots” most vegans don’t look

Here are some sections of the store that you might be avoiding, but there can be some gems in there, either through misunderstandings from the stockers or simple happenstance:

The meat department. I’ve found Tofurkey sausages in the bacon section, and sometimes there’s a weird ethnic section with interesting vegan-friendly options. (It could be any type of food, and I don’t mean the ethnicity is weird, just that the assortment of foods that are associated together paint a strange picture of a style of cuisine, is all.)

The fish counter. Often this is next to the deli, and some strange shelf capacity overrun issues can push Actually Tasty Food into this area. In my regular store, the sushi section tends to be here, which is mostly takeout, and while it does include some veg options there are also the supplies to make rolls at home.

Frozen meats. In a lot of stores vegetarian frozen products will have their own section (isn’t it amazing that there are enough of them now?) but even then, things can slip. I’ve recently found veggie chicken strips sitting right next to frozen (real) chicken breasts, and sometimes we’ll discover a brand new “just happens to be vegan but not marketed that way” product from a new company that only has one SKU in the store, so it gets put in the “we have room for this here” spot, far from anything else you as a vegan would associate it with.

Do a quarterly audit

Despite the promise of vegan riches, the sad fact is that you have to wade (not literally, thank goodness) through a lot of dead animals to find things, and this can be disturbing and depressing if done on a regular basis. I recommend you conduct an “audit” of your store every three months or so (do it when the seasons change, for example.) Pay attention to the three “secret spots” I mentioned earlier, but really, check out every foot of shelving – you might be pleasantly surprised at what you’ll find!

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We are the first followers

February 17, 2010

I’ve been having a hard time getting Derek Siver’s Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy talk out of my head. Here’s something to fill 3 whole minutes of your day:

If you prefer to read, Derek posted the full transcript here, but I’ll excerpt the Big Idea for you:
It was the first follower that transformed a [...]

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Can’t, Won’t, or Don’t?

January 13, 2010

One of the things that’s fascinated me over the years is the reaction I hear from vegans when they scan an ingredients list on a new product and find an animal product. It might just be an innocent choice of words, but I always think there’s something more going on:
“I can’t eat that”: this is [...]

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