Vegetarianism is on the rise, people are choosing lower meat content diets because of health benefits or even personal health conditions.

But there is a new form of diet appearing to become a much more popular choice for the health conscious who still want to consume meat occasionally.

How does this affect your business though? Well you might want to take at look at your menu…

Maybe you have a large number of meat dish options for your patrons on your menu, but only a small number of vegetarian options.

We think it’s about time you maybe took a look at the ‘veggie’ options you are currently offering, with many people now choosing a range of vegetarian options instead.

Semi-vegetarianism is sometimes referred to as being a ‘cheating vegetarian’, but it is much more common than you might have realised.

With many processed meats being declared as carcinogens and vegetarian options becoming much more prominent, plenty of people are choosing to follow a mainly vegetarian diet with the odd bit of meat for a protein boost, or it could simply be down the the rising price of meat.

Stronger flexitarians may decide on this diet based upon animal cruelty beliefs, and when eating meat source it from ethically sound, animal welfare conscious farms or establishments.

This might be seen as cheating by many ‘true’ vegetarians, but for large portions of the world this is a cultural norm but without a moral decision for this lifestyle choice being made.

Meat prices can be much higher in less economically developed portions of the world, when compared to income levels, and their menus will have been tweaked to account for this.

Mango and guacamole tacos #foodporn #nofilter #vegetarian #flexitarian #sodelicious #tacos

A photo posted by Kerry (@kerrynorton25) on Jul 26, 2016 at 2:48pm PDT

But what can we learn as restaurateurs from this change?

The popularity of East-Asian street food that contains little or no meat, is proof that many prefer a fresh, less meat-reliant dishes for not only taste reasons, but the health benefits.

Many Hindu Indian restaurants offer no beef dishes, and instead have incredible flavoursome vegetarian dishes, and not a bit of meat in sight.

Let’s think about this for a second, there are huge margins to be made without requiring meat in a dish.

Vegetables are cheap, can be paired with other flavours and prepared in a variety of ways that enhance the colours on a diners plate.

It might be worth taking a look at your menu to see if you have enough vegetarian options for this growing group of ‘semi-veggies’…