There was a time, not that long ago, when I struggled to keep up with newly-opened vegan food businesses in London.
There was a green culinary boom taking place in the UK capital that was tough to track and I’d often find myself being the last to know about a new eatery.
Sadly, there now appears to be another new trend rapidly spreading around town which is equally as exhausting to document.
Vegan restaurant closures.
I’m not here to do a deep dive into why these businesses are closing (mostly because I’m too lazy for investigative journalism) but I did want to take this opportunity to give a shout out to a few locations that had been feeding the vegan and vegan-curious in London but which have now turned out the lights for good.
The huge (and hugely-popular) Club Mexicana on Commercial Street, Shoreditch recently closed quite abruptly. This loss came as a shock to the community as the restaurant had been promoting its offerings almost until the day it was shuttered.
Fans of the Mexican-inspired eatery can still enjoy their favourite menu items at two continuing locations, Soho and Mayfair. Click here to get more information and booking details. Use it or lose it people!
This listicle isn’t my favourite thing to do, but let me rush through these recent closures.
I won’t write too many words on Unity Diner as I only recently mentioned its closure on the blog.
However, I did want to include the sad news again as reminder that even the most popular and beloved of our vegan restaurants can be at risk in the current economic climate. London real estate is brutal and rents are skyrocketing.
The neighbourhood around the Unity Diner is a veritable graveyard of food businesses with aforementioned Club Mexicana just around the corner.
Unity Diner revenue was used to support the animal protection work of Surge Sanctuary. Click here to read about supporting the sanctuary moving forward.
Plants by Deliciously Ella in Mayfair closed before I ever got a chance to dine there, so I am unable to speak on their menu.
I can only imagine how incredibly expensive it must be to run a restaurant in one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in London. The rent. The business rates. The running costs.
Thinking about the outgoings of this recently departed restaurant makes my head spin!
Clean Kitchen disappearing from Battersea isn’t such a huge surprise and truth be told, we lost them as a vegan business prior to them shuttering.
This once-vegan restaurant chain managed to open multiple sites around London including Camden, Soho, and Notting Hill but one-by-one these sites closed. The Soho site closed and reopened a number of times prior to disappearing completely.
Battersea Power Station remained the final asset standing for the brand until the investors demanded animal products be added to the menu, a moved which forced vegan co-founder Verity Bowditch to emotionally walk away.
The closure of this final Clean Kitchen site wasn’t far behind.
Yes, the news is true.
The Camden site of much-adored fast food chain What The Pitta is gone. I don’t know when this happened or even why, but it was one of my favourite places to go for comfort food. Those loaded doner fries!
There is a silver lining if you are a fan of What The Pitta. The Brighton and Brick Lane outlets are still trading with their delicious kebabs and side. Click here for more information.
This one is a bit of a mystery to me but I’m sad to say that Wulf & Lamb appears to have disappeared off the face of the planet.
The image I’ve shared shows the Google listing for the Marylebone branch featuring the ominous announcement Permanently Closed.
A few minutes more searching online brings up zero proof that the company exists in any form. This means the original site in Chelsea and the short-lived Wulf deli near Oxford Circus are also shuttered.
If you know differently about the future of Wulf & Lamb, please comment and share updates with us all.
And that’s an invitation for your comments giving updates on not only other vegan restaurants we’ve lost, but also new and surviving businesses we need to know about.
Post your sad news and hot new tips into the comments section!
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Similar story in Manchester. Before Christmas we ordered a take away from What the Pitta and the loaded fries we so epic that we decided we would order the same the following night. But it wasn’t to be as they just closed overnight without a word of warning!
Oh yeah. I forgot about the location up there. So sad!
I am so sad about Club Mexicana – always seemed so busy. Really strange that there is no comment about this on their Instagram…
Noticeably many of these closures are vegan owned businesses which makes it more depressing.
There are new vegan restaurants springing up at the same time but as with Clean Kitchen you know they can always go to the dark side if they feel it is financially advantageous.
Also never knew about Plants by De closing.
Feels like we need an upsurge in grassroots vegan support for vegan owned businesses…
Club Mexicana is always, and I mean always busy. After 7pm, it’s impossible to get in there without a reservation. I’m devastated, but also surprised because last summer they sent out emails looking for investors into their business and were looking to open more branches.
Maybe it was becuase the Taco Tuesday offering was too expensive to run? They didn’t run it at there different locations, just the shoreditch one. There normal menu was just too expensive for what it was.
Having previously worked for a well-known vegan restaurant in London, it saddens me so much to see that these places struggle to survive. You honestly wouldn’t believe how hard these people work, despite pay in this industry being extremely low. It is just so expensive to run and the margins are so tight. Even a small increase in rent can be a devastating final blow. Ultimately, I believe it is the rent that is crushing these businesses.
I’ve really noticed the last few years that popular, busy businesses are closing down. In the past places would clearly struggle for customers. But in recent years it’s all about rising costs rather than no customers. It’s really sad. The number of customers needed to deal with the high costs now is rarely possible.
It’s so gutting. Thought I was nearly numb to it but the sudden loss of club mexicana was a new level! But it’s not that surprising.
It’ll get focus as a vegan thing. And sure, while the number of vegans rises slowly, there still aren’t enough to support loads of different places sadly. But it’s a much wider issue than that.
2022 and 2023 were record years for business closures. 2024 will almost certainly beat that. That’s not vegan business, it’s all business. It just happens that vegan businesses tend to be small and fairly new, so at risk. The issue is the insane cost rises businesses face. A cafe owner told me he’d gone from profitable to a loss abruptly with energy bill rises and needed to charge over £5 a coffee to stand a chance, which he couldn’t and wouldn’t.
We’ll just end up with big bland chains at this rate. People can’t afford to eat out as much, nightlife is suffering from the same problem. Some will make it a vegan demand thing. But that ignores the economic reality. Veganism growing or declining depends on the time period you look at. It’s been an incredible ten years for growth, but attracting loads of new people will always mean reducing the number of new people who stick with it. It’ll be up and down regularly but hopefully steadily growing long term.
There just isn’t enough of us to make endless vegan options in supermarkets profitable, or all the restaurants. What we can do is support the remaining all vegan brands and restaurants while they’re there rather than chains and supermarket branded goods.