Last week a group of us headed along to Tofu Vegan on Charlotte Street to celebrate my husband’s birthday because he absolutely loves the place.
The food is consistently excellent, the menu is huge, and every single dish on our table had us declaring it the best of the night.
But did you know that Tofu Vegan is part of a culinary empire that is not completely cruelty-free?
Read more below.
The dining room in Fitzrovia was absolutely packed and staff were running around trying to keep up with the hungry masses while groups hovered hopefully near the entrance waiting for tables. Lots of people were turned away because there just wasn’t any space.
At this point, turning up without a booking at some Tofu Vegan is a fool’s errand.
In just over five years, Tofu Vegan has grown into a six restaurant operation with five locations across London and another in Brighton. That is an astonishing achievement in a hospitality climate that has absolutely battered vegan businesses over the past few years.
But I have found myself thinking a lot recently about what this success story represents and what it says about vegan business in 2026.
For people unaware, Tofu Vegan founder Zhang Chao is already a hugely successful restaurateur with multiple non-vegan restaurants across London, including four locations of Xi’an BiangBiang Noodles alongside many others. While those restaurants do offer some plant-based dishes, they are very much not vegan spaces, serving meat, seafood, and animal products including chicken, beef, and fish.
Zhang Chao has spoken publicly before about wanting to encourage more people to eat vegan food and that desire helped inspire Tofu Vegan, despite him not being vegan himself.
And this is where things become complicated for my vegan brain and heart.
One of the most successful vegan restaurant chains in the UK has been built in part using money generated through non-vegan restaurant ventures.
This is not me criticising Tofu Vegan. I adore eating there and clearly thousands of other people do too. The restaurants are thriving in a way most vegan businesses can only dream about right now.
But I do think this situation reflects a wider dilemma many vegans increasingly find ourselves navigating.
Some of the vegan products we buy come from supermarkets that aggressively push meat, dairy, and eggs. Some vegan toiletries and cosmetics come from corporations with long histories tied to animal testing or exploitative supply chains. And now some of our most successful vegan restaurants are linked financially to broader hospitality groups built partly on non-vegan dining.
It raises uncomfortable questions.
When we spend money in vegan restaurants owned within wider non-vegan business structures, are we indirectly helping support those other businesses too? Are vegan diners subsidising non-vegan ventures? Is this simply the unavoidable reality of trying to exist ethically inside capitalism?
I don’t think there is a neat answer.
The reality is that veganism and capitalism are becoming increasingly intertwined and messy. As vegan products become more mainstream and commercially attractive, it may become harder and harder to completely separate our spending from corporations, investors, and industries that remain deeply entangled with animal exploitation.
Maybe this is simply the next phase of vegan consumer culture or maybe it is something we should be discussing more openly as a movement.
Either way, I know one thing for certain. The salt and pepper tofu at Tofu Vegan is irrestible.
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I love this post and it is something I think a lot about too. I also love Tofu Vegan – and have no intention of stopping going there – but am really making an effort to prioritise my support for vegan owned businesses.
I used to love Floozies Cookies – and thought Holy Carrot was pretty good – but would no longer visit either as they have both taken the step back from being fully vegan (and in the case of Floozies are no longer even vegetarian). A vegan business that takes a step backwards is to me so much worse than a non-vegan business offering more vegan options.
If a business is vegan owned there is so much less chance that profit will be prioritised over ethics – and have lost too many properly vegan businesses at the expense of non-vegan businesses.
Yeah, it feels like we have less and less vegan places every month
Wouldn’t you prefer the owner to open a vegan restaurant rather than a meat eating one? It’s a win for me even if they aren’t vegan. I mainly eat in vegan places and support vegan business, the more cruelty free places there are, the better. A non vegan business owner opening a vegan restaurant means there’s more cruelty free places to eat, which I feel is great as how many other non vegan business owners just open meat places.
Of course I prefer he opens vegan places but I’m just starting a discussion about how our vegan money is probably subsidising the non-vegan places he owns when they have a bad month. You know what I mean? It’s complicated