We have just introduced a VEGAN CHEESE (Notzarella) option following an increase in customers requesting “No Cheese” Some are Vegans and others Dairy or Lactose intolerant.
In the past we offered a Garlic infused olive oil addition to stop the ingredients drying out without the cheese topping, then suggested we would add their own vegan cheese if they wanted to bring it in when ordering
My supplier has added this Notzarella Vegan Cheese to their range so we put it in as an option only yesterday. Posted it on Facebook and on 2 Vegan Facebook sites and it has gone ballistic in views (almost 2,000 in 12 hours on our site) with many positive comments.
We are charging a small premium ($1.80 for 10" @ 45gm, $2.80 for 13" @85gm and $3.80 for 15" @ 120gm).
Usage on pizzas is very light due to poor melting quality.
Our supplier is charging a modest $18.80 kg which is far cheaper than the $7 for 200gm for packs at supermarkets
Has anyone else added Vegan Cheese as an option?
What is your request for such cheese if any?
Just seeing it aa a niche not being filled by many outlets here
Dave
We use Daiya. Good melt, decent flavor. It’s the best alternative I’ve found. We are in the same mall as an organic grocery (people very diet conscious) and we sell 20-30 dairy-free pizzas a week at least.
Actually we are now getting a decent melt with this cheese, far better than other types that customers had brought in themselves.
Feedback has been good plus last night we found out we are the only outlet for about 30km radius that is doing Vegan cheese on pizzas.
Had to make special batch of dough without our sour dough additive (milk based) or eggs and then rolled out 10" and 13" sizes, par baked them and bagged and froze them.
Seeing we have a captive market I am looking at adding some “Vegan” pizzas outside of our range of vegetarian pizzas. Just got to find a wholesaler of Vegan products. A small but growing niche market that we can grab before anyone else does. Was in early with offering Gluten Free bases and built a strong following on this so Vegan may be our next step as an early innovator in the pizza industry.
I have really considered adding this option to our menu. Haven’t had many requests myself, but I am sure other orders takers get them. Like you are doing, with the proper promotion it will help to sell itself! Need to contact my suppliers for options.
@wa dave what brand gluten free do you use? We have tried a couple options, they aren’t great.
The gluten free bases we use we buy in frozen, They are fantastic and taste like ordinary bases , a bit stiff but plenty of chew. Ours are Australia made and the brand, Julians, are by far the best we have tried
We have a large vegan demographic and they prefer Daiya, so that’s what we use.
This is our first Vegan pizza (out side of our regular vegetarian variants) with Hummus as a base sauce topped with baby spinach leaves, laved mini roma tomatoes and thinly sliced red onion and topped with vegan cheese Notzarella (Picture shows it with Mozzarella as I wanted tp taste it ;))
We have a second variant with garlic infused olive oil as a base with cinnamon infusd sweet potato, chopped kale, mini roma tomatoes, Notzarella vegan cheese and cubes of tofu
Dave