Organizing vegan potlucks, whether your goal is to promote veganism or whether you are interested in a vegan lifestyle for yourself, is a powerful way to reinforce food preparation as well as to exchange social support. When I organize potlucks, I am not only assisting people who are not yet vegan to gain food preparation skills and social connections, I am also helping to reinforce vegan eating for new and seasoned vegans. We often forget that the failure rate for someone who newly identifies as vegan is about 90 percent! Even though I have been vegan for over 6 years, I still learn a tremendous amount at the vegan potlucks that I host and others that I attend. This makes my vegan journey easier and more fun. For example, I learned about black salt at a Healthy Vegan Potluck I hosted; it is great for “no-egg” salad and savory stews.
You can help people curious about the vegan lifestyle by exposing them to a plethora of easy, fun and nutritious vegan dishes as well as have them practice vegan food preparation by providing detailed guidelines and ideas for the potluck item they bring.
I recommend studying meetup sites for multiple groups before creating your own. Here are the guidelines for my group, Madison Area Healthy Vegan Meetup . You will want to be specific about how to RSVP, whether children are welcome, displaying ingredients for potluck items and more.
You may also consider having a theme for your group. My group has a theme of healthy eating. It is a good idea to solicit input from your members every now and then. Recently I sent out a message to gauge interest in a new format of potluck, combining healthy eating with meditation, eating in silence for 10 minutes (a concept I learned from another meetup) and packing future meals from the potluck items, in addition to enjoying a meal together. I received a strong response back with my membership which confirmed that there was indeed interest in mindful eating.
Note that Meetup.com is not the only way (or even the best way) to set up a meetup. You can start a group as a private Facebook group or through your own website or email list. There are advantages and disadvantages to scheduling events through Meetup.com. It costs $89 every 6 months and is not as user friendly as it should be for the price. On the other hand, people go to Meetup.com to find groups in their local area that reflect their interests. I gain several new members every week without doing anything and Madison Healthy Vegan is now approaching 1,000 members.
An additional benefit to running your own group is that you can cross-promote events for similar groups and highlight key events of interest to your membership. You can also use your list to create a meetup within a larger event such as a vegan festival or a wellness fair or you can just get the word out there about events relevant to your members.
If you are uncomfortable starting a new group, you may consider starting out by volunteering to be a co-organizer of an existing group or simply informally gathering friends and acquaintances for a vegan potluck!
Sonya Sidky is a certified Master Vegan Lifestyle Coach and Educator.
Her website is https://actualizedvegan.com
great piece. our group, Vegan Kalamazoo, does a few potlucks each year. I would add:
1) have a lot of gluten free offerings (the two groups are converging, and I think this boosts attendance). It also gives you a whole new group to promote to.
2) vegan queso for the win! It is easy to make, cheap, and feeds a lot; and REALLY impresses the non vegans. there lots of recipes for it out there, including Instapot ones
3) state explicitly that nonvegans are welcome. we add this to all our events: “As always, at Vegan Kalamazoo events, everyone is welcome, including vegans, vegetarians, omnivores, and vegans-in-progress. However, out of respect for our mission, we request that you only order / consume vegan food at this event.”
I love this post and your additions. Thanks, Sonya and Hillary!