Vegly & It's Roots

Vegly came about when I decided to go Vegan after watching Earthling Ed speak about the impact of the meat & dairy industry on our planet, bodies, and brains.

Vegly helps you find vegan friendly places to eat, drink, and socialize in your city so that you can eliminate the guesswork of determining what places serve cruelty-free foods (or not).

Vegly is a passion project created by myself (Nikush Dalia), a plant-based web developer working out of Pittsburgh.

The First Vegan Food Discovery App

Upon starting my journey as a vegan, I figured there would be an easy way to find restaurants that would serve vegan foods so that I could filter out the places that don't care about being plant-based.

I found sites like HappyCow and Google and Yelp helpful but they weren't quite what I hoped for. HappyCow is vegetarian and vegan friendly, which is great, but in my opinion veganism couldn't be farther from being vegetarian. Vegans have completely different reasons for going vegan than people who decide to go vegetarian.

Why is it so hard to find places in my city that respect vegans enoughto serve a decent selection of plant-based foods?

This is the question that led me to create Vegly.

HappyCow/Google/Yelp doesn't help enough?

No. At least not in my city (Pittsburgh). Upon going vegan, I was able to find 10-15 places that served plant-based foods.

I got tired of them quickly. When I ate meat/dairy products, it seemed like the options were endless. I felt trapped. Is this reality for a vegan? Do we only rely on a select few restaurants, and home cooked foods? The answer is no.

The more I looked into it, I realized there were so many restaurants that already offered plant-based substitutes and foods on their menus, but they just weren't being recognized on Google, Yelp, or HappyCow. What a goddamn shame.

So, What's The Real Issue?

How is it that all these restaurants go under the radar on Google/Yelp/HappyCow?

Hyperlocalization was the answer.

These other services rely on mass systematic data and user input. How can you try to show plant-based restaurants from a mass systematic perspective when the world is pushing so quickly towards being plant-based every single day of our lives? You can't. You need people who know their city, and restaurant owners that care about serving cruelty-free foods. One restaurant at a time, one city at a time.

How do you plan to be better?

Our goal is to create not only a app, but a community of vegans trying to move the culture forward by making it easier and easier to take the plunge into a plant-based diet.

We want the community, restaurant owners, local city experts, and vegan enthusiasts to help create the most vegan centered restaurant discovery platform, so that no one can say "I tried going vegan but just couldn't find anywhere to eat".

We are driving to inspire restaurants to start serving plant-based foods.

Okay, What If They Only Serve Salads?

We try our very best to vet these places out. If we include them on our site, they would have the Few Vegan Options label. In general, we only list places that clearly have Vegan items on their menus.

What's Next for Vegly?

Currently, we are only operate in Pittsburgh, but we are expanding into other under-represented cities, as well as add more functionality.

We will soon be making it possible for owners to update their own menus and information, while also adding vegan specific reviews, blogs, etc. Please contact us if you have any ideas or something that might make the app better!