What "fully vegan" actually means — and how we verify it

Most vegan directories are not honest about what their "fully vegan"
tag means. Some let restaurants self-label. Some inherit tags from
upstream data sources (OpenStreetMap, Foursquare, Google Places) and
never re-check. Some use a vague "vegan-friendly" badge that covers
everything from a single salad on the menu to a fully plant-based
kitchen.

We've spent over a year cleaning this up on PlantsPack. Here's why
it matters and what the actual verification process looks like.

The two failure modes

Failure mode #1: trusting the source data.

Most of our places start their life as imports from OpenStreetMap or
similar. OSM contributors are well-intentioned but inconsistent —
the diet:vegan=only tag is sometimes applied to places that have
one vegan menu and ten meat dishes. Inheriting that tag without
checking lands you with "fully vegan" labels on places that aren't.

Failure mode #2: trusting the restaurant.

A restaurant has every incentive to claim "fully vegan" because it
attracts a more loyal customer. Vegans repeat-visit, post about it,
review it. The downside of mis-labelling is small (a complaint email)
compared to the upside of being on the "100% vegan" list. So
self-labelling, even from honest restaurants, is biased upward.

What "fully vegan" should mean

There's one workable definition:

Every item on the menu — including specials, drinks, desserts,
condiments, and breads — is vegan. No exceptions. The kitchen does
not handle animal products at all.

That last clause matters. A restaurant with a 100% vegan menu but a
kitchen that also handles a non-vegan catering business is different
from a kitchen that has never touched animal protein. Strict-vegan
travellers care about cross-contamination; casual plant-based eaters
mostly don't. We mark both as "fully vegan" today, but the long
roadmap includes splitting "fully vegan kitchen" vs. "fully vegan
menu" as separate tags.

The verification process

Every place tagged fully_vegan on PlantsPack with the
is_verified = true flag has gone through this check:

Source check. What does the venue's own website / menu page
say? Is "vegan", "vegano", "vegetalisch", or the local-language
equivalent visible on the page?
Menu PDF or full menu page. We look at the most recent menu
we can find. If desserts or drinks are missing from the public
menu, we flag the place "needs verification" and don't tag
is_verified until we resolve.
Recent reviews. Any review in the last 90 days mentioning
meat, dairy, or honey items? If so, it's a soft veto.
Cuisine-specific knowledge. Some cuisines have hidden animal
ingredients (kimchi often has fish sauce, certain wines use
isinglass, some breads use eggs). A "vegan" tag on a place that
serves these without explicit substitution gets a closer look.
AI-assisted web search. We use search to surface menu items
the venue might not have on their site (third-party review
mentions, social media). Helpful for places without a website.

If the place passes all five, it gets is_verified = true. Otherwise
it stays at verification_level = 2 (machine-confidence) and we
revisit later.

Why our "fully vegan" numbers are smaller than other directories

A consequence of this process: PlantsPack's verified fully-vegan
counts are visibly smaller than what you'll see on HappyCow or
Google Maps for the same city. That's deliberate.

If we listed 200 fully-vegan places in Berlin and only 30 of them
had actually been checked, the "fully vegan" tag would mean nothing
to a strict-vegan traveller. So we don't. We'd rather under-promise
and be trusted than over-claim and get caught.

What you can do

Click "report update" on any place page where the tag is wrong.
Corrections flow into a daily review queue.
If you're a venue owner, the same form has a section for owner
claims — you can self-report your menu changes and we'll fold
them in.
If you find a fully-vegan place we haven't listed yet,
add it — we audit submissions within 7 days.

PlantsPack is funded by supporters, not paid listings. We don't take
money to list a place, change its rating, or move it up search
results. That's structural — the "no paid listings, ever" rule is
what lets the verification process stay honest. Become a supporter
for €3/month →