The Stanford Inn by the Sea knows vegan. Based in Mendocino, California, the 41-room oceanside bed and breakfast was experimenting with all vegan cooking before it was cool to do so. But things have shifted since 2004 when the Stanford officially introduced an all-vegan dinner. (The property had been vegetarian since 1997). And various fractions of vegans have plenty of ideas (many of which differ) about what exactly constitutes “vegan” these days.
HOTELS spoke with Stanford Inn’s Jeff Stanford (who co-owns the property with his wife Joan) about their history and what vegan diners look for today.
HOTELS: What made you guys take that leap so early on you know before it was cool to be a vegan, especially as a hotel property? Were you guys worried at the time about isolating people who might be looking for more dining options?
Jeff Stanford: We originally did a vegetarian restaurant, and when we told everybody we were vegetarian, it really made a whole bunch of guests mad that didn’t know we were vegetarian. We lost a bunch of guests for that, and I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve got to be more careful next time I announce any changes.’ In 2004, I found out what goes in, goes on with dairy. According to the Humane Society of the United States, there’s no way to do dairy, even when you’re doing it organically and humanely. So I just became instantly vegan.
So then I told the kitchen –we’re going to turn the restaurant at night to vegan. It took a while, because we had to develop recipes. They weren’t out there really at a high level of food. Then we moved to turn the breakfast vegan, but we’re going to make the eggs, until further notice, cost US$2 extra for outside diners.
It took me until 2011, and I said, that’s it, we’re not having any more dairy or eggs. So that was seven years ago.
H: Do you think what you do is scalable for larger hotel companies and brands?
No, I don’t, but I’m going to tell you the truth. This is our choice. This is the way we want to live, and my wife and I have both been therapists and educators. And we believe that what we do can be done, but you have to be satisfied on less income and that’s just the fact of the matter because there’s two things that are going on that are principal. One is that there are a lot of people that don’t want to be reminded about the decisions that they are making. Therefore, we piss them off because we’re reminding them that they’re making some bad decisions, and they want to deal with it. They’re not ready to make a change, but they are aware, and they want to keep that awareness up, they want to keep a boundary between that awareness and their ordinary life.
H: You guys avoid the word ‘vegan,’ focusing on plant-based. Why?
JS: The real reason is, vegans are crazy! So many of them are doing it for health reasons, and they’re absolutely overly concerned about themselves. There’s this newer thing called SOS: no salt, oil or sugar — and some vegans consider these things not part of a whole food vegan diet.