This couple owns vegan restaurants in California. They started eating meat and their clientele is furious
This couple owns vegan restaurants in California. They started eating meat and their clientele is furious
By Christine Armario, The Associated Press (reported by National Post) May 6, 2016
This undated photo provided by Cafe Gratitude shows owners Matthew and Terces Engelhart at their farm in Vacaville, Calif. Angry patrons and animal rights activists are calling on vegans to boycott the restaurant chain after learning that the Engelharts have begun eating meat and consuming animals raised on their private farm. ( Cafe Gratitude via AP)
LOS ANGELES — At the Cafe Gratitude restaurant chain in California, waiters serve plates of vegan rice bowls, vegetable pizzas and tempeh sandwiches with names such as “Gracious,” “Warm-Hearted” and “Magical.”
The last two weeks, though, have been anything but kind.
Angry patrons and animal rights activists are calling on vegans to boycott the restaurants after learning that owners Matthew and Terces Engelhart have begun eating meat and consuming animals raised on their private farm.
“The brand has betrayed my trust by turning around and killing the animals that trust them on their property,” said Anita Carswell, a communications manager for In Defence of Animals who says she won’t eat at Cafe Gratitude again.
This Wednesday, May 4, 2016 photo shows Cafe Gratitude restaurant in Los Angeles. ( Nick Ut / AP )
Though the restaurants continue to serve only plant-based food, the couple’s decision has provoked a heated backlash in a state where vegan restaurants and juice bars can be as easy to find as burgers and barbecue.
Death threats were left at the couple’s Be Love Farm in Northern California and demonstrators gathered outside a Cafe Gratitude restaurant in Los Angeles last week. Meanwhile, groups such as In Defence of Animals are calling on the couple to turn their farm into an animal sanctuary.
The Engelharts themselves declined an interview request, but Terces Engelhart’s son and Cafe Gratitude’s chief operating officer said the feud against Cafe Gratitude has unfairly cast his mother and stepfather as deceptive animal killers.
“I personally feel it’s a little illogical to require my parents to remain vegan for the rest of their lives just because they created a vegan restaurant at a point in time that they were vegan,” Cary Mosier said.
The family’s chain includes six Cafe Gratitude restaurants and two Mexican vegan eateries called Gracias Madre in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Matthew and Terces Engelhart were vegetarians for nearly 40 years, but decided to return to eating meat after leaving San Francisco and starting a farm about 55 miles away in Vacaville. They started with eggs and cheese from the farm’s chickens and cows. Then, after one old cow had to be put down, they decided it made sense to incorporate meat into their diets as well.
In a blog post, Terces Engelhart wrote the transition was a “necessary and important part of our own growth as well as the sustainability of our farm.”
The entry was posted in February 2015 but went largely unnoticed until a few weeks ago, when it was shared and went viral on vegan and animal rights websites. The couple is now being inundated with messages on Facebook and social media forums criticizing them as “flesh eaters” and calling them hypocrites for owning vegan restaurants but eating meat at home.
“If they market themselves on ethics, they should follow through on that,” Carswell said.
Mosier said his parents have “literally two cows,” and his mother dotes on them, even rubbing them regularly with coconut oil. While the restaurants are vegan, he said the company has never promoted a “meat is murder” viewpoint.
“I understand people can disagree with eating meat or killing animals,” he said. “But to put those beliefs on another person and call them a liar if they don’t do it, I think, is heading in the wrong direction.
“And if you’re a vegan, why would you want to close and boycott, frankly, the largest vegan restaurant group in California?”
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BETRAYAL? Oh, do I know this kind of betrayal. Back in the early 70s, before I was married, I had a relationship with an American girl who was living with me, who decided that we should both go on a strict brown rice diet, which was in vogue at the time. After weeks of eating nothing but brown rice I was starving, and went out for a walk around the corner, past a restaurant with a big glass window, looked inside and there was my in-house "dietitian" eating a hamburger. That was the end of the diet and the relationship.
“I personally feel it’s a little illogical to require my parents to remain vegan for the rest of their lives just because they created a vegan restaurant at a point in time that they were vegan,” Cary Mosier said.
I agree. I mean if the restaurants are still vegan (though I don't know why one would ant one to be) then what are they bitching about? I don't expect the CEO of Kellogg's to eat cereal for breakfast every morning.
Becoming vegan isn't that hard to do . Staying vegan is very hard .
Vegan is Ojibwe for ''can't hunt''.
To make these people happy, I guess all the country's livestock farms would have to stop killing animals, and turn their facilities into sanctuaries filled with more animals than they could support, with each one being spayed or neutered to keep them from multiplying. The owners would have to find completely new jobs, and find a way to feed and care for the tens of thousands of animals on their sanctuaries, as well as manage their waste, all at the owners' expense. Pets would all have to switch to vegan pet food. Zoos would have to feed their carnivores tofu, and leather would become a thing of the past. Sounds reasonable. /s
The dumbest thing ever for anyone to be offended by
These people need to get over themselves
Eat somewhere else
What idiots.
I have a friend who is a vegan and has her own website about being vegan. She is easy going about it. But for most vegans, being vegan is not a "lifestyle" but more akin to a religion. They are never going to understand owning a vegan restaurant while not walking the walk. I can understand boycotting (if one feels inclined). The death threats are kind of bizarre, since they wouldn't kill an animal, but hey, it's OK to kill a person.
I side with the customers. And I am not vegan or vegetarian and have even made fun of such people at various times.
The owners seem to be saying they became meat eaters for convenience and /or financial reasons.
I can see why this would upset dedicated vegan practitioners. Maybe the couple should sell the restaurants.
Maybe the couple should sell the restaurants.
Maybe the disturbed (in more ways than one) customers should simply eat elsewhere, if all the customers boycott the restaurant it will disappear based on supply and demand as it should rather than because someone is offended
IMO the vegan customers are acting like a cult - reminiscent of Scientology. Try to leave the fold and be made to suffer. Isn't there a religion with a similar method?
Buzz
Totally agree if they do not want to eat in the restaurant, they should go somewhere else.
Stereotypical vegans. Close the restaurants the tell the vegans to fuck off. Or maybe sell the restaurants and tell the vegans to fuck off.
Then tell them you've been putting dog meant, whole cow's milk and goat's cheese in all their meals from the very beginning...