Are you tired of scouring the aisles of your local grocery store just to find out they don’t have that marvelous vegan miso paste you saw recommended on Reddit?
Unfortunately, as amazing as supermarkets continue to be, it’s possible that they may not have a lot of the uniquely vegan food items one may need to cook a vegalicious Korean noodle soup recipe.
This is where vegan online stores come in— to provide you with specific vegan items you can’t find anywhere else and deliver them to your doorstep in just a few business days.
In this article, I’ll go over 5 of the best vegan online stores you can shop from.
Why Vegan Online Stores?
There are several reasons why a vegan may choose to purchase from a small vegan online store over massive online retailers like Amazon that also sell vegan products.
You Don’t Support Monopolies
Several issues make companies like Amazon unattractive in the eyes of those hoping for a fairer society. Although Amazon is a marketplace that allows everyone to promote their products, it’s not necessarily a fair environment as Amazon can negatively impact the bottom lines of merchants by increasing fees or undercutting them massively by launching similar products under a much cheaper Amazon brand.
A documentary called Amazon Rising gives its viewers an example of a Paintball store that decided to start selling on Amazon to help boost sales. They were doing great as they got a lot more exposure and were making much more than they did from their regular website and storefront, even with all the fees. However, eventually, Amazon caught wind of their success and started undercutting them.
Amazon went to the same suppliers as the small paintball shop, bought in bulk for a cheaper price, and started selling the same products for much less than the paintball store could. They effectively ran the business into the ground. No one would buy from them anymore, because they could find it all cheaper on Amazon.
This is effectively what monopolies do— they take over the marketplace and make it really difficult for smaller businesses to prosper. And because they have so many resources, they can easily undercut arising competition.
Ethical and Environmental Imperative
Apart from the aspects I’ve just mentioned, there are also negative environmental and labor practices that companies like Amazon are known to perpetuate.
It is well-documented that Amazon’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased from 2020 to 2021, a double-digit increase that has now occurred two years in a row.
Unfortunately, companies like Amazon can get away without any accountability by pledging to become carbon-neutral and purchasing carbon offsets to cancel out their emissions.
They invest in eco-friendly projects that plant trees, protect forests, or promote clean energy, which is commendable but doesn’t result in real-world reductions in the planet-heating CO2 building up in our atmosphere.
Monopolies like Amazon are also known to have poor labor practices, and if you live in the United States, you’re probably well aware of the news. Whether it’s long working hours, unsafe working conditions, low pay, limited benefits, surveillance, or anti-union tactics, Amazon is far from being an ethical company.
Unique Products
If you’re trying to find a unique product, you may often find that large retailers don’t have as many options available.
However, an online store that solely serves vegan customers will surely have a wider variety of meat and cheese substitutes, dips, spreads, sauces, and flours— you name it!
To give you a quick example, I and my wife love to make homemade seitan as it’s way more delicious than the store-bought version that tends to have an unpleasant rubbery texture.
But to make our seitan, we need a specific type of flour called “gluten flour” which we’re usually not able to find in big supermarket chains so we need to go to small health stores.
I believe this is where a vegan online store can be helpful— if you’re looking for very specific products that are very hard to find in big supermarket chains.
The 5 Best Vegan Online Stores
Vegan Essentials
Vegan Essentials is hands down the most successful vegan online store in the US, which is no surprise considering they’ve been around since 1997 and are the longest-operating cruelty-free retailer around.
They offer a wide range of products that include food, clothes, personal care items, as well as household items such as cleaning supplies. If you also have an animal companion on a vegan diet, they also have all sorts of food, treats, and even supplements.
If you want to shop from a store that has an extended track record of success (more than 20 years), then Vegan Essentials is definitely the place to be shopping from if you’re dedicated to the vegan cause.
GTFO It’s Vegan
Frankly, although their website is not aesthetically pleasing, GTFO It’s Vegan is also among the largest online retailers for vegans, offering you an equally wide variety of products akin to Vegan Essentials. They have a product section dedicated to plant-based seafood, offering you vegan alternatives to crab cakes, fish fillet, caviar, tuna, and more!
You’re also able to find prepared foods, including tofu scramble, burritos, empanadas, falafels, pizzas, protein bowls, and a whole lot more. Among their selection of products, you can also find personal care items, household items, as well as sustenance for your beautiful animal companion.
PlantX
PlantX stands out as the biggest company out of the five based on a few different things: it is listed on the global exchange under VEGA, it had over 30 million in capital funding, it strategically acquired 5 different brands, has 8 flagship locations, and it has its products listed on Amazon and Walmart.
It is truly incredible to see a plant-based brand grow to such an extent, but I understand if it’s not your cup of tea considering its association with top retailers. It also has over 10k shareholders, so it’s certainly more capitalistic in nature, an aspect that many vegans may not appreciate.
With that being said, they have the biggest potential to be the largest vegan retailer in the US, which could potentially be better than purchasing from places like Amazon, Walmart, or Whole Foods (which is owned by Amazon)— and I would argue it may be a better way to support the vegan movement as they have the potential to build a global plant-based ecosystem, bringing plant-based food to the masses.
PlantX has over 5000 products listed on its website— including meat and cheese substitutes, prepared foods, vitamins, supplements, bread, cookies, brownies, and a whole lot more! If you’re keen on supporting a plant-based “Amazon”, then PlantX is perhaps the company you want to purchase from.
Plant Belly
A new brand on the block but that is growing pretty fast with its different approach to food selection, Plant Belly claims to only select the best-tasting foods.
What I personally like about their website is the fact you can browse food selections by diet and values, in other words, if you want your products to be vegan-certified, woman-made, or not contain any palm oil or soy, you can easily do so via their impressively functional website.
If you’re into mysterious boxes, they also have a tasting box subscription service. It’s a box with 6 unique full-sized plant-based products that will give you an insight into new and exciting products you may have not heard about.
The Vegan Kind (UK Only)
Unfortunately, The Vegan Kind is not available in North America, but I have to say it’s an amazing vegan online store that’s certainly very popular among vegans in the United Kingdom.
They have a beautiful and functional online store with tons of different options, including whole foods, vitamins & supplements, fermented foods, cupboard essentials, meat, seafood, and cheese substitutes, as well as pet food.
What’s also really cool is that they offer free delivery on orders over £30, which is incredible considering how the options I’ve previously mentioned only enable free shipping for orders over $70. Big difference!
If you’re in the UK, consider yourself lucky by having such a great online store that caters specifically to vegans!
Conclusion
Ever heard of the days when being vegan or vegetarian meant being part of a fringe subculture that was defined as radical or eccentric?
Well, it seems that those days are behind us as veganism and vegetarianism are now widely accepted, and are getting recognized and catered to in places you wouldn’t believe.
And supporting vegan online stores like the ones above is a good way of ensuring that these movements continue to grow and that new, delicious plant-based foods also become appealing to the masses.
