NOT VEGAN! Not even vegetarian… Shame on you Whole Foods
If there is one thing that makes me happy in this life it is breakfast tacos and now that love has been UTTERLY BETRAYED by a giant corporation. And I know, I should know better than to trust a freaking corporation that serves meat, hates fat people, and is anti-union. But when the flagship Whole Foods opened on Lamar a few years back I couldn’t help but become a regular. I work down the street and the miles of vegan food stuffs, the coffee bar with soy & coconut creamer, and most importantly, their cheap, delicious and extremely vegan friendly breakfast taco bar. OR SO I THOUGHT!
This is a taco bar that seems to do everything right, they have the tofu scramble, the vegan chorizo, and vegan cheese all in the back so they won’t cross contaminate when they inevitably drop things in when reaching across. Since I go there all the time I sometimes forget and just order cheese, and they say “vegan cheese?” or “vegan chorizo”, “oh yes thank you” I say. They have several salsas and I know which ones aren’t vegan because the employees made sure I knew. The taco bar has free kale, vegetables, two kinds of vegan cheese, and more options for a vegan breakfast tacos than just about anywhere in town. I go there so often that I set my phone to say “does anyone want anything from Whole Foods” by just typing WFrun into my phone when I’m texting my coworkers in the morning. I’ve probably blogged about them a hundred times because they are my favorite way to start the day.
And now I learn they have been serving me potatoes cooked in meat.
For years.
I’m not vegan, I’m not even close! 30% of my diet is Whole Foods tacos!
It’s one thing to accidentally eat something cooked in meat at a small town family owned restaurant or even a taco stand where people don’t speak a lot of English. But for the flagship Whole Foods, a store that LABELS THE FUCK out of every little thing to knowingly serve the zillion vegetarians that patronize the taco stand potatoes cooked in meat is shameful and insulting.
I am completely disgusted with myself and with them. I never even thought I could feel betrayed by a restaurant but there it is.
I don’t even know if I will be able to drive down Lamar anymore.
I don’t even know if I can live in Austin anymore!
This is a living nightmare.
UPDATE 8/27 Whole Foods confirmed the post below in the comments.
Laura Benold, Whole Foods MarketAugust 27, 2013 at 6:10 am
I’m sorry to hear about any verbal miscommunication about the potatoes at Whole Foods Market taco bar. Because they are cooked in the same oil with meat, they are not vegan.
Even though the potatoes aren’t labeled vegan, nothing on the taco bar is and I find it very deceptive to the many many vegetarian customers to not be more upfront about their meaty potatoes.
UPDATE 9/27 I learned that it is a shared fryer situation not a cooked in meat fat situation so I am not as mad as when I wrote this post. I still think they should be explicit on the taco bar about what is and isn’t vegan