LA’s popular weekly vegan market Vegan Exchange has relaunched as a Vegan Exchange Drive Thru to make shopping safer during the COVID-19 pandemic. The drive-thru market will take place on Sundays from 11am to 5pm in North Hollywood and will feature eight to 10 vendors each week, such as Nova Boba Tea, Voodoo Vegan, Pacifico 1542, Inomoni Vegan, The Donuttery, The Frankenstand, Veggietize Me, Never Caged, Oono Sushi, Centric Eats, Fancy Juice, and Lobo Cuban Food. Some vendors will make regular appearances at the market while others will rotate, just like at the traditional Vegan Exchange market. Customers can pre-order ahead on the Vegan Exchange Drive Thru website, and then drive to the market, stay in their car, and purchased products will be brought to them.
Pandemic pivot
“Watching people in our own family and close friends suffer from COVID, we knew we had to take this thing seriously. We could have created a farmer’s market to circumvent the rules, but in all honesty, we knew we would never want folks to take that kind of risk. We knew we had to pivot to something new and COVID safe in the interim,” Vegan Street Fair Founder Jessica Cruz told VegNews. “It took nearly a year to come up with a viable concept that didn’t endanger the public and that offered the vendors an opportunity to continue doing what they do best as safely as possible—cue the Vegan Exchange Drive Thru.”
If successful, and if COVID-restrictions continue, Cruz hopes to bring the drive-thru concept to other neighborhoods in LA during the week. In the future, the Vegan Exchange market will also debut in new cities such as Dallas, Seattle, New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area. “Vegan Exchange is built for city expansion and we are very much looking forward to getting back out there and providing this super fun vegan experience to people outside of Los Angeles as well. We can’t have all the fun,” Cruz said.
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