Yelp Releases List of Its Top Black-Owned Vegan Restaurants 

This week, Yelp released its list of the highest-rated Black-owned vegan (and vegan-friendly) restaurants on its review platform. The 18 named restaurants stretch from coast-to-coast and span a variety of cuisines from soul food to Jamaican-inspired fare to Ethiopian. When compared to last year, the searches for Black-owned businesses across all categories have increased significantly, a Yelp spokesperson told VegNews. The full list of Yelp’s top Black-owned vegan businesses is:

• Blueberry Cafe Juice Bar & Vegan Grille (Newark, NJ)
• Fire & Spice Vegan Restaurant (Hartford, CT)
• The Vegan Doughnut Company (Lakewood, OH)
• Vegan Fresh (Loma Linda, CA)
• Simply Pure by Chef Stacey Dougan (Las Vegas, NV)
• NuVegan Café (Locations in Washington, DC, Richmond, VA, and College Park, MD)
• Refocused Vegan (Baltimore, MD)
• Detroit Vegan Soul (Detroit, MI)
• Veg on the Edge (Santa Cruz, CA)
• Vegan Mob (Oakland, CA)
• Urban Fresh (Tucson, AZ)
• Sweet Soulfood (New Orleans, LA)
• All The Way Live (Philadelphia, PA)
• Dajen Eats (Eatonville, FL)
• The Land of Kush (Baltimore, MD)
• Sol Sips (Brooklyn, NY)

Yelp also named Ethiopian Cottage Restaurant (Milwaukee, WI) and Brooklyn Blend (Brooklyn, NY) in its list of top Black-owned vegan businesses and while both eateries serve a variety of plant-based options, they are not fully vegan.  

In the last two years, reviews that mention the term “plant-based” increased by 140 percent and the Impossible Burger was the biggest trend on the platform in 2019. In June, Yelp partnered with Impossible Foods to curate a list of its top 30 diners which subsequently launched the plant-based startup’s new Impossible Sausage—previously only available at select Burger King and Starbucks locations—on their menus.