HappyCow - Vegan Food Near You 12+

Great for travelers

I was first told about this app by someone who works in tourism in a city where it is often difficult to locate vegan and vegetarian options and said that her vegan and vegetarian guests use it to great success. Since then I’ve used it so much when traveling and also sometimes to find places in my own city that I hadn’t previously known about. I’m perplexed that the second most helpful review on here is a 5-year-old review telling people to just use Google Maps as I am traveling presently and today thanks to this app I visited a takeaway/takeout veg place that isn’t even listed on Google Maps. The only thing that personally frustrates me about the app is what many other reviewers have mentioned, that it would be great if it were clearer in the app that only veg places can get five stars and only non-veg places can get one star, as I personally only found that out by reading reviews within the app where people said they would give X stars if they were allowed by the app. However it is a great app regardless.

Just use Google, honestly it’s way better

In response to Happy Cow’s response: You suggest “lowering your standards” and adding establishments that only offer “a few” vegan friendly options - excuse me but I thought the purpose of this app was to guide us vegans to restaurants that have vegan friendly options, even if it’s only “a few.” Maybe I misunderstood the premise of this app? I don’t think so. And I tried adding the place we ate at in Ely, NV and the website made me feel like it wasn’t appropriate to add it so I didn’t. Stupid questions like “are you SURE they have more than a few vegan options?” No, I’m not sure but I’d still like other vegans to know they can get a pizza there if they’d like. Google can do that, too. Google all the way. (Original review:)This used to be a great and helpful app for finding vegan food nearby - when I was in Seattle. Now, not so much. A month ago I went on the road and was fully expecting this app to help guide me to vegan friendly establishments. That has not been the case. For example, I’m sitting in Ely, Nevada right now and when I search in Happy Cow one restaurant pops up and it’s closed. However, when I search in google I found a pizza joint, a Mexican restaurant and a couple other places that offer vegan friendly options. I was borderline angry when I discovered that because I paid for this stupid app. I’m on the road 100% of the time and I’d suggest just using google and not waste your money on this app.

Developer Response ,

HappyCow is very different from Google as we focus exclusively on vegan-option restaurants and provide a break-down and filters like no other service does. An additional advantage of HappyCow is that the reviews on our site are mostly written by vegans/vegetarians, so the perspective of our reviews is more tailored to other vegans and vegetarians. In larger cities where there are more plentiful options, this advantage becomes much more apparent.

We also list 14+ other types of vegan-related businesses. Our app allows you to filter out and search by each listing type. We also have a number of features in the app, like being able to plan out your trip and save the data offline, search by “gluten-free” or “organic”, sort by what’s popular and much more. If you continue to use the app, I think you will see that it has many useful features.

Unlike listing sites like Google which aren’t vegan-centric and are populated by computers, HappyCow offers hand-curated listings. We verify each listing as fully vegan, vegetarian, or a vegan-option restaurant. To reach our goals of quality listings, our submission form may seem a bit clunky, but we’re always working to improve it and value your feedback & ideas.

The pizza place you mention which doesn't have specific options catering to vegans likely would not fit into our criteria. If we allow every restaurant to be listed on HappyCow, we feel our service can become more cluttered and less useful, especially in areas with a higher concentration of listings. We always decide what to list on a case-by-case basis and do make exceptions in areas where little exists. We’re focused on adding places that make an honest attempt at offering vegan options without a lot of menu hacking. For example, most pizza restaurants offer the option to remove cheese on request to make it vegan-friendly but we don’t feel that alone is making an effort to provide adequate vegan options. If you still believe places are missing which are on Google for Ely, please email (ios@happycow.net) some examples and we’ll gladly investigate. HappyCow is maintained by the community and we encourage you to add places that you feel deserve to be listed. Let us know what you feel is missing!

Please consider revising your review and rating based on the actual features and quality of data the app offers rather than assuming we would block listings you haven’t yet put through the submission process.
Thank you. TeamCow.

Best Search Tool for Vegan places

It’s easy to be mislead by ads or SEO’s that some restaurants have and then when you check them they barely have more than one vegan option in their menus (when they have any). Also, to be honest, most of us vegans prefer to be patrons of restaurants 100% vegan, and thats what makes HAPPY COW app vegan’s best friend. It’s worth it the small fee that actually supports the app development and is more than worth it to have it available for any time you decide to explore new cities and new vegan food places worldwide. Yes, the collective contribution to add as much information about vegan places is real. The beauty of the app is also that it takes in consideration the differences between restaurants with vegan or vegetarian offers, restaurants that are vegan and vegetarian friendly and the ones that are 100% vegan that very often accommodate people that are also gluten-free, soy free, etc. I’m happy that I’ve been using it for a year now and I’ll keep using it because it rocks !!!

Developer Response ,

Thank you for the detailed review Mel! We are happy to have to in the community 🐮💜