A look at the offline and online offering of Vbites

I popped down to the opening of Heather Mills Vegan cafe ‘Vbites‘ on Saturday as Iâ??d heard whispers of its opening for a few months and fancied seeing what she had done with the old fish eatery that used to be there before. Another think that I wanted to see was how ‘Vbites’ was promoting itself, being interested in media and the way ethical ventures make that leap from hippy idealism (something I have struggled with myself) to cool rich media and an understanding of social capitol.

The opening itself was as my actor friend pointed out “a little frayed around its vegan edges”, with a very loud Glenn Miller band for the old folks, a dodgy microphone for Heathers opening speech and more ‘old media’ journalists that you could shake a stick at.

Heather however looks superb and I was at the front cheering her on as she appeared on top of the building relaxing against the ‘Vbites’ diner style sign. I’ve been an admirer of Heather for years, ever since she appeared on the Big Breakfast and described how she lost her leg by being hit by a police motorcycle. The fact that she was married to a pop star bla bla, doesnâ??t really interest me and I much prefer to read about her animal welfare exploits.

As I was leaving I collared one of their PR girls and said that Iâ??d like her to guest blog and that she needed some advice on her website. I was tempted to grab Heather as she popped out the back of Vbites and beg her to get a new developer, but she was on the phone so I thought Iâ??d leave it.

Now, the Vbites website:

Vbites website

Whatâ??s wrong with the website:

• The menu does not contain keywords specific to the campaign
• The content has not real direction on any of the pages
• No specific menu pages
• Their are no social networking links on the homepage
• No RSS feed for subscriptions to the newsletter
• No real calls to action
• No SEO across the site based on the lack on title tags, keyword inclusion etc
• Lack of pages on the site, if the sitemap is to be trusted
• The press and media page has no rich media or any real content
• The lack of humanity on the site is frightening – add some images of the place, the workers, heather, kids eating lunches, the skaters outside
• There are so many opportunities here for some great social media, so many aspects to the cafe that can be drawn upon to make it both an on and offline success.
• No internal linking
• More inbound links from relevant sources

I do find it unfortunate that allot of vegan and ethical sites are missing the basics of good design and SEO, it doesnâ??t seam important in the grand scheme of things but it does make a profound difference as to how users see you. Any site, no matter what it is saying needs to be making a media statement about its efforts, services or products… it is the fundamentals of it being a website and with all the competition out there, sites like Vbites need to stand out from the crowd or risk just becoming a dead weight online page that tarnishes the offline appeal of a great concept.

I’ll think of a few nice little ideas for Vbites social media and see if we canâ??t get it moving.

One last thing that I think would be nice for Vbites to is to add ‘deliveries’ to its offerings, swift deliveries of ‘Mrs. swirly’ vegan ice cream for example.

I did have difficulty finding any articles to add below this, as it seams most of the press that turned up were only there to slag her off, a bit pathetic on a sunny day to head down there just for that, but … who am i to judge.

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Hullo readers,

Yes its been about 2 months and i’ve been working on social media tracking tools and considering ditching Minkbaby and develop another blog.. BUT, hey i like the Mink and i’m getting over the fact that Ali has not left the team to go have babies.

So what i’m going to do i shift focus a little and include a lot more posts about ethical branding and ethical websites to read, i’m going to try and get around to posting a few review videos as i’ve got some fab ‘organic dipping oil’ and ‘vegan chocolate’ to try out and i’m going to get back on track with going to events and such like and add some short snappy posts daily about current green issues, animal rights stuff and sites you should look out for.

Well, thats about that, many thanks for staying around and i hope you enjoy the new slant

claire

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Total Raw Food Open Day

The Fear

I knew that I was scared of going to this event, and I was pleased to find out that Claire was also scared.

Is it?

I was scared because during my 30 Day Vegan challenge I had observed lots of vegans and raw foodists being quite narky with one another about whether you could wear leather under any circumstances, the plight of bees (i.e. whether or not a vegan can eat honey), and whether or not failing to supplement raw and or vegan children was a form a child abuse (or not) and so on and so forth, at times ad nausea.

Of course there were also lovely sites and forums where this was either not the case of kept to the minimum but I had been a bit shocked by the vitriol I had stumbled across, whenever I found it – perhaps that just shows how naive I am rather than how chiaroscuro the vegan landscape is, but hey…

Vegetarians (and more recently vegans in all their forms) have been perceived by many (including me) as being undernourished hippies, spouting peace, love and slogans like “no food with a face” (yes, I know, I don’t know what I thought animal rights activists were about but there we are…)

The reality is that wherever politics and activism lurks, there too you will find feelings running high and the diligent fervour of the religious convert. Did I mention that religious fervour also makes me nervous?

So when I said to Claire, on the morning of the Total Raw Food’s Open Day, “Let’s not go!” I was perfectly serious. And I am perfectly serious when I say to you now that I am 120% glad that she felt the fear and did it anyway, called us a taxi and made me go with her.

So what was the Total Raw Food Open Day Like?

Although we were technically late by the time we got there, in actual fact our timing couldn’t have been better. We took our seats a few minutes before Tom began to introduce the Barefoot Doctor, and had just enough time to discover and rootle through our Total Raw Food goody bags before settling down to enjoy the office-opening ceremony, some barefoot banter and general warrior wisdom.

The Barefoot Doctor Opens Total Raw Food’s New Offices (but not in this picture)

The Urban Warrior Himself

I would love to tell you all about what Barefoot had to say. Sadly I was so busy listening that it never occurred to me to take notes. This was error number one. Luckily Claire had the wherewithal to take notes, and once she has conveyed those to me, I will replace this apologetic paragraph with a lovely summary of what he had to say.

Unfortunately Claire was not immune from making the odd schoolboy (or girl) error – it was only yesterday that she confessed to me that had thought she was filming the talk and realised about a quarter of the way in that she hadn’t turned the digital recorder on! We have so much to learn! Tom and Jess were miles ahead of us however and appeared to have engaged someone to take pictures and to record the talks, so we are hoping that they will make those available to us so that we can post them on this post.

We were hoping to get to have a chat with the Barefoot Doctor but he had to dash almost as soon as his talk was finished, so we settled for vegan fruit punch and some chit chat with the other attendees.

Jess’s Raw Food Demo

Following this was Jess’s raw food demo, which included useful information about the raw super foods she was using (origin, quality, ethical supply, practical uses in food and health benefits thereof). The proof of the pudding is traditionally in the eating, and Claire and I were delighted to be presented with raw vegan chocolate ice cream to try.

Now for anyone who hasn’t tried any kind of vegan substitute for dairy (cheese and chocolate are the worst offenders here), you should know that there are many products out there that profess to be just as good or even better than their dairy counterparts and, for the most part, according to my research so far, most of the purveyors of these non-dairy substitutes must have pants that are currently on fire.  By and large, the word ‘yuck’ doesn’t begin to cover it. During my 30 Day Vegan Challenge I would frequently wonder if other vegans have been vegan so long that they have forgotten what chocolate is supposed to taste like in the first place. Perhaps this is how they appear to have been so easily duped. But I digress…

Well, I was ready for an experience like that. Yuck. What I got from this raw chocolate ice cream was one of the smoothest, richest, most chocolaty ice cream experiences I have ever had. Seriously. YUM! If this is an example of Jess’s raw food desserts, then I am going to have to get myself her raw food desserts DVD demo.

We did get a chance to have a brief chat with Tom and Jess, but they were understandably pretty busy making sure that everyone was getting the most out their open day. They were both very friendly and Jess looked radiant – a raw food vegan diet is clearly not a problem, even during pregnancy – I certainly didn’t have Jess’s energy when I was 34 weeks pregnant!

It would have been nice if…

It would have been nice if the demo could have been done on a raised platform, so that people at the back (like Claire and I) could have seen the demo rather than just heard it. Or perhaps the demo could have happened more towards the middle of the room, with onlookers in a kind of semi circle. Aside from that though, the day seemed to go very well, with herbal teas, fruit punch and raw vegan snacks on offer and lots of super foods and other raw products on sale for those who wanted to shop without the usual p&p charge, and take advantage of the 10% discount that was offered to us that day.

We met some lovely people, some of whom were vegan, some of whom were raw and some of whom were not. No one made caustic comments about my leather boots. Everyone seemed very open minded and interesting, which was lovely. I was so glad that my online experience was balanced by meeting people in the flesh. I can’t wait to meet more vegans, raw food or not. I am much less afraid, and I am ready to make raw ice cream ASAP!

A Gentle Way to a Vegan Diet

An easier way to get on board with vegansim

The thing that really struck a chord in me though was something that Jess talked about during her demo – the idea of introducing quality, natural whole foods into your diet and observing that a person who does so will most likely begin to phase out other kinds of foods, without having to forcibly deprive themselves of the unhealthy foods they like.

This not only makes a lot of sense to me because I want to continue eating as I did before my 30 Day Vegan Challenge but also because I do have a food problem which is exacerbated – triggered, even – by my trying to cut out the junk foods that I crave. As soon as I try to ‘make myself’ eat a certain way, I am beset by uncontrollable urges to binge. If I donâ??t censor what I eat, the binging doesn’t happen.

Jess’s words made me feel hopeful because I had started to think that ethical and healthy eating could only have an effect on you if you ruthlessly and wilfully eradicated all but the purest foods from your diet, which did not bode well for me. Listening to Jess gave me a new perspective – a less extreme approach that may help me to improve my eating, from an ethical and healthier stand point, in a gradual and therefore more attainable way. So thanks for that Jess, and we wish you lots of luck and health for the rest of your pregnancy and all that comes after!