VEGGIE VELO: 2013

Our First Year Anniversary at Veggie Velo.

There is so much to talk about!

Thank you to everyone who have made Veggie Velo a success, we are really grateful for the support we have been shown by the citizens of Adelaide, by the Adelaide City Council and our friends and families! There are too many of you to thank individually but we hope you all know we appreciate your support and encouragement and couldn't do it without you.

We had a 1 year Anniversary party in Lindes Lane off Rundle Mall to celebrate, and were really happy to see so many customers and friends come and help us party. The weather was as equally inviting (!!) as one year before when we launched Veggie Velo, but we had quite a few more customers this time. Big thanks to James, Darren, Sam and Danni for helping us on this day! Flamin' Weiner and Smooth Revolution are amazing bicycle food vending businesses.

James at Smooth Revolution showing age and size is not an issue for making a good smoothie!

Danni sampling a vegan hotdog from Flamin' Weiner

Darren and Sam at Flamin' Weiner, Thanks guys!

It was so great to see so many of you! Thank you for coming!

Thanks Mum and Dad Watts

Thanks Jess and Kerry!

Conrad and us saying Hi and 'We miss you' to Chloe!

Mark and Sarah with Smudge Monkeys

Thank you for the present Sophia!

We were excited to show our new Cake Bike for the first time!

Cake Bike is all vegan all the time, with our apple crumble on display alongside amazing treats like Salted Caramel brownies and Orange Blossom Sesame cake.

First Cake Bike customers! Woo!

We also had our friend at the Flamin’ Wiener selling veggie hotdogs, and James at the Smooth Revolution giving away his amazing pedal powered smoothies. As party hosts we gave away free cakes to everyone who came and had a burger for lunch, and we were really happy so many people took advantage and tried some tasty treats.

Thanks especially to those of you who gave us presents. We were spoilt! Thank you!

Cake bike is my new favourite ride! So glad that I have restored my old blue cargo bike into a sweet ride! We want to promote a vegan diet and through cake bike we can show people that you don’t need dairy or eggs to make amazing sweets.

Being so busy with the burgers, I can’t cook all those extra cakes, so I wanted to feature the cooking of some beautiful local bakers on my bike.

Pixie at Tasty Goodness (Tasty Goodness on Facebook) has years of experience in vegan cooking and has the most extensive vegan catering menu we have ever seen. We loved her cakes from day one, having tried them at the 2012 Vegan Festival in Adelaide, then at The Elephant Walk Café and The House of Donkey. We are very happy to have her bringing us the amazing choc chilli mousse tart, gluten free cheesecake and more.

Ricky from Gourmet Brownies is the living proof that you don’t need any butter to make a good brownie. His vegan brownies are wicked, always with different flavours, just the right size, and very addictive.

There will be more to come and we hope that you can enjoy the benefit of a vegan diet, even if it’s only occasionally for you.

This year we have seen the councils new guidelines put in place for street vending, and new council fees set up for vendors. There was a lot of discussion about fairness and costs and we are really pleased with the result. Personally we feel street food vending makes Adelaide a better place, it enhances outdoor spaces which otherwise may not be used to their full potential, and brings food to people in places that might ordinarily not be reached. We are really happy with the positive support from the Adelaide City Council and the Splash Adelaide project, as we feel they are successfully helping to bring this city to life and providing great opportunities for people. We know in other states the laws vary greatly for street food vending, and we think overall in Adelaide there is an open minded and supportive attitude and we love it! We hope the citizens continue to voice their opinions as this is how changes are made.

For the next few months we have some exciting events coming up that we are looking forward to. Spring and summer should be a little more enjoyable for outdoor dining too!

Well that was a huge few months!

Time for a little update.

In no particular order here are some amazing experiences Veggie Velo has had in the past few months:

The Big Day Out, Adelaide. That. Was. Huge.

Barrio for the Adelaide Festival. Great fun, great food, great people! (I’d be surprised if many of our customers remember what they ate for dinner though, 6 bars in full swing can really get the party going!)

Fork on the Road, Adelaide, support for this event is of mega proportions. Thank you to everyone who came and bought a veggie burger!

Scum Fest. Yep, it was different for us, but the customers were lovely and made our stay at the Old Queens Theatre awesome.

‘Oi You’ Art exhibition opening at the Adelaide Festival Centre, we were so impressed at the number of people who came along to support this festival. Excellent turn out, and a great chance to meet Tash and co. from the Annexe at Glenelg, our Veggie fix at the bay.

Mini Maker Faire Adelaide, lovely day of learning new things, and meeting nice people, what more could we ask for?

World Vegan Day Festival. Well next time we will certainly bring more food!

And last but not least our regular street side service. It’s going well, so many smiling faces and supportive customers- Thank you! Hindmarsh Square, North Terrace, Leigh Street are our favourites and we can’t wait to meet you all!

We are still amazed by the huge response to us, and the mobile food vendors of Adelaide in general. It gives us such a positive feeling about the future of Adelaide, a city we feel so happy to be living in! We feel like the people of Adelaide are realising that to cause change they need to be active in making it happen, and that sitting back and appreciating something that’s going on is not enough, you need to be a part of it for it to work. We really believe that as more people are travelling around the world they are not only appreciating what they have here in Adelaide, but are more open to new ideas, and want to bring some of those ideas home. We regularly get people saying they’ve seen vending bicycles in Asian, Europe or America and understand what we are about. It so nice!
There really seems to be a buzz of new activity in Adelaide, a momentum we hope continues, and we really want to be a part of that positivity.
Before I leave you with some photos from our adventures, I just wanted to make special mention of the charity group Fauna Rescue of South Australia Inc. During the Adelaide Festival we spent one night raising money for this group. It was just a little drop in the ocean of what we would like to do long term, but it was really rewarding. We raised $150 in one night just by donating a percentage of our sales to them. We know that money will go towards feeding animals in recovery, funding vet bills and creating nurturing environments for animals in need of assistance. So good! Thanks to everyone who came and supported us on this (and every) night, and made this possible. Thanks to Robyn Wood from the Fauna Rescue group for helping us organise this!