Vegan Cheese Incident

Having our "Grilled Cheese Headquarters" smack dab in the middle of "America's Last Real Beach Town" is an amazing thing & I try to never take that for granted.   

Ocean Beach has a real sense of community, & even though it boasts around 27,000 residents, it still captures that small town feel.  Being from a small town of about 950 people, I gravitated toward that right away.  I love the big city for it's plethora of opportunity, but love having my space as well, 

I learned way back in 2009, when I lived in Florida, that when you live, work & play in the same area, life is less complicated.  A bartender whom, I delivered Jimmy John's sandwiches to in downtown Orlando gave me that great piece of advice (along with a shot of whiskey) for a tip.    

But, the most important thing about running a business, is understanding your customer & catering to their unique tastes.  Because, let's face it- without customers, you have no business.

So, being in OB, we knew that some of our customers are vegan & they won't eat "anything with eyes," as the great musician & well-known vegan, Prince, once put it.

People would stop by & sometimes call on the phone asking if we had vegan cheese available as a substitute.  At first, we did not have an option.  Kate had gone vegan a few times for Lent in the past & knew that vegan cheese, "doesn't melt in the oven, no matter how long you put it in there."  

So, I wasn't real fond of having something on the menu that I wouldn't care to eat myself. 

But, as luck would have it, one day a rep came in from Follow Your Heart, a company that specialized in dairy-free cheeses.  He gave us many different flavors to try:  Pepper Jack slices, shredded Mozzarella, etc.  He also gave us a dairy-free mayo spread that we could use on our sourdough instead of butter.

Kate & I made a few sandwiches & I admit they tasted, "meh."  I liked our's with real fully melted cheese much better, but Kate posted on Facebook & Instagram that we now offered vegan cheese:

A few people came in an ordered a dairy-free cheezer, but in the end, it was not sustainable.  We didn't have a big enough demand to purchase & keep the vegan cheese in stock, only to hopefully sell one or two of them a week.

And, so ended the vegan cheese experiment.  It didn't cost us anything, but it was a good learning experience.  

Years later, Kate came up with the much more successful, "Viva Las Vegan" sandwich on sourdough that was made up of dairy-free mayo, avocado, hash browns (or fried eggplant), grilled onions, tomatoes & dill pickles.  That sandwich was good enough to eat, in my opinion & that's why it hung around the menu for several years & not a few months.