Courtesy Jordan Bauer
There was a time not too long ago when ordering a vegan meal was no simple task in many St. Louis restaurants. Often vegetarian options weren’t easily veganized, including cheesy pasta dishes and veggie burgers made with eggs as binders, leaving only stripped down salads for vegan diners. In the past few years, though, restaurants across the area have expanded their plant-based options, ranging from veggie potstickers to dairy-free lemon-poppyseed ice cream.
Promoting the range of options now available to vegan diners is the foundation of ThriveBook, which founder Robin Marquand launched last fall. After working as a server in a local vegetarian restaurant and seeing the creativity and vibrancy of plant-based cooking, Marquand was inspired to craft a coupon booklet to catalog the many vegan options available in restaurants across St. Louis.
“My goal with ThriveBook is really just to broaden the circles of the vegan community and to show people who are interested in plant-based food all the possibilities out there,” Marquand says. “There's just tons of different types of vegan food out there. There's really no limit to what you can find and what you can make plant-based. And I just think it's so important that people start to open their minds up to different possibilities.”
The second edition of ThriveBook was released in June and features 40 deals, including meals at many local restaurants as well as a handful of wellness activities such as online yoga and sustainable beauty products and home goods. The majority of the coupons are food-focused, however, including those vegan potstickers (one free order from Crispy Edge, to be specific), and that dairy-free lemon-poppyseed ice cream (which you can order with free toppings at Clementine’s Naughty and Nice Creamery).
Courtesy Robin Marquand
Hello Juice & Smoothie in the Grove offers a BOGO acai bowl.
Some of the restaurants featured, including Small Batch (where ThriveBook customers can get a free s’mores with purchase) and Pizza Head (where you’ll get 15 percent off a whole pie), are focused on plant-based fare, but many of the eateries are not — and that’s by design.
“It lets a group of people like that who has diverse culinary or dietary needs find a new niche,” Marquand says. “A lot of these places are more Flexitarian — they don't exclude people who maybe aren't going to have an interest in eating [vegan] foods. It highlights places that are welcoming to everyone, which I think that's really important.”
This same focus on inclusion informs the geographic footprint of businesses featured in ThriveBook, with businesses in St. Louis, Ballwin, Maplewood, Maryland Heights, Florissant, Creve Coeur, Chesterfield and more. The coupon booklets can be purchased online for $25, although Marquand is currently offering 20 percent off to customers who submit a receipt from a local Black-owned restaurant.
“We're really trying to just use what we can to promote people to go out and buy from Black-owned businesses,” Marquand says. “We definitely have the platform and the power to support Black-owned businesses in the area. Right now we have some Black-owned businesses in the booklet, but we're definitely keeping in mind for next time to include a lot more. Going forward, I would really like to incorporate and support areas of St. Louis that don't have easy access to fresh food and produce. So we're working on figuring out exactly how that would manifest, but it's definitely a goal of mine in the next few months, to get more involved in gardening and community food initiatives.”
Courtesy Experience Booklet
Since launching in St. Louis last autumn, ThriveBook has already grown its partnerships, now collaborating with another coupon booklet, Experience Booklet, a guide to local restaurants, retail businesses and more. Marquand and Experience Booklet founder Jordan Bauer have supported one another through shared marketing efforts, including a bundle offering both coupon booklets for $45.
Soon, ThriveBook will endeavor a new project: a vegan recipe series to inspire home cooks to experiment with cooking creative plant-based fare at home. Recipes are meant to be accessible and familiar, Marquand says, including a Tempeh Beet Burger (pictured below).
Courtesy Robin Marquand
For Marquand, who adopted a vegan diet about three years ago for health reasons, seeing the growth and success of ThriveBook is extremely rewarding. As ThriveBook charts its next chapter in St. Louis, it’s also preparing to expand into Denver this fall, highlighting the local plant-based fare in yet another market.
“ThriveBook is really just an effort to incentivize people to support restaurants that sell plant-based food,” Marquand says, “and to inspire that kind of shift culturally. Even though it seems limiting, there's actually a ton of room for really comforting and delicious food.”
