Vegan Chicago: Mercy For Animals Feed-In

This past weekend, I held a feed-in for Mercy For Animals in the Wicker Park area of Chicago. Ste Martaen and the Vegan Food Truck folks helped us out by catering sample sizes of BBQ seitan and vegan mac 'n cheese. The feed-in was pretty successful considering the bitter cold (below freezing!). Not as many people showed up as I had hoped, so we did not have anyone holding our usual colorful banner that reads, "Free Vegan Samples". We had two people passing out the samples with a leafleter near them and then others leafleting the remaining corners of the street cross section.

The food was well received with many people curious about non-dairy mac 'n cheese. One man was quite hesitant but I urged him to just try it out and he was quite surprised that it tasted like "real" mac 'n cheese. His buddies then followed in suit by taking samples as well. Many people also asked where one can get more vegan food like this and of course we told them all about the vegan-friendly options in Chicago. Ste Martaen packaged these samples in a great way. Instead of the activists using gloves and passing out the food, they came in prepackaged containers eliminating this need for gloves and food prep. People could just take a sample, stick it in their pocket, and eat it later if they wanted. This really helped with peoples desire to take the food, I think.

 

Leafleting went well. We passed out more leaflets than food it seemed like totaling 300 MFA Compassionate Choices. Actually, the leafleting went more smoothly than the feed-in aspect of this event. We met a lot of fellow vegetarians and vegans who were excited to see MFA out doing this event.

Overall, great event and thank you for those who came out during this super cold Saturday in Chicago! Also, many thanks to VegFund for funding this feed-in.

For more information on how to host your own feed-in in your city, please check out Mercy For Animals guide. If you live in Chicago and would like to get involved with MFA, please email me at AlexisS@MercyForAnimals.org.

And how could I post an entry about giving away free, delicious BBQ seitan and mac 'n cheese without posting some recipes? For a stellar mac 'n cheese recipe, check out this one on VegWeb. Also, check out my BBQ seitan recipe here.