Today we’d like to introduce you to Jamey Scott.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
When I became vegetarian almost 15 years ago, it was something I was going to do for a month to become more fit and healthy. During that month, I researched how others chose a vegetarian lifestyle for the environment and for the animals, which convinced me to keep at it. A couple of years later, after learning more about the inherent cruelty involved in dairy farming and egg production, I went vegan and never turned back.
When I first went vegan, I wanted to start writing about restaurants in the area that had vegan options. While looking for an outlet for my writing, I met Eddie Garza, another blogger with similar goals. We joined forces and started writing about vegan-friendly restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth. About a year later, I created a website and added restaurant listings to our blog, and DallasVegan.com was born.
After seeing increased interest in my writing, I wanted to see what more I could do to bring people together. A monthly social happy hour in New York City called “Vegan Drinks” had started and spread to other cities. At the time in 2009, there wasn’t a chapter in all of Texas, so I started our first event in October of that year at the Idle Rich Pub. This October will be Dallas Vegan Drinks’ 10th Anniversary, having never missed a month in its ten years of existence.
Between blogging with DallasVegan.com and hosting Dallas Vegan Drinks, I was able to find lots of fully vegan establishments and other restaurants offering plant-based options for eating out. However, when it came to visiting festivals and other special events, the options were few if any—and fair foods like corn dogs and funnel cakes had always been some of my favorites.
I decided if there wasn’t an event where I could enjoy those type of foods as a vegan, that I would have to create my own. So in October of 2010, I hosted the inaugural Texas Veggie Fair.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Being an annual event, the struggles we encounter are more typically associated with planning and execution during the event itself. Each year seems to have its own set of challenges, often times out of our control, such as our electricity provider not being ready in time for the start of the event in 2018. Or there was the time during one of our first years at Reverchon Park that a non-attendee insisted on grilling meat on an outdoor grill in the middle of our event. It seems there is always something that comes up unexpectedly that you have to deal with. My approach is to keep calm and do what you can to make things you do have control over the best they can be.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Texas Veggie Fair story. Tell us more about the business.
The original Texas Veggie Fair was inspired by veganized versions of typical fair foods like corn dogs and funnel cakes, which we made sure our three food vendors provided. But we also invited an animal rights organization to help educate our attendees about the many reasons one might choose a vegan diet. That year at The Phoenix Project, a small artist collective and music venue near Fair Park, we had about 750 people in attendance—many more than I expected for the first year.
In 2011, we expanded to Winfrey Point at White Rock Lake, but with a more than doubled attendance at 2,500, we knew that we needed a larger venue to accommodate long-term growth. Reverchon Park provided a great backdrop for the past seven years as we grew to over 120 vendors and 15,000 attendees in 2018. We are so excited to move to the Dallas Farmers Market and City Futsal Dallas Sports & Social Park for 2019.
Texas Veggie Fair is the largest, longest-running vegan festival in the state, and we have had so many amazing speakers and vendors participate in our event over the years. We love to showcase local vegan and veg-friendly vendors every year, and it’s also an honor to have prominent vegan vendors come in from across the state and the country just for our event.
We are most proud of the consistent feedback we get from attendees and vendors saying that we are one of their favorite events of the year. When we started, there weren’t many other events like ours in the United States. But with hundreds of “VegFests” in existence now, to continue to be praised as one of the best is very humbling.
Tens of thousands of Texas Veggie Fair attendees over the years have enjoyed vegan food, cruelty-free products, free samples, live music, yoga, and other family-friendly entertainment while learning about the benefits of a plant-based diet from notable speakers and chefs.
Our mission is to bring together, educate, and expand the plant-based community regionally, nationally, and worldwide; display alternatives to the “norm” of destructive, violent food and product production; and provide a positive, entertaining, and educational experience in a fun, welcoming environment.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
A writer for a national vegan news magazine called VegNews happened to be in town for our inaugural event and wrote a blog post about her positive experience. The following spring, VegNews printed a “Vegan Bucket List” article naming Texas Veggie Fair as one of “99 Thing You Must Do.” I think this lucky coincidence helped us to gain national prominence early in our journey.
Pricing:
- Texas Veggie Fair is a free event, open to the public, from 11 am–6 pm. on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019.
Contact Info:
- Address: 920 S. Harwood St, Dallas, TX 75201
- Website: http://texasveggiefair.com
- Phone: 214-444-8171
- Email: info@texasveggiefair.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/texasveggiefair
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/texasveggiefair
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/texasveggiefair
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/texas-veggie-fair-dallas?osq=Texas+Veggie+Fair
Image Credit:
Sylvia Elzafon
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