Berkeley Vegan Earth Day

Full disclosure — this year I won tickets for BVED, but otherwise probably wouldn’t have attended. I volunteered to help with the first BVED — helping the very kind, ambitious and all around awesome Karine B with the event as well as working with James Hall/​Raw Daddy at his table. Wow — it’s been FIVE years!
I haven’t been to the David Brower center before — it’s a beautiful lobby, and probably not ideal for a crowd, really. I did check out the itinerary of speakers before the event and the charter for the event implies that it is really more «Vegan 101÷201» — lots of food prep demos and nothing too controversial in the topics. However — if I were a new vegan or interested in going vegan — I’m not sure I would be all that jazzed about paying $ 20 to go spend more money.
It was great to see Raw Daddy there — and there were plenty of vendors and food samples available. I was surprised to see Synergy there — and ended up spending about $ 200 at the expo in food & clothing. Since the event charges the vendors a percentage of sales — as my friend pointed out, «it would be nice if they gave a refund if you spent over a certain amount at the expo» — certainly that might encourage more people to shop!
While most of the expo focused on lifestyle/​consumer vegan offerings — there was table full of very informative and engaging folks from Food Empowerment Project (
). This sparks my intellectual curiosity as a trained political sociologist (now you know — I’m a marxist) and the volunteer who spoke with me asked me about chocolate.
I love chocolate. And, of course — I thought that I knew about what chocolate to eat: fair trade, organic etc. But honestly — with so many excellent vegan candies available at places like Republic of V, I think I just assumed that vendors like Amy E’s chocolates or Vega were using fair-​trade/​organic/​equal exchange products. It turns out that the Food is Power folks have a massive list and many vegan food producers are on the «not recommended» or «problematic» list (including Amy E’s and Vega!).
I’m glad that these events exist — they provide a very important function to new vegans and in exposing more people to vegan lifestyle oriented goods and services.

Was hoping this event improved from the 2013 reviews here, but unfortunately I don’t think it has. Thanks to Unilocal I received two free tickets to attend. I would have been pretty upset it I paid the full $ 20 at the door. There were maybe a dozen vendors. A few vendors gave some free food samples, while the rest were selling food or products.
The venue was small and maze-​like. They had speakers and cooking demos throughout the day. We were able to sit in on one cooking demo and they ran out of samples of the food for half of the audience to try. It was clear that there was a lack of direction and organization.
Hopefully the event organizers can improve this. On another note, looking forward to Oakland Veg Fest!

This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Charging $ 20 at the door to try and get people interested in veganism is a bit off. Surely there’s a way to make it free, and make more from the vendors?
The venue is also pretty cramped, and the stuff on display is interesting, but not life changing. If I want to puruse a range of vegan products, I can just pop on down to Republic of V. But this seem overly cliquey.
I’m sure there were some great talks, but I think we could do better here, especially since isn’t the first year.

I’m not a hater, I just review a lot… of Vegan stuff. I was expecting so much more out of this event. I can’t give my fellow Vegan peeps a 1-​star hater review but they need to change something about this event before next years goings on. Either add more content, or drastically lower the ticket prices because there is no bang for the buck here.
Maybe it was that fact it was held on ⁴⁄₂₀ but you had to be smoking something to pay $ 20 ($ 15 online) per person at the door! Especially since the folks working the tables up front weren’t really paying attention while anyone could pretty much waltz in off the street. It’s not like there were wristbands or any markings to designate who was who. Just «look hippie» enough and you’re good to go… About the only thing admission gave you over the people potentially sneaking in, was a free small bag of Vegan nacho chips, which I must say were really good! Just not THAT good…
The event only used up one level of the David Brower Center and was very crowded as such. We saw pretty much everything to include product demos, sampling food, and eating within an hour or so. The only thing left to do is stick around for some of the speakers but most of them I wasn’t too interested in except for the chef battle that we missed.
The highlights were the ladies of Tamale Love serving up some delicious tamales, yummy Mexican Spice Cookies, and the best, creamiest, Horchata I ever had! I also had the best piece of raw candy from Living Light Culinary Institute, who had a lady putting on a demo that showed how to make a Chocolate Pecan Tart. Her sample was much more like a piece of gourmet chocolate candy than a tart. She also had some pre-​made coconut chocolate decadence that I attempted to savor but ended up destroying in one bite. Genuto Gelato was there serving up some creamy nut based treats. It’s no Scream but since Scream is closed for now, were else are you gonna get your fix except at the Whole Foods locations that they sell from?
Hopefully if the organizers keep this alive for next year, as there were no shortage of attendees, they will expand things a bit to justify the price. Perhaps bringing in some more well known speakers would help as well. Then again, with Oakland Veg week happening the week after, perhaps they couldn’t get more of the Vegan-​centric presenters, and instead focused on more of the Earth Day theme.

Thanks to Unilocal I was able to get in to the 3^rd Annual Vegan Festival in Downtown Berkeley. Regular cost at the door was $ 20 and I guess it’s mostly for the speakers & food demos because you don’t get much for that fee. It’s only a block away from Downtown Berkeley Bart, next to Taqueria Cancun.
They gave some vegan chips & vegan giant cookies at registration. There were a bunch of tables set up around the main area & another room. Most of the food vendors charged money to eat their food, only a few gave samples.
Tamale Love — I got a vegan tamale with sweet potato & some mole & green salsa $ 4 — it was ok, nothing special about it.
The Taste of Tea — tiny samples of hot or cold tea
Local Love Catering — he sampled out a hot potato soup — it was pretty good.
V-​Dog — got some samples of vegan dog food — will give to co-​workers that have dogs.
Beyond Eggs — they made a tasty chocolate chip cookie & gave out sample of something that’s like egg just add water.
There were talks in the Conf Room; Theater, Main Lobby. I only stayed for the Dr. Alan Goldhamer talk on Avoiding the Dangers (and achieving the benefits) of a Vegan Diet. He was good & talked of avoid sugar, fat, salt, get his book «The Pleasure Trap»
I left after a while, went to Cal Day.

I have to agree with Ann L about the 3^rd Annual Vegan Festival.
Thanks Unilocal for the free tickets!
The regular $ 15 pre– event and the $ 20 admission day-​of-​the-​event fees were hefty for what they had to offer.
At the door we were given a giant wrapped cookie and a bag of chips.
There were 3 – 4 booths for food that was for sale not samples
including tamales, plates
A couple of booths offered small samples including a tea booth and a vegan
eggless packets that offered free cookies that were really tasty.
There was a veg dog food booth giving away packaged samples for your
canines.
There were a couple of info booths, the best I thought was the SF Vegetarian Society that had very informative sheets and an excellent guide to veg restaurants in the
Bay Area.
There were a couple of talks going on. We attended one on raw foods.
They did pass out samples but they were kind of tasteless. Even Mr Rinky who has been a vegan for 20+ years thought it was just so so. The speakers were very energetic and enthusiastic. The son thought they came across as self-​righteous.
When we asked someone who was volunteering if there was a schedule posted
she didn’t know, We found one posted with tiny print that I was unable to read without
reading glasses.
The film and some food demos were scheduled for mid-​afternoon but there wasn’t enough to see that would interest us to spend several hours there.
The entire fest was on the bottom floor with the booths covering two small rooms and the lectures taking place in adjacent larger rooms.
I think the organizers were well intentioned but I felt disappointed.
i realize it takes a lot of effort and people power to plan such an event.
If I hadn’t been married to a vegan and wasn’t already familiar with vegan cooking
I would not have been swayed to adopt a vegan lifestyle.
I think the $ 15-​$ 20 fee was a bit much. If I hadn’t gotten free tickets from Unilocal
I would have felt ripped off. Maybe they could have given us a punch card or some sort of scrip to receive mini samples plus have regular size servings for sale.
I thought it was rather ironic that in the window near the entrance was a pack of animals attacking and devouring another animal not the best «ad» for veganism.