The Ultimate Vegan Guide-Chapter 14

Online Groceries

Not so long ago, shopping for vegan food online was prohibitively expensive. When the Web got popular in the late 1990s, a number of vegan specialty merchants quickly set up shop. Many of these businesses still exist today. Some of these companies are essentially one-stop online department stores featuring items like vegan shoes, candles, marshmallows, and so forth. Other websites are run by vegan bakeries, and sell cookies and other treats by mail.

These sorts of websites are useful for specialty items, but none of these companies seem to be in the business of selling everyday vegan grocery items at a reasonable price. In most cases, shipping costs alone make these independent sites too expensive to compete with your local food retailers.

Happily, this situation changed when Amazon.com decided to get into the grocery business. True, most of Amazon’s grocery selection isn’t vegan. But they do carry hundreds of great vegan products, often at highly competitive prices. In fact, for some categories such as energy bars, you’d be hard-pressed to find an equivalent selection in your community. Add to this the fact that Amazon offers free shipping on the grocery products it directly fulfills, and their offerings become hard to beat.

For several items including energy bars, cookies, salad dressing, and vitamins, I personally wouldn’t shop anywhere but Amazon. But again, there’s the problem that all this great vegan stuff is buried under a mountain of non-vegan items. And, as of this writing, Amazon really doesn’t offer a convenient way for customers to filter out its non-vegan offerings. So, through Vegan.com, I’ve set up a web page that features Amazon’s vegan offerings. (Disclosure: purchases made through this page generate commissions that I use to keep Vegan.com updated, and to make resources like this online book freely available.)

Amazon of course doesn’t offer any fresh veggies, nor does it sell items that require refrigeration. But for a number of shelf-stable vegan food products, the company offers unbeatable prices and selection. Give it a look.

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