The Cenacle Coffee and Bistro, located at 2844 Veterans Memorial Highway in Austell, recently added vegan options to their menu.

Owner Malcolm Lewis said to the Courier, “We’ve added a vegan menu, motivated by customer demand. Since we’ve been open we’ve had a lot of vegans come looking for that on our menu, so we wanted to put it in place at the right time when we had the right chef in place who could really understand the (vegan) menu, and come out with a variety of items.”

“We’ve added about four breakfast items and about five lunch and light dinner items from pancakes to vegan burgers,” he said. “So we’ve added some wholesome items for the vegans. And it’s really just to fill the demand that vegans are coming asking for. It’s a special space just for them, and we want to invite all vegans out to the Cenacle Coffee and Bistro to taste it.”

For breakfast those options include a tofu scramble, a vegan breakfast burrito, a vegan breakfast platter, and vegan sausage or tempeh bacon.

Lunch and dinner includes a Beyond Burger loaded vegan hot dog.

Sweet potato fries, potato salad, and a strawberry salad, with candied pecans are the vegan sides offered.

What is veganism?

There are a number of reasons people choose a vegan diet, including health (reduced saturated fat from a plant-based diet) and ethics (the treatment of animals).

The Vegan Society website describes veganism as follows:

Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.

There are many ways to embrace vegan living. Yet one thing all vegans have in common is a plant-based diet avoiding all animal foods such as meat (including fish, shellfish and insects), dairy, eggs and honey – as well as avoiding animal-derived materials, products tested on animals and places that use animals for entertainment.