This week we are featuring Melbourne Vegan Tours. Following the success of vegan tours in other major cities Jess and Dan are taking vegans out and about in Melbourne showing them all the cool places to eat.
You can view the Melbourne Vegan Tours page here.
Who is in the Melbourne Vegan Tours team and how long have you been vegan?
Melbourne Vegan Tours are run by Jess Ivers and Dan Pinne. We have both been vegan since February 2016, starting “The Reluctant Vegan” podcast to document our vegan journey.
When did you guys get started?
Tours officially began in September, 2018. We began planning out the business earlier in 2018 after making travel plans and noticing the demand for vegan tours in other countries. Cities like Madrid, Berlin, Paris and Dublin were all offering tours and it seemed like a no-brainer to start them in Melbourne.
What challenges did you face in starting your business and now that it’s up and running?
Knowing we’d never done anything like it before! Hosting and tour guiding is still something very new to us, but we thrive off of conversation and new experiences. Being taken seriously in such a niche service was hard at first, but we feel we’ve proved ourselves that we’re in this for the long-haul!
What strengths and weaknesses do you think come from being a specifically vegan business?
In terms of strengths, definitely backing yourself and your beliefs. It’s so common for people to question your motives of veganism and why we would choose to live the way we do. And being experts in a particular topic is a definite strength, knowing that in the tourism industry, we’re quite unique in what we do. A weakness is that we aren’t for everyone. Being such a different service means that people won’t naturally think of us when it comes to activities in Melbourne.
What’s the thing best about running your business?
That we get to eat falafel almost every day? Haha The best part is meeting new people, hearing their vegan stories, or what brought them to Melbourne. Our tours combine the best of vegan food and Melbourne history so it’s a great mix of cultural activities.
What would say is the ‘secret sauce’ that makes your business so special?
Belief in our product. And being able to see the bigger picture. Our impact has started and will keep getting bigger the more our business grows.
Looking forward what does the future hold for Melbourne Vegan Tours?
We hope to be running more themed tours soon, launching in new areas and hopefully hiring more tour guides! We want to be the one-stop info guides for vegan travel in Australia. We have also just launched in Sydney!
Anything else you would like to add?
We’re proud to say we want to grow and to be a viable and flourishing business. Doing that will help us have a bigger impact for vegans and animals everywhere.
