Finding Your Vegan Essentials Without Leaving Home

Why is this list helpful?

As someone who is very used to having every ingredient I’ve ever needed at all times, the shelter-in-place order kind of threw me off my cooking / baking game. After having a difficult time finding some of my essential grocery items online, I thought others might be experiencing this same dilemma. In case that’s true, I put together this list of places to get vegan goods and ingredients during a time when going to your favorite grocery stores is potentially dangerous.

Please note that this website may contain some affiliate links, which means that if you order a product using one of those links, I may receive a commission. This commission helps me cover my blogging expenses so I can continue to create content for you. That being said, I would never recommend something I wouldn’t purchase myself.

In addition to this list, I also created a list just for vegan products on etsy and I also have a shop of all the tools and ingredients I use to make my recipes.

Vegan Republic

For anyone who doesn’t live in or hasn’t visited the bay area in the past 6 year or so, vegan republic is an all-vegan grocery store that donates 100% of their proceeds to support the little cuties at Animal Place Sanctuary. If that’s not a reason in itself to order from them, I don’t know what is.

Vegan Essentials

Vegan Essentials is a vegan store that I believe is 100% online, and they have SO MUCH STUFF. It’s not cheap, but if you’re looking for some specialty vegan products, this is the place to go. They sell my nutritional yeast in bulk, but the shipping bumps it out of my price range unfortunately. The good news is that if you sign up for their newsletter, and you’ll get a coupon for 10% off.

Plant Based Grocery

Plant based grocery is located in Dallas, TX, but they have a full online store that you can order from and have awesome shit delivered straight to your house. They even have vegan gummy vitamins (because we’re all adults).

Green Taste Vegan Goods

Green taste vegan goods is a San Francisco based vegan store that are not only offering nationwide shipping, but they’re also delivering food around the bay area for a delivery fee of only $10.

Meal Kits and Pre-made Meal Services

Purple carrot delivers you meal kits that include everything you need to cook a vegan meal at home, you know, the place where you always are now, haha. Warning: their delivery times are delayed due to higher sales that they’re used to.

Veestro sells you pre-made vegan meals, and they look quite good. And if you sign up for their newsletter, you get a coupon for 15% off your first order!

Vegin out offers a variety of different vegan meal plans, depending where you live. In northern California (where I live), there’s a set menu that changes every week. You order by friday, and it’s delivered by monday, and it’s supposed to be meals for the week. It definitely looks like the meals are on the healthier side (which is the opposite of what I’ve been craving lately, but could be a good way to counter balance all the carbs I’ve been eating).

Boycemode is another plant-based meal delivery service. They do have an introductory option that’s more affordable for your first time only. And if you sign up for their newsletter, you get 15% off that first order as well.

All Vegetarian Inc.

My friend Sarah recently placed an order with All Vegetarian Inc for vegan bacon and eggs. They shipped it with dry ice to her apartment, and she made this awesome breakfast!

Reine Vegan Cuisine

Reine vegan cuisine is an online vegan cheese store, where all the cheese are organic! I’ve never tried these cheeses, but they look SO GOOD. You can get 20% off your purchase using the code WELLNESS, which is good because shipping isn’t cheap.

Riverdel Vegan Cheese

Riverdel is a vegan cheese shop in Brooklyn, NY. They sell more than just cheese, but they have the widest selection and variety of vegan cheeses I have ever seen in life. And luckily for you, they have an online store!

Thrive Market

Thrive market is unfortunately not a vegan store, but they make it easy to sort by vegan items only, and they have over a thousand vegan items! Thrive market has kind of a weird sales model where they make you pay to become a member ($5/month), which initially made me exit the website immediately. But, once I checked it out again, I realized that it has some great benefits compared to a lot of the vegan online shops, including the following.

1. your membership fee comes with a $20 credit if you use someone’s referral link
2. once you’re a member, the prices of vegan food are cheaper than average (they claim 25-50%)
3. shipping is free (and quick!) if you purchase a minimum of $25

If like me, you’re not a risk taker, maybe when you first sign up, you should try just the 1-month membership, rather than the 3-month or the annual, just to see if it’s a good fit for you. I joined so I could could give you the run down of what I think of it.

I paid $5 to sign up, and I used someone’s referral code to get a $20 credit. I purchased $80 worth of groceries and the prices were indeed lower than the stores (but not 50% lower). It was more like regular sale prices at the store. I mostly just bought snack foods because that’s what I’m mainly running out of between my every 3 weeks shopping trips. I placed my order on April 27, and on April 28, I received an email that my order had shipped and that my expected delivery is April 30. I think during this shelter in place order, I’ll continue to use Thrive (and maybe even after it’s over), but it can’t replace a trip to the store because I think it’s only non-perishable foods.

If you plan to try it out, I recommend ordering these items:

• unreal chocolate coconut bars
• crackers
• milkadamia
• vegan cheeze-its
• bacon habanero chips - these are my FAVORITE chips
• pepperoni flavored vegan jerky

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