Today, November 6, 2019, is an historic moment in the perpetual, moral, drive to bring a Vegan option to mainstream fast food dining in the USA. Today is the day that the Beyond Sausage Sandwich makes it debut at over 9,000 Dunkin locations.

The Dunkin Beyond Sausage Sandwich is mind-moving because you can make the sandwich Vegan by removing the egg and cheese, and the sandwich is available all day long.

Now, Vegans have an opportunity, across America, to eat as they wish, and want, at any time at all, without the fear of going without, or being left out.

In my June 1999 article — The New York City Vegan Guide to the Lower East Side — I celebrated, and lamented the fact that McDonald’s was doing its best to create a healthier burger with the McVegan; but since that time, the McVegan has diminished, and failed, and McDonald’s still does not have a Vegan, or even Vegetarian, burger in the USA. As well, at least 80% of those restaurants I mentioned in my review are no longer doing business.

But, today is a time for celebration, and a revelation of the new Vegan revolution that is finally taking stake in mainstream, accessible, eating. You no longer have to search for a hole-in-the-wall cafe on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to eat Vegan. Today, you can do that at a Dunkin, or at a Burger King, or at a Chipotle, or at a Qdoba, or at a Subway.

Earlier this summer, Burger King introduced the Impossible Whopper, available at over 7,000 locations, and the taste, and the experience was nothing short of wonderful. The Impossible Whopper was a Vegan watershed moment of joy that has turned into a wave of healthier plant-based options finally being available, and affordable, at a fast food chain.

Before Beyond Meat, and Impossible Foods, made their historic marks this year in the mainstream mind, Vegans and Vegetarians lived in a food desert. The options for healthy eating were not always readily available, or convenient. You usually had to settle for eating a salad if you chose to eat out at a regular restaurant, and even then you had to make a special effort, or request, to find something safe to eat.

The debut of the Impossible Slider at White Castle was another historic moment in 2018 that helped start the mainstream acceptance of non-animal based plant burgers.

With Vegan burgers, and sausage sandwiches, now becoming more widely available, quickness, convenience, and availability, will do more for the Vegan movement than any other protest, or act of defiance, ever could begin to budge.

Sure, there are hardcore Vegans who disagree with me — for them, it’s all, and everything, or nothing — but I have always believed it is better to be “more Vegan than not” when placed in an unbearable bind, because it is still impossible today to be 100% Vegan. If you use a computer, or if you drive in a car, you are using bits of animals in that sort of processed manufacture.

A political movement takes time, and a moral war is won in smaller battles that build greater meaning. If we all wait for “100% or Nothing” we’ll all be waiting ourselves to death into the grave instead of slowly helping others to safely join us in our mission of health, and in obtaining non-cruel food sources.

Don’t miss the point for the protrusion! It is far better for McDonald’s to eventually offer one Vegan option than no option at all.

There’s money to be made in making Vegan food, and the time is now for that reality to hit the homes of the big business food suppliers.

Sure, Qdoba offers Beyond Meat at 729 locations, and The Cheesecake Factory offers an Impossible Burger at 211 locations, and Subway is slowly offering a Beyond Meatball sandwich at 685 locations —

— but you really need the 16,000 store velocity, and PR mass, of a Dunkin and a Burger King together to overpower a change in ordinary, everyday, thinking for those who believe animal flesh is the only acceptable protein; and let there be no doubt that I am all in, and absolutely Pro-GMO!

Will Taco Bell ever offer a Vegan meat substitute? So far, they have resisted that demand. To compete, Taco Bell will have to comply.

Chipotle has been “Sofritas” Vegan for some time at their 2,473 stores — but there is a certain discomfort I have with the Chipotle brand. I find their store managers unfriendly, stingy with guacamole, and arrogant and, of course, their E. Coli past still continues to bite them in more than one haunting way.

In unrelated Chipotle news, my recent bout with E. Coli now always makes me a wary consumer of any restaurant with an E. Coli past:

Plant-based food is the future of American fast dining — because it is healthier to eat, and it will be cheaper to produce than processed animals — and that’s a really good thing for your body, and the planet!

When McDonald’s, with 37,855 worldwide locations, and when KFC with 18,875 locations, and when Wendy’s, with over 6,500 locations, next take the leap into plant-based offerings, the game will be forever changed — and we already know every big, and small, fast food chain is already hard at work on Vegan food options because they fear being left behind.

Once that door of healthy accessibility if finally flung far open, it will never close, and the good food revolution will finally have been won; and I never thought I’d see that victory in my lifetime, but that permanent blessing is arriving sooner than you might believe.