I stopped being vegetarian almost 2 years ago—one of the biggest reasons I’m not a vegetarian is that I stay up late pretty much every day and don’t always feel like cooking or eating snacks so I will go to whatever is open near me. During university, nothing really stayed open after 10 anyway because Evanston is a lame place. So I would often eat at or before 10, and if I was eating out there were vegetarian options (stir fry with tofu, chipotle, etc.) still at this time.
Now I live in a predominantly eastern European and Mexican area of Chicago. There isn’t much vegetarian food in this neighborhood in general, although there is some still. However, the vegetarian restaurants here seem to service a wealthier demographic than the non vegetarian food. It closes earlier, more expensive, etc. The cheap and late night options are fast food and taquerias, which essentially have no quality vegetarian items. But since this stuff is open, it actually makes me lazier and I’ll often eat at 11:00 PM because I can. However getting into this routine means I eat more meat.
I’m pretty sure if there was a decent cheap vegetarian restaurant that stayed open till 2:00 am I would eat at least 1 less meat meal a week, probably 2-3.
why aren’t there any vegetarian late night options near me? probably the normal reasons—no one around here wants or can open one, or there isn’t enough demand.
In either case it got me wondering. If there is enough demand to recoup say 95% ish of cost for a late night falafel stand, would it be a cost effective intervention (over whatever other things ACE recommends) to fund that last 5%? I might think more about this unless it’s super obvious to someone that this is orders of magnitude worse than other options.
A five percent subsidy is about fifty cents a meal in Chicago, roughly. However, some subsidized diners would have eaten a vegetarian meal with or without the subsidy, so the true cost per meat meal averted would likely be higher—so maybe a dollar or so? So you could predict the cost per farmed animal averted from that, keeping in mind that the demand elasticities aren’t 1:1.
It doesn’t sound terribly promising on my three-minute BOTEC. Notably, much of the displaced meat would be beef, leading to a high cost per 1 cow reduction in demand.
I stopped being vegetarian almost 2 years ago—one of the biggest reasons I’m not a vegetarian is that I stay up late pretty much every day and don’t always feel like cooking or eating snacks so I will go to whatever is open near me. During university, nothing really stayed open after 10 anyway because Evanston is a lame place. So I would often eat at or before 10, and if I was eating out there were vegetarian options (stir fry with tofu, chipotle, etc.) still at this time.
Now I live in a predominantly eastern European and Mexican area of Chicago. There isn’t much vegetarian food in this neighborhood in general, although there is some still. However, the vegetarian restaurants here seem to service a wealthier demographic than the non vegetarian food. It closes earlier, more expensive, etc. The cheap and late night options are fast food and taquerias, which essentially have no quality vegetarian items. But since this stuff is open, it actually makes me lazier and I’ll often eat at 11:00 PM because I can. However getting into this routine means I eat more meat.
I’m pretty sure if there was a decent cheap vegetarian restaurant that stayed open till 2:00 am I would eat at least 1 less meat meal a week, probably 2-3.
why aren’t there any vegetarian late night options near me? probably the normal reasons—no one around here wants or can open one, or there isn’t enough demand.
In either case it got me wondering. If there is enough demand to recoup say 95% ish of cost for a late night falafel stand, would it be a cost effective intervention (over whatever other things ACE recommends) to fund that last 5%? I might think more about this unless it’s super obvious to someone that this is orders of magnitude worse than other options.
A five percent subsidy is about fifty cents a meal in Chicago, roughly. However, some subsidized diners would have eaten a vegetarian meal with or without the subsidy, so the true cost per meat meal averted would likely be higher—so maybe a dollar or so? So you could predict the cost per farmed animal averted from that, keeping in mind that the demand elasticities aren’t 1:1.
It doesn’t sound terribly promising on my three-minute BOTEC. Notably, much of the displaced meat would be beef, leading to a high cost per 1 cow reduction in demand.