Austin voted No.13 Most Vegetarian and Vegan Friendly City

Austin has a reputation for being a healthy, outdoorsy, and self-care based city, and WalletHub's newest article confirms this even further! Austin has been voted the 13th best city for vegans and vegetarians! For many, it isn't just a diet, it is a way of life. Austin makes it easy for those who are meat-free in a number of ways. Keep reading to learn more about WalletHub's methodology.

"To determine the best and cheapest places for a plant-based diet, WalletHub’s analysts compared the 100 largest U.S. cities across 15 key indicators of vegan- and vegetarian-friendliness. We examined each city based on such metrics as the cost of groceries for vegetarians, the share of restaurants serving meatless options and salad shops per capita."

Three Key Dimensions

1) Affordability

2) Diversity, Accessibility & Quality

3) Vegetarian Lifestyle.

Wallethub's analysts evaluated those dimensions using 15 relevant metrics, which can be found here with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for vegans and vegetarians. For metrics marked with an asterisk (*), they calculated the population size using the square root of the population in order to avoid overcompensating for minor differences across cities.

Finally, analysts determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its total score and used the resulting scores to rank-order the cities in our sample. In constructing the sample, they considered only the “city proper” in each case and excluded surrounding cities in the metro area.