GRUB’s annual vegan street food festival is back – and this year it includes an eco-friendly market, too

Manchester has become a vegan hotspot in recent years, with a wide array of independent 100% vegan eateries popping up.

GRUB launched the first ever weekly vegan street food market ‘Plant Powered Sundays’ three years ago. And their upcoming vegan street food festival ExtraVEGANza (supporting Veganuary), now in its sixth year, is back this month.

To help customers embrace the new year challenge of going vegan for a month as part of ‘Veganuary’ the city centre street food event will be supplying the usual top notch street food, beers and drinks with the complete absence of animal products.

The special vegan menus at the festival include beautiful handmade Chinese dumplings from Oh Mei Dumpling, perfect French patisserie from Chou Choux, fresh waffles from Sugar Spun Sisters, doner kebabs from Seitan’s Kebab and fried chicken burgers from Huns Vegan. 

Alongside the grub there will be 22 lines of 100% vegan beers from local breweries on cask and keg plus the usual selection of wines, ciders, hand made sodas, soft drinks, hot drinks and spirits. 

In addition, the event has now been expanded to include a vegan and eco-friendly shopping market in the face of an incredible growth in the popularity of veganism.

The ‘plant powered shopping’ market will feature products such as essential oil candles from Therapy & Scent, handmade chocolate from Dormouse Chocolates and vegan honey alternatives from the Northern Pantry.

According to figures from The Vegan Society, the number of vegans in Great Britain quadrupled between 2014 and 2019, helped in no small part by the launch of big name products like Nando’s vegan perinaise and Greggs vegan sausage roll.

“It’s been another year of amazing vegan growth in Manchester, we’ve been blown away by the quality and quantity of new vegan grub appearing,” said Jules Bailey, director of GRUB.

“We’re super happy to be providing a great end of Veganuary knees up to celebrate with new vegans, food fans who have been vegan for years or just folk who want to try out some smashing vegan food!”.

The Grub ExtraVEGANza takes place on Friday 24th January 4pm – 10pm, Saturday 25th January 12pm – 10pm and Sunday 26th January 12pm – 6pm at 50 Red Bank, M4 4HF.  The event is free entry and welcomes all comers including families and dogs. Full details of the event can be found on the Facebook event page here.