On Aberdeen’s Skene Street, grey rain greets Bonono Cafe’s last day in business.
The vegan cafe – one of the longest standing in the city – announced the day before that because of falling sales and rising costs it will shut for good at 4pm.
“We have tried very hard for a very long time, but we just can’t make it work,” the owners and staff say in a Facebook post.
The announcement shocks Bonobo’s many loyal customers, who had little idea the cafe was in trouble. By mid-morning, the venue is packed with people paying their final respects.
“It’s a real shame it’s closing,” says Fiona Mutch as she walks out of Bonobo for the last time. “It’s such a lovely place. My husband is a meat eater but even he likes the food here.”
Jaz Armour, a local teacher, used to bring her mother to the cafe after cancer treatment at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.
“Today is bringing back memories,” she says. “I’m trying really hard not to cry.”
A rise and a fall for Bonobo Cafe
It was a sad end for Bonobo, which started out as a pop-up vegan cafe seven years ago and moved to Skene Street two years later.
It quickly grew to become a destination for the city’s vegan community, who loved it for its fully-vegan menu and ethical stance on issues such as staff wages and suppliers.
Bonobo’s demise, however, raises questions over the shape of Aberdeen’s vegan restaurant scene, which has changed markedly in the past few years.
And while the cafe is far from the only food business to go under post-pandemic, new trends are making it hard for committed vegan outlets.
“You can get vegan options pretty much anywhere these days, especially in the city,” says Rebecca Knowles, the Aberdeenshire founder of Vegan Outreach Scotland, an animal-welfare charity.
Rebecca, from Collieston, was a big fan of Bonobo. But as someone who shares its commitment to fighting animal abuse, she knows the pressure it faced.
“Everyone from Doc Martens to Adidas has a vegan range, now. You don’t have to go to these specialist shops.”
According to an Ipso Mori poll from 2019, just 2% of Scots identify as vegan. However, Rebecca says the movement overall is more popular than ever thanks to younger people attracted to the lifestyle.
This new generation, however, is more flexible.
“There’s a lot of people who dip in and out,” Rebecca says.
‘When Bonobo first opened, there weren’t many vegan options’
These are the customers flocking to Iwona Szmid’s restaurant, BioCafe.
Just a 60-second walk from Bonobo, around the corner on Rosemount Viaduct, business is as good as ever.
Iwona was a huge admirer of Bonobo. She puts its closure squarely down to rising costs and soaring food prices.
But she also sees the changing trends – the increased interest in the health benefits of a vegan and vegetarian diet and people who eat less meat because of its environmental impact rather than animal-welfare concerns.
“Also, you can buy a lot of vegan food in the shops now,” Iwona continues. “When Bonobo first opened, there weren’t many vegan options. Now shops even have ready-to-eat meals. And this is not just one shop, this is every supermarket.”
In response, Iwona makes BioCafe is as welcoming as possible. Her cafe is part of a new influx of vegan kitchens across the UK such as Jam Delish in north London that wear their ethical stances lightly to focus on the food.
“We are open to everyone,” says Iwona, who has plans to open a food truck on Aberdeen beach. “We don’t close ourselves off and don’t say we are just for vegans or vegetarians.”
The plant-based vs vegan controversy
Many of these new cafes call themselves ‘plant-based’, and it has been revealing to see the phrase supersede ‘vegan’ in recent years.
Iwona says plant-based is “a safer way” to describe her food as well as sounding more healthy. Health is important to the BioCafe owner, who moonlights as a personal trainer.
“When some people hear vegan they say, ‘I’m not going to go there’. But when they hear plant-based, they think, ‘oh this place sounds nice, it sounds healthy’.”
The debate over plant-based and vegan has sparked controversy in some circles.
“Vegans are a bit divided on this one,” says Rebecca from Vegan Outreach Scotland, who explains that plant-based refers to diet while vegan “is more of a way of living ethically”.
“Plant-based doesn’t have the same jarring effect as the word vegan,” she continues. “I think vegans still, probably with a big section of the public, have this image of being radical, argumentative, judgmental, preachy. And that’s really unfortunate.”
For Leanne Cooper, however, none of this explains why Bonobo Cafe closed down.
The Aberdeen University post-grad has been vegan for ten years and will miss her trips to Skene Street.
“Bonobo had existed long before veganism or ‘plant-based’ food was as popular and accessible as it is today, so I don’t feel like they were ever chasing some kind of trend,” says Leanne, who is writing a PhD on the experiences of ethical vegans in state institutions.
“It’s a real loss for Aberdeen, independent business and customers, vegan or not.”
Bonobo did not respond to requests for comment.