A Wren Says

During my trial of Sakara, I told myself that in order to do this “diet” right for the program, I should eat vegan on the other days. I continued to do research to figure out what the founders do. But in a podcast, Whitney Tingle spoke about eating burgers on the weekend. When asked about cheat meals,  they often call out pizza and cheese as part of their “play dirty” weekend delights. I just assumed it would be a veggie burger or vegan cheese. But I couldn’t leave well enough alone and kept digging. It turned out I was wrong and overly restricting my idea of this plan.

Sakara is not vegan. It is plant based.

In a 2023 interview with Modern Luxury, Co-Founder Danielle Duboise had this to say about the plant-based label on the meal service: “Plant based does not mean vegan. We have a term for vegan. We don’t need another one. The whole point of plant based is you base your diet on plants.” (You can read the whole interview with Danielle Dubose on Modern Luxury here.)

Honestly, if you pay attention to the ingredients of the meals, you will notice honey. If this were truly vegan, they would have gone out of their way to avoid that. Dubose is not even vegan. Her favorite restaurant is La Mercerie, with not a vegan item in sight on the menu.

I find it interesting that the founding duo had intentionally chosen the term plant-based, because it wasn’t restrictive. And now cultural use of the term has made it a synonym for vegan. Now in their nutrition philosophy, they use the term “plant rich,” likely to get at more of what they want to say: Sakara isn’t promoting a vegan lifestyle. They just want you to eat more plants, especially if you let them deliver it to you.

As a brand, you want to be careful in choosing your messaging. As time changes things, you have to also be willing to continuously revisit your messaging. What message are you putting into the world? Is it still communicating what you want it to? Are is it time for you to rethink your words?