EAST COBB, Ga. — It may be hard to believe, but there are still restaurants out there that have no vegan or vegetarian options – unless you enjoy a side salad with no dressing. Thankfully, places like Peace Love and Pizza are keeping up with the times. In fact, the local pizza chain, which now has six locations in metro Atlanta, has an entire vegan menu – and it consists of much more than just raw veggies.
“Vegans and people with dietary restrictions, they want to be able to order where it's convenient for them, and we make it convenient for them,” owner and founder Richard DeSantis said. “I spent six months developing the vegan menu.”
One of the newest specialty pizzas is titled “Beyond Beef Bumble Q,” and you would never know it’s meatless and dairy-free.
“That’s the plant-based protein Beyond Beef,” DeSantis said. “It’s awesome. It even has the right look. They use beet juice to give it that beautiful color. It looks like beef.”
The Beyond Beef is paired with red onions, green peppers, pineapples, VioLife Vegan Mozzarella, and a signature BBQ sauce. But enough about the delicious offerings from the extensive PLP vegan menu. The way in which this pizza is prepared is especially impressive. DeSantis says the employees follow a strict protocol when preparing food for people with dietary restrictions.
“First off, we need to identify what those restrictions are,” he said. “Is it a gluten restriction or is it an allergy? Then, we alert the kitchen. Our system will flag that this order is gluten-free, or it is a vegan customer so that that's kind of where the process begins.”
From there, the kitchen staff changes gloves to prevent cross-contamination.
“We use different tools to build the pizza down to packaging the pizza and using a different cutter to cut the pizza,” DeSantis said. “It is a pizza store, but we're trying to keep them as safe as possible.”
Even the computer system is equipped with specialty buttons and settings.
“We have ‘vegan-friendly’ for a button, or you as a customer can ask a question like ‘tell me about your magic mushroom pizza,’ and there it is.” ,” DeSantis said. “We really try to look at every communication point along the way to make sure that we're taking care of people with dietary restrictions.”
For more on Peace Love and Pizza, CLICK HERE.
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