Why Vegan Jerky? 🌱 🐰

Growing up, one of the neighbor kids down the street from my house used to come to school every day with his backpack full of one of my favorite snacks: beef jerky! Well, to be accurate, he didn’t always bring beef jerky; some days he would bring venison or turkey jerky or some other exotic variety. It turned out his parents had a meat dehydrator at home, so they would “jerkify” anything they could find. Well, lo and behold, one day my neighbor came to school with mushroom jerky.

That’s right, they had decided to “jerkify” mushrooms using the same spices and marinades they normally used on their meat jerkies. And let me tell you something, that mushroom jerky tasted good.

I guess you could say that was the first vegan jerky I ever tried! I’ve thought about that old neighbor of mine a lot after I started Bunny James. Why? Because for a long time now, my vegan friends and customers have been asking me one thing: when are we going to get some vegan jerky?

I knew there had to be great vegan jerky options out there, so I began taste testing my way through every variety I could find. It got to the point where I was eating a stick of vegan jerky after every workout, until I had tried them all. At that point, I knew which vegan jerky we had to include in our next sampler box.

Bunny James already has an exotic jerky sampler for the meat lovers, but I’m even more excited about our vegan jerky sampler. The simple reason? It’s hard to find good jerky options that aren’t made from meat. When we were choosing the jerkies that went into this box, we had three criteria:

1. They had to taste good. (Duh!)
2. We wanted a mix of sweet fruit jerkies and savory jerkies.
3. The full jerky experience: that’s why we’ve got strips and sticks and bite-sized bits.

I’m lactose intolerant, so I know how frustrating it is not to find snacks you can eat. That’s why I was careful to include vegan jerky that can also be enjoyed by those with other special diets.

Our vegan community has been asking for this for a very long time, and I’m glad we were finally able to find just the right items that provide that jerky experience. Try giving some to your meat-loving friend and see if they’ll even notice the difference!