Oakland Vegan Beer and Food Festival

After years of seeing all the fun that SoCal folks were having at the LA Vegan Beer and Food Festival. I was skeptically excited when I saw Hella Vegan Eats announce they were planning the Oakland Vegan Beer and Food Festival. I say «skeptically» since the time between the initial announcement and the date that was chosen for the beer & food fest were too close together for anything nearly as massively epic as LA’s version. Even still, this has all the makings of what could be a Bay Area «must attend» event in the years to come. It just isn’t quite there yet.
Popular Interest: I’m not sure they were expecting this kind of turnout, in fact I know they weren’t even close to ready for it. The massive crowd crammed the Classic Cars West parking lot as if they were handing out freebies left and right. Nope, folks were just standing in line for up to two hours in order to purchase a sandwich or appetizer from the two available food vendors. Those that got here early, got the goods and those goods were great. If you arrived after noonish, you most likely got screwed out of what you came here for. Yay for us early birds, bummer for them. Major bummer.
Excellent Vegan Food: Everybody knows HVE slangs some of the best, most creative food from a mobile cart that you’ll ever find. Their Southern Fried Chicken sandwich was no joke delish! It tasted much like the Banquet brand chicken from my youth. This is a major compliment since that was one of my favorite things as a kid. S+M Vegan is the new kid on the block and their stuff is fantastic, although they opened up an hour late and closed early without any explanation. There wasn’t much wait for Timeless Coffee’s awesome pastries, because they seemed to be ready for the onslaught of customers. Finally a Vegan place that has their shit together.
Beer: While no local breweries were invited to participate, as in the LA version, CommonWealth. Café & Pub served up pints of tasty local brews including a few from Oakland’s newest brewery, Ale Industries. To become more appealing to a larger audience, more breweries would need to become involved.
Word of Mouth: What seemed like a Facebook/​Twitter invite, created an enormous amount of buzz based on the name alone. I think folks were hoping that it would be similar to this amazing event.
If next year the organizers can secure a much larger space, many more actual food vendors, and invite local breweries to the fold, this can easily rival LA’s version. Our food is just as good as what they have down south and our beer is much better, so I don’t see any reason why not.

This event was a huge disaster! We waited in the line for Hella Vegan for 90 minutes and only made it halfway through. We gave up and decided to cut our losses before we wasted another 90 minutes. Two out of the five items on the menu were already sold out by the time we left. There was another food vendor but that too looked like a mess as they were taking orders first and you then had to wait around for your food and there were people who had been waiting for over an hour and they had no idea when and if they would get their food. Huge waste of our time.

After seeing the glorious photos and videos from the L.A. Vegan Beer and Food Festival, I was overjoyed at seeing that there would be a smaller version coming to our very own Oakland. Whoo hoo! Yippee!
Sadly, I had a family engagement that held me up until the mid-​afternoon. I heard from not one, but TWO sources that they had already started selling out of a lot of items by 2pm. I made it there at 2:30, and yes indeed, S+M Vegan was completely sold out of everything, and Hella vegan Eats was out of their sandwiches. Not to worry, right? Still three more menu items!
I moseyed to the back of the line, slightly bewildered that there appeared to be at least fifty people in front of me. The line was moving super slowly at first, but quickly picked up. As I neared the front of the line, HVE sold out of their chicken ‘n waffle bites, and their Potsticker Burrito. They changed the burrito to tacos, so I ordered one potsticker taco, and one Lusty Lovers taco. Oddly enough, I was still given a burrito. After an hour of waiting, I was overjoyed to get some food into my empty belly.
Like a phoenix from the ashes, S+M started serving again after I had ordered my tacos. Greedily, I decided to order something from them as I waited for my Hella Vegan tacos. I chose their French Dip seitan sandwich with avocado added (but of course!). If there is an option to add avocado, you bet your ass I’m going for it!
The sammy was pretty tasty, even though I was really full from my unexpected burrito. I skipped most of the bread and just munched on the seitan, roasted veggies, and avocado. It was hearty and delicious. I would definitely order this again.
Apparently one of their vendors didn’t show up (Black Spring Coffee?), so that’s why they were not prepared for the volume. I wasn’t able to try any of the ice cream, either (sad face!).
I’ll cut them a little bit of slack, as this was their test run. 3 out of 5. Next year (if they attempt this again) will be a lot better!