Shifting Values and Careers: How Gretchen Price Took Her Work Online

We interviewed Gretchen Price of Gretchen’s Vegan Bakery. She is a professional pastry chef, blogger, and YouTuber. After becoming vegan in her personal life, Gretchen sold her brick-and-mortar bakery to focus on spreading vegan baking information to her extensive online audience.

Q What inspired you to become a professional pastry chef?

It’s actually a funny story. I failed algebra my freshman year of high school so they put me in home economics instead. That class sparked my interest in the food business in general! I’ve been waitressing since I was 14 and always gravitated towards the bakery. I loved to watch the chefs work.

I graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and went on to work for hotels and catering companies, but I always had the itch to start my own business. In 2005, I bought my bakery in New Jersey!

Q What prompted you to become vegan?

I became vegetarian in 2009 but still ate eggs and cheese. I didn’t make the connection to the horrifying aspects of the milk and egg industry because I thought at least the animals weren’t being killed.

At that time I owned a small 15 person bakery. When I would order ingredients, i.e. 30 pound blocks of cream cheese, hundreds of dozens of eggs and tons of butter, there was something nagging within me. I thought of how many animal resources just my small bakery consumed every week. How taxing must this be on the animals?

It wasn’t until 2014 that I really started digging into the truth of the egg and dairy industries, and the next year I became fully vegan.

Q How did becoming vegan affect your career?

It was a shock to many of my followers when I announced that I had become vegan. People thought I was doing some crazy hippie thing, but I just kept going with it!

I had started my blog and YouTube as an exit strategy from the bakery, but that’s when the conflicts started. I was still creating and sharing these non-vegan recipes but I wasn’t eating those foods in my own life. When I made YouTube videos with non-vegan foods, my audience actually noticed that I stopped taste-testing my recipes! I had to make a business decision – I couldn’t in good conscience make more videos with food from an industry I didn’t agree with. In 2016, I made the jump to sharing only vegan recipes, and soon after made a separate vegan blog, Gretchen’s Vegan Bakery

It was a starting over period in my YouTube and blog business. I received a lot of hateful emails but now I have gained a new audience and some former viewers have even returned with a more open mind.

Q What kind of feedback did you receive from your online audience when you started sharing solely vegan recipes?

I had a large following that was not vegan at that time and they had followed me for years! There was a level of trust – they connected with me personally through my videos and in transitioning and keeping authentic, it turned a lot of people off. The people who decided to stick around were very interested and they were able to learn a lot about what going vegan is about. As with anything, it’s the people who are unhappy who speak out.

I even got backlash from vegan people saying, “You’re too apologetic,” because I still embrace people who aren’t vegan and welcome them to use my recipes. But I think it’s important not to say, “My way is the way things need to be.” I try to take a more subtle approach online and share my reasons without forcing them on others. I’ve definitely received a better response that way and have been able to help many people transition to vegan or vegetarian foods.

Q Were the reactions from people in your personal life as harsh as those from your following?

People in my personal life have been just as harsh in some circumstances. They have challenged me since day one of my transition. It can be very hard to have a calm conversation to defend your decision because it brings peoples own morals and the consequences of their choices into question.

When I decline certain foods some people become very hostile and demand to know why I won’t eat what they’ve made. Maybe at a deeper level, they know that something isn’t right in their conscience. At the same time, many people just don’t understand or don’t care to understand the reasons people become vegan. That being said, I always welcome people to try my recipes and learn from my blog regardless of if they are vegan or not.

Q Is there anything you can’t replicate as a vegan baked good?

Eggs are very difficult to replace! The whole premise of my blog is replicating traditional bakery style desserts. I could make a sponge cake blindfolded before going vegan and it was difficult to learn the science behind vegan baking! My most asked questions is how to replace eggs in any recipe. Unfortunately, there is no one-size fits all solution. I have been testing vegan recipes for years and I won’t put out a recipe if I don’t think it measures up to the original. Vegan recipes for some of my favorite desserts can be found in my book: Modern Vegan Baking. That’s also why I created the course Vegan Baking Mastery, where I share the how-tos of vegan baking in detail and in an interactive way that’s easy to follow.

You can read Gretchen’s blog here and check out her new book here.