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Of all industries, agri-food has one of the largest environmental impacts. Reducing the production and consumption of meat, dairy and seafood, and moving to predominantly plant-based diets, is key to lowering our environmental footprint. Veg-friendly restaurants play a key role in this transition as they have the capacity to build a greener dining scene (e.g. positively change consumer opinions towards vegan food). Hence, the purpose of this paper is to understand the entrepreneurial journey of veg-friendly restaurateurs.

The authors employed an inductive-qualitative approach to analyse 12 veg-friendly restaurants in three countries (Spain, Australia and Colombia). In addition to inspecting available data on the restaurants and their menus, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the restaurateurs to uncover (1) the impact of their venture for customers and society, (2) the drivers to establishing their businesses and (3) the challenges faced and strategies used in the management of veg-friendly restaurants.

This work recognises veg-friendly restaurateurs as key actors in building a sustainable future through a greener dining scene. The authors uncover the main drivers of the entrepreneurial journey and propose a multi-dimensional approach to identity and passion as key antecedents of entrepreneurial intention. The authors also discuss how social and sustainable entrepreneurship may be the expression of an activist behaviour. Finally, challenges and strategies to manage veg-friendly restaurants are discussed with directions that contribute to both theory and practice.

A switch towards vegan and vegetarian diets has important implications for ecology, society and the economy. While most research has focused on the consumer side, this paper is unique in understanding how veg-friendly restaurants emerge. This is quite distinctive in the literature regarding sustainable restaurants, which until now, has focused on the managers' adoption of sustainable practices rather than the restaurateurs' entrepreneurial journey. This work additionally builds new insights in the entrepreneurship literature, through uncovering the motivations, experiences and challenges of entrepreneurs that, in most cases, show activist attributes.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to research on individual entrepreneurial intention (IEI) by assessing the importance of entrepreneurship education to students in vocational training programmes and using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to analyse these students’ entrepreneurial intentions. The family background of the students and their exposure to entrepreneurship subject matter were included as antecedents of TPB components and IEI.

To test the research model, the primary data were collected with questionnaires distributed to students in their last year of vocational training programmes with and without entrepreneurship coursework, in a region of Northern Portugal. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling.

The results show that TPB dimensions substantially contribute to explaining students’ IEI. However, their family background makes only a minor contribution, and exposure to entrepreneurship education has no influence on IEI.

Given these results, the authors propose a broader discussion is needed of the importance of introducing business classes into the curricula of vocational training programmes.

This research’s results show that IEI models need to assign greater importance to variables related to previous exposure to entrepreneurial experiences through direct family members. The findings contribute to a fuller understanding of IEI and the factors that precede the formation of this intention among students in training programmes.