Monday, September 6th marked the official beginning of the 21-day Vegan Kickstart campaign sponsored by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), in an effort to promote vegan diets and healthier lifestyles.

Though teens are an enigma to many adults, they are the consumers of tomorrow — heads of households and holders of the family purse who will make the decisions and shape the habits and attitudes of yet another, even newer generation. With enormous potential buying power and influence, we may believe we don’t understand this group, but what we do know about them offers great potential to vegetarian food businesses.

Getting your foot in the door can be the hardest part of attracting new customers, particularly with once-upon-a-time niche items like vegetarian foods. However, with new business models sprouting up each day, more and more options are becoming available to get the word out.

Selling doesn’t just take place in the aisles of grocery stores anymore. Those days are long gone — in fact, selling is often taking place on laptops, on cell phones, and most recently, on iPads! A new study from Nielsen finds that the world spends over 110 billion minutes on social media networks and blog sites, which is equal to 2% of all time spent online or one in every four and a half minutes spent online per user.

According to research from Mambo Sprouts Marketing, functional foods — items that provide additional health-promoting or disease-preventing attributes beyond their basic nutritional properties — are making a big splash with consumers and offer another way for manufacturers to differentiate their products.