Below is a long, detailed review of eating vegan at Beaches all-inclusive resort in Turks and Caicos. It’s not something many of my normal blog readers are interested in, but it would have been so incredible for us to know before we went, so I’m putting it here so fellow vegan travelers searching for reviews might stumble upon it and know ahead of time how vegan dining works at this resort. Skip if you’re not interested!

Why we thought Beaches would be vegan friendly:

We used Liberty Travel to book a vacation with family because we wanted great vegan options and weren’t sure where to go. We were told that Beaches is an expensive luxury travel experience, but worth it for traveling with dietary restrictions because they cater to every type of diner. So we called Beaches to confirm that they cater to adult vegans and also have kid-friendly vegan options, and were assured emphatically that they’re fantastic for vegans.

We asked for menus in advance, but were told that their menu options change regularly so instead they would have a head chef meet with us when we arrived and let us know all our options based on the current menus, arrange any special requests, and make sure we were completely taken care of during our entire stay. That sounded really good!

But here’s how their system for vegan dining actually works.

Paperwork in Advance for Every Meal:

If you have dietary restrictions, you look at their menus that they have in the culinary office, fill out a paper form for every single meal with where and when you are going to eat and what meal you will have, and drop it off at least one meal period in advance and then they’ll make sure your meals are free of allergens / meet your dietary requests. This probably works really well for many people looking to swap for Gluten Free bread or pasta, or avoiding an allergen like tree nuts or peanuts.

It didn’t work for us as vegans. Most of the menus didn’t even have a vegetarian option, let alone something that seemed easy to veganize. It made writing down our meal requests a weird guessing game.

The culinary food concierge would just say “request what you want!” and I’m like, well, what do they have in the kitchen? What do they make vegan that’s good? I have no idea what to ask for!

It was like doing all the meal-planning I would do at home, but without knowing what’s in the fridge, freezer or pantry and without being able to talk to the person who was going to cook it.

And we got some hilariously bad results when I guessed wrong or communicated poorly.

Trying to ask for vegan versions of existing menu items as the food concierge suggested got us a plain crepe with absolutely nothing in it. When we were told we could order vegan hot dogs, we were served Italian spiced vegan sausages with no buns (our kids were pretty unhappy).

A box of “assorted vegan pastries” we were offered as a snack after seeing the gorgeous looking chocolate and pastry buffets came back as vanilla cupcakes with no frosting and plain sugar cookies.

Tofu tacos were unseasoned crumbled raw tofu subbed in for their meat – and they were good enough compared to other meals we got that we ordered them twice despite being flavorless… but then the second time they came with dairy sour cream on them.

We asked for help, we asked for advice on what to write on the forms… but nothing seemed to get predictably good meals.

When we tried the buffets, we were told that the red snapper and buttered vegetables were options, leading us to realize that we couldn’t trust staff to tell us what we could eat at the buffets. Many of the visually promising items had butter on the pasta or meat on the sauce; it would have been so helpful if the resort had labeled things vegan since they “cater to vegans” instead of having us walk through it with staff who weren’t sure what to tell us we could eat – we had trouble trusting the food at the buffets.

Using their food request forms meant we had no spontaneity to our dining experience, and our meals often took 45 minutes or more because they were made to order, so we spent hours each day sitting and waiting for food with kids who wanted to be on the beach. We also had to take time to do all the paperwork and then more time to walk it over to the food concierge ourselves.

There was so much stress planning meals and filling out forms that I had nightmares about it twice. That might sound ridiculous, but I was feeding two kids I love and trying to have a vacation we invested a lot of money in be worth it for us, and I felt like maybe if I just wrote better requests we’d get decent food but I couldn’t figure it out and the meals were just so disappointing most of the time. I spent so much time trying to figure out the system and get good vegan food because I knew in my heart that the chefs probably could cook amazing vegan stuff with all the whole, plant-based ingredients they had but I couldn’t figure out how to order it since we were told by someone in an office to write down requests based on a completely non-vegan menu.

Some of the meals were really good. The mushroom risotto at Mario’s was fabulous, and they made us amazing French toast two mornings, too.

But for the price we paid for the vacation, it was such a disappointment to have to put in so much time and effort to request meals that were incredibly varied in quality. Their rooms are very expensive; and you’re paying for the average amount of food and alcohol consumed by all the people there plus a profit margin for the resort. Of course it’s not economical – but we hoped it’d feel luxurious and hassle-free enough to compensate for the price tag. I was really disappointed.

I would never, ever recommend it to another vegan until they put vegan options on the menus instead of making you guess and request off-menu meals.

In addition to feeling like the experience wasn’t what we’d been advertised, when we reached out to Beaches with suggestions for how to improve the dining experience for future plant-based travelers, they offered us a one night refund only if we removed our TripAdvisor review, all social media posts, and this blog post. They require all unhappy customers who are offered any type of  refund because of their experience to sign an NDA and take down all online mention of their negative experience.

This practice means that the absence of negative reviews of a Sandals resort like Beaches does not mean an absence of negative experiences; the company has a policy of buying people’s silence. And sometimes it’s more serious than what’s for dinner. Their Jamaica resort has been accused of buying the silence of sexual assault victims. https://www.businessinsider.com/sandals-resorts-jamaica-accused-silencing-sexual-assault-victims-2018-12

“Not meant to cover up concerns…” and “Should you decide to accept our offer for one night refund, we will ask that the postings be removed” are contradictory statements.

In the end, it was the coverup of sexual assaults on their property combined with the frustration of knowing that other travelers might have warned us and given us the chance to choose a different resort if Sandals didn’t buy unhappy people’s silence that made us decline to sign the NDA.

This blog post has cost us – but if it saves fellow travelers from choosing a resort that doesn’t meet their needs, it’s worth it.

BUT – don’t give up hope fellow vegan travelers! We have had truly incredible vegan meals in so many places in the world. Please check out my post on Grand Cayman for the Caribbean – it was incredible. We have loved Paris and Amsterdam and oh my gosh NYC is a dream. It’s possible to get amazing food at wonderful values all over the world. Just not at Beaches Resort.

Here’s what vegan food in the Caribbean CAN look like!