While most of us are busy beach-bumming and barbecue-hopping this weekend, a lucky few (well, around 70,000 per night) will be gathering at Chicago’s Soldier Field for one last long, strange trip with the Grateful Dead. The four living original members of the band—Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart—are reuniting for what they say is the final time, to perform three shows in honor of their 50th anniversary. (Phish’s Trey Anastasio will sit in for the late, great Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995.)

Even those of us who never really got beyond American Beauty (present company included) have some sense of the tailgating scene at a Dead show: lots of hippies in VW vans smoking pot, wearing tie-dye shirts and ponchos, and eating vegetarian food. This go-round, meat-repudiating Deadheads with the munchies will not have to BYO-Tofu or fill up on what’s available at makeshift parking lot stands; the concessionaires inside Soldier Field will be hawking their own veggie dogs and burgers.

For this, Deadheads have Gene Baur to thank. Baur, a vegan, is the president and cofounder of Farm Sanctuary, an animal rescue organization started in 1986. Dead fans may know him better as “the guy with the veggie dog stand.” In the late eighties, Baur and a partner would follow the Dead around for weeks at a time in a VW Westphalia van, selling vegan hot dogs, with a side of anti–factory farming literature, to the hordes of fans that camp out in venue parking lots.

Thirty years later, Farm Sanctuary has developed some more sophisticated outreach tactics—their supporters include Alec Baldwin, Jon Stewart, Ellen DeGeneres, and Ryan Gosling—and vegan food is, as we all know, far more ubiquitous. So when Baur found out that the Dead were reuniting, he called up Soldier Field and, with the help of Bob Weir, petitioned Aramark, the arena’s concession provider, to offer an expanded menu of vegan-friendly options. Aramark agreed.

Read on to hear more from Baur about the virtues of meatless meat, and how he helped put veggie dogs into the hands of Deadheads past and present.

Tell me how you came to sell veggie hot dogs at Grateful Dead shows. Are you a big fan?

I love the Grateful Dead. I never identified as a Deadhead exactly. I certainly enjoyed traveling and being part of the scene. Our van was a pretty well-known location. People would say, “I’ll meet you at the meatless hot dog stand.”