Time To Invest In Oat Milk Lattes?
As a 20 something millennial my experience of veganism growing up was limited. At best is was the occasional visit with my parents to a small wholefood store in search of an obscure ingredient required for a recipe.
My memories are of various vegetarian labelled goods, supplements, shit loads of lentils and these interesting looking hemp flavoured chocolate bars.
I’d get excited at the prospect of getting high if I ate enough of them.
Only to realise, sadly, that when I got home they tasted like crap and offered minimal to zero actual cannabis content.
The staff were ageing hippies and this vegan store was a weird place to be.
Fast forward to 2020 and veganism is anything but niche or weird. As healthy living, diet and fitness have risen in our consciousness, veganism has risen with that tide.
My dad’s gone vegan. My cousin’s gone vegan. My mates gone vegan.
So, in this week’s entry let’s take a look at the unstoppable trend that is veganism.
Has everyone gone Vegan?
The stats say increasingly yes. In the UK the number of people identifying as plant based consumers has jumped from 150k in 2006 to over 600k today.
The number who say they are trying to cut down on meat consumption is much higher.
Vegan options are bountiful at both the home of the hamburger McDonalds and the purveyors of fried chicken KFC. Meat-alternative food sales are to set to push £600 million by 2021.
A quick search of #vegan on my Instagram gives me over 90 million posts. The majority are not from animal rights activists but rather pretty damn cute fitness models and Instagram chefs.
So Vegans are cool
The face of veganism has changed.
Someone who epitomises this on the instafeed is Gaz Oakley.
A smart, talented and decent looking chef who started posting pictures of his creations to share with friends. He now pumps out TV quality recipe videos each week to over 1 million subscribers on his YouTube Channel.
Gaz’s food and image break the notion that vegan’s eat lentils and soya beans, have braids and wear tie dye t-shirts.
Hitting up a supermarket you will find Oatly.
The Swedish brand started life with little traction for its oat milk which was sold as a lactose free dairy alternative to independent coffee shops. Now you cannot avoid the stuff.
Its tongue-in-chic packaging stands out in every supermarket milk aisle up and down the country.
My semi-skimmed looks cheap compared to this dope vegan friendly milk box.
The Soya Pound
Consumers are identifying with veganism as a brand of cool, health and wellness.
So it’s no surprise that chasing the soya pound to drive shareholder value are a lot of knowing corporate faces.
Front and centre is Pret a Manager. Everyone’s favourite work day lunch spot has gone ‘all in’ on opening fourteen 100% vegan outlets in the UK. When Pret acquired rival EAT for £60 million last year it said it would convert the majority of those stores to Veggie Prets.
That’s a serious investment in Oat Milk Lattes.
In January, KFC launched it’s ‘zero chicken’ burger to all 900 UK stores to celebrate Veganuary. McDonalds pushed a veggie dippers meal nationwide.
These two are laggards compared with high street baker Gregg’s whose vegan sausage roll drove sales 11% higher at stores through 2019. CEO Roger Whiteside said the vegan roll had driven awareness of the brand to an all time high.
The stock market is betting on Vegans.
In the US, plant based food brand Beyond Meat is trading at 23 times its revenue on the NASDAQ. At $7.8 billion it has valuation to earnings ratio normally reserved for tech stocks.
Sales increased 141% in the past year and the Beyond enjoys margins of 40% on it’s plant based goods, roughly double that of meat focused competitors.
What’s next?
People want to eat less meat.
And when those people include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lewis Hamilton and Conor McGregor (all of whom are featured in the Netflix vegan documentary ‘The Game Changers’) then you know a trend has gone mainstream.
The Netlfix show argues that a vegan diet can increase strength and performance at the highest level.
Whilst the documentary’s focus is sport, the same benefits can surely be reaped by anyone smart enough to tap into the movement.
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This post was originally written for the Digital Evolution newsletter.
Check it out here: https://digitalevolution.substack.com/welcome
Follow Callum on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/McdonnellCallum
