The death of veganism? Meatless brands seeing a ‘slowdown’ in appetite for their products amid concerns over ‘ultra-processed foods’ and the cost of living
- Leeds-based Meatless Farm falls into administration with 50 staff redundant
- Experts say trendy vegan market is ‘stagnant’ as people search for alternatives
Britain’s vegan market appears to be faltering due to a ‘slowdown in demand’ for meat-free products amid concerns over ‘ultra-processed’ food and the cost of living.
Meatless Farm has become the latest victim after the Leeds-based company made its 50-strong workforce redundant last Friday and collapsed into administration.
The firm was set up in 2016 and sold £11million worth of plant-based mince, burgers and chicken in 2021 – but has struggled as demand for meat-free products slowed.
Its failure comes as experts warned the trendy vegan market was now ‘stagnant’ as people search for more healthy alternatives and turn their backs on the animal-free food and drink products which briefly took over supermarket shelves in the UK.
Other brands to have faltered in Britain in recent months include Yorkshire-based sausage maker Heck which has dropped most of its vegan products, and Swedish oat milk firm Oatly which has withdrawn its dairy free ice cream offering in the UK.
Meatless Farm of Leeds made its 50-strong workforce redundant and fell into administration
Yorkshire sausage company Heck has reduced its vegan-friendly range to just two products
In addition, Nestle said in March it was removing its Garden Gourmet plant-based vegan brand from the shelves of UK stores, less than two years after it was released.
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And Beyond Meat, the California-based firm behind the burgers in the McPlant at McDonald’s and the Beyond Burger at Wetherspoon pubs, has seen its shares fall 95 per cent since 2019. Last month it reported its fifth consecutive quarter of declining year-over-year revenue.
Speaking about the failure of Meatless Farm, independent retail analyst Maureen Hinton told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I think the problem is it’s one of the smaller players, and what you’re seeing is that demand for these meat-free products isn’t growing as fast as the supply that’s available out there.
‘So as one of the smaller suppliers who hasn’t got the scale, and costs are going up, so you can see it must have been struggling for quite some time – it hasn’t filed its accounts for a couple of years, for instance.’
Other brands in the vegan sector now scaling back include Innocent, the smoothie maker which discontinued its dairy-free range earlier this year.
Supermarket customers appear to have started cutting back on meat-replacement products as inflation rose, according to research firm NielsenIQ, which said sales fell by £37.3million in the year to September 2022.
Ms Hinton said customers also had concerns over how vegan products are made, adding: ‘There’s a lot of feedback that they want the taste of meat. But then if you’re going to get the taste of meat it’s going to be an ultra-processed product.
All three of Innocent’s vegan, dairy-free milk alternative products have been discontinued
Swedish oat milk firm Oatly which has withdrawn its dairy free ice cream offering in the UK
‘And people are becoming more concerned about sustainability, what goes into their products, health and wellness. So what we’re seeing is it’s become fairly stagnant across this market. We’re not seeing that pickup that there was initially, say, a couple of years ago.
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‘And they’re aiming more at the 16 to 40 year olds, that younger market. And of course with the cost of living, people are thinking about what they’re spending their money on as well.
‘So I think there is a definite slowdown in demand for this – whereas people are looking for more healthy alternatives which actually, when you think about it, is just fruit and vegetables.’
Asked whether the meat industry could take advantage of this, she continued: ‘I think with the meat industry then of course there’s a pushback against meat because it’s the same reason – there’s ethical reasons for not eating meat, but there’s also that sustainability and what is the impact on the environment.’
She also cited the example of a meat producer in the Netherlands that has switched to making vegan products, while adding that UK retailers such as Marks and Specer are ‘making a very big message about the ethical and the provenance of all the meat that they use’.
It comes after Meatless Farm was forced to stop trading despite its products being stocked in major supermarkets in the UK and 20 other countries as well as being used at the Itsu, Pret and Yo Sushi chains.
The firm’s commercial director Tim Offer said on Linkedin that the ‘business has unfortunately made all the teams redundant’.
Nestle is removing its Garden Gourmet plant-based vegan brand from the shelves of UK stores
Beyond Meat, the California-based firm behind the burgers in the McPlant at McDonald’s and the Beyond Burger at Wetherspoon pubs, has seen its shares fall 95 per cent since 2019
It comes after the firm’s shareholders faced multimillion-pound losses after it lost a battle to secure new £10million of new investment. The company lost nearly £50million across the past three years.
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Meatless founder Morten Toft Bech had told The Grocer just last month that the company was ‘doing really well’ and described it as ‘good and healthy… with strong growth’. Meatless had valued itself at nearly £90million just four months ago.
But experts are now predicting the potential wipeout of many trendy vegan brands.
Last month Heck reduced its vegan-friendly range from ten products to just two – chipolatas and burgers – after a lack of demand revealed customers were not as eager for vegan sausages as had previously been thought.
Its managing director Andrew Keeble said: ‘We had a huge range of vegan products because, like everyone else, we believed what was being written in the press. The vegan market is really funny.
‘We actually had some amazing products out there that were very functional. But the public somehow wasn’t quite ready for it yet. They didn’t want all that veg in the sausage.’
But the decline of vegan products comes as business investors invested large sums into meat-free brands because ‘they didn’t want to miss the next Google’, Mr Keeble told the Sunday Telegraph.
By the start of this year, analysis by ADHB and Kantar found that a million fewer households bought meat-free products compared to last January, and 280,000 fewer households bought dairy-free.
They also found that among those participating in ‘Veganuary’ (January) this year, by the middle of the month as many as 70 per cent had returned to their normal diets, with 40 per cent claiming it was too expensive and another 40 per cent struggling to find vegan food and drink they enjoyed.
Clive Black, an analyst at Shore Capital, told the Observer last month: ‘The real market is nowhere as big as some people hoped and some people ramped up.
‘Reality is dawning. We looked with some incredulity at the number of companies that were drawn into this space and the amount of shelf space that was given to it in supermarkets. There will be some winners, but the numbers will be relatively small because we’ve been through a bubble.’
MailOnline contacted the Vegan Society for comment today.
It has previously rejected the idea that adherents may be giving up on the lifestyle, instead suggesting they may be switching to more traditional – and less expensive – vegetables, rather than substitute-style products which seek to mimic the texture and flavour of meat or milk.
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