It’s hard work being a Formula One racing driver. You need to be super-fit, mentally sharp, and able to maintain incredible focus, concentration and dexterity for hours at a time. Lewis Hamilton is very good at it, having won the World Championship five times. And he does it on a purely vegan diet.
Hamilton is one of a new wave of pop stars, actors and celebrities who are turning to a plant-based diet, among them Natalie Portman, Woody Harrelson and Joaquin Phoenix. They are in good company: the Vegan Society says that the number of British vegans has quadrupled over the past four years, to around 600,000. This is not a huge slice of the population, but there are millions more who are willing to sample or experiment with vegan options. This growth in veganism means that the total value of the UK’s plant-based food market is now £572 million.
Roll of honour
If there was a moment when veganism came from the fringes into the mainstream, it was in January this year, when the bakery chain Greggs launched its vegan sausage roll. The vegan sausage roll’s pastry is made with vegetable oil and it has a “bespoke” Quorn filling (Quorn being the branded meat substitute made from a kind of very small mushroom). This sparked predictable outrage in some quarters, with Piers Morgan describing Greggs as “PC-ravaged clowns”. “Nobody,” frothed Morgan, “was waiting for a vegan bloody sausage.”
He couldn’t have been more wrong: such was the success of the vegan sausage roll, and the publicity stirred up by Morgan’s outburst, that sales soared and Greggs’ share price rose 5.6 per cent immediately afterwards. Other major chains have introduced vegan products, including McDonald’s, Marks & Spencer and Subway, whose new vegan sub and salad was launched in April. And this month, KFC launched “The Imposter”, a vegan version of its chicken burger, made mainly from Quorn. In 2018, the UK launched more vegan food products than any other nation.
The story of veganism
But what is veganism? Simply, it is a diet that completely excludes any animal-based products: no meat, eggs, dairy-based cheese, butter, milk. (There is debate among vegans as to whether foods such as honey count as vegan, because they are made by insects.) Vegetarianism goes back thousands of years – Buddha, Pythagoras and Albert Einstein were vegetarians – but 75 years ago Donald Watson, a British vegetarian, and a group of friends, wanted to explore the possibilities of a diet that excluded all animal-based products. The Vegan Society was born.
There are several reasons why people are adopting veganism: animal welfare, personal health, and environmental concerns – raising animals uses land and resources inefficiently, and the animals themselves emit a lot of methane, a greenhouse gas. So turning vegan is a feelgood choice, one that can make you feel better about yourself, about animals and about the planet. And it’s a choice that, thanks to developments in technology, offers an increasingly wide range of choices: meat-style products, burgers, milk substitutes such as soya, almond and oat milk, tofu, as well as the more traditional salads, nuts, rice, pasta and fruit.
Bright young vegans
What does this mean to anyone running a café, restaurant or a pub offering food? The short answer is: this is not a trend. It is a permanent shift in eating habits, and it is one that retailers and caterers ignore at their peril. Surveys confirm what most of us already know: veganism is most popular among the young. If you want to attract new young customers, at the very least, you should be offering vegetarian options, and at best, you should be offering vegan choices.
And here’s the thing about vegan food. By offering it to your customers, you will not be putting people off. Anyone can eat vegan food – and they do. You don’t have to be a full-time, committed vegan to enjoy a vegan burger or a soya latte. The rise of the so called “flexitarian”, with more people eating less meat, means that many consumers, given the choice, will go for the vegan option. Greggs is proof of that.
Scrambled tofu
What are the vegan options? First, if you are running a café, this means offering alternatives to cow’s milk: soya milk and oat milk are the most popular, and they can be treated like regular milk when making latte, cappuccino and so on. Food choices for vegans include a variety of burgers, tofu-based dishes – tofu can be scrambled with other ingredients in the same way as scrambled eggs. There is a wide choice of vegan sausages on the market. Remember that many of the dips that are already available, such as humous and guacamole, are actually vegan.
Roasted vegetables can be served on their own, or in a sandwich; large mushroom varieties such as Portobello mushrooms can be grilled. Pitta bread or wraps can be filled with salad, vegetables, tofu or vegetarian sausage. Pizzas can be topped with vegan ingredients: there are vegan alternatives to most types of cheese, including mozzarella (though none of them really comes close to the flavours and textures of “real” cheese). Dairy-free yogurts are widely available, made from coconut milk.
The key in catering for vegans is to think beyond the traditional plate of food, with meat taking a central role and vegetables on the side. Veganism offers an entirely new way of serving and eating food – one that accentuates variety. It’s also a healthier way of eating: a breakfast of, say, a platter of fresh sliced fruit, toast or a muffin, and a soya latte has none of the artery-clogging ingredients of the traditional British fry-up.
Blood, but no meat
If you include vegan options, shout about it from the rooftops (or at least in your publicity materials and on social media). Many people are choosing to have a “meat-free Monday”, and this could become part of your catering calendar. Meat-free January – known as “Veganuary” – is also becoming part of many people’s calendars, so this, too, could be made into fixture.
For pubs, the burger has always been a popular choice, being relatively easy to cook, serve and eat. Here, vegans are increasingly well served by products such as the “bleeding burger” introduced by pub chain Marston’s; this product, made by food company Moving Mountains after three years of research, sizzles like meat, and “bleeds” on to the plate, like a meat burger – thanks to the beetroot juice in its ingredients. Vegan curries are easy to make: the ingredients are limited only to the number of vegetables that exist in the world. Butternut squash is a popular option. Vegetable spreads should be offered as alternatives to butter.
It’s important to ensure that meat and vegan cooking are done separately so there is no cross-contamination of ingredients (though most vegans will accept that if they are eating out, it is inevitable that they will not be eating “pure” vegan food).
Animal-free drinks
As for drinks: animal products are sometimes used in the manufacture of wine, but vegan wines are now widely available. Make a point of publicising these. Likewise, animal products – notably fish bladders – are often used in brewing to “clear” beer, but some brewers, such as Guinness, have now stopped using them. This means that Guinness is now officially a vegan beer. Newer entries to the brewing market Brew Dog and Camden also brew vegan-friendly beers. Again, you could make a point of this in your publicity and social media.
Veganism is seen by many as an ethical choice: one that is friendly to animals and to the planet. Perhaps your pub, café or restaurant could follow suit and become more ethical and eco-friendly in other areas: furniture, for instance. Trent Furniture’s products – which include pub furniture, café furniture and restaurant furniture – are sustainable, using eco-friendly materials such as renewable rubber wood (such as Trent Furniture’s Shaker tables) and beech wood from sustainable forests. Furniture made from metals such as cast iron and steel is sustainable, durable, and recyclable. By going vegan-friendly and eco-friendly, you will be making your offering much more palatable, in every sense.
Finally, it’s worth remembering the health benefits of veganism: Donald Watson, founder of the Vegan Society, lived to be 95.