You’re not the only one interested in the vegan market right now. Some of the biggest and best-funded companies in the world are betting on the plant-based marketplace as their next area of major growth. In 2019, one out of every four new food product launches in the UK carried a vegan claim. Even the country’s biggest dairy producers are launching plant-based dairy alternatives, seemingly in direct competition with themselves. Yet, depending on what figures you use, vegans only make up around 1% of the population. That can come as a surprise if you’re vegan yourself, because we create our own vegan bubbles: we follow vegan pages on social media, we get involved in vegan events and watch vegan cooking shows on YouTube. Vegans also gravitate towards other vegans, so it can be easy to forget that the vast majority of the world doesn’t share our vegan view.
Why then are there five times as many searches in Google for vegan products compared with five years ago? Why does Waterstones currently have 10,000 books listed with the word ‘vegan’ in the title compared to just 900 in 2018? How did Beyond Meat raise $240 million in share sales when it was floated on the stock exchange? How is all this growth being generated by the 1% of the population that identifies as vegan?
It’s because the vegan marketplace IS NOT JUST VEGANS.
It’s the middle-aged couple who are becoming aware of the impact meat has on their health and so are eating meat-replacements three times a week. It’s the grandfather who started buying almond milk when his vegan granddaughter visited, and he found that he liked the taste of it himself and it lasts longer in the fridge than dairy. It’s the flexitarian who cares about the impact animal agriculture has on the environment and so is reducing the amount of animal products they buy. It’s the student who chooses the vegan shampoo over the non-vegan one because they know it’s not tested on animals. It’s the conscious holiday-maker who stays at a vegan B&B because although they think they could never be vegan themselves, they want to support an ethical business – earning a type of morality credit.
