Vegan Business Talk episode 159

In this episode I interview Kati Ohens, co-founder of vegan deli meats company Plantcraft in New Zealand.

After a 20-year marketing, advertising, and software executive career, Kati exited her agency to start working in the mission-based space.

While working as a vegan transition coach, she noticed the gap in the alternative meat market, and the need for deli slices.

Kati met commercial banking executive Csaba Hetenyi, a fellow Hungarian, during a work project as they were looking at commercializing a new food tech IP.

As she learned about the technology, Kati discovered that it could be used to make groundbreaking, sustainable, plant-based meat alternatives, and in 2018 the pair founded Plantcraft.

The company is just about to launch its first products into the US market.

In this interview Kati discusses:

• The challenges of running a services-based business to a product-based business and she’s handled them

• The different roles she and co-founder Csaba’s have and how they complement each other

• The two most important criteria for business success

• How Covid impacted the business

• Marketing strategies that are working we, including where buyers are now looking to find new products

• Why ‘plant-based’ is on the packaging for the US market but may be different when the company launches in other markets

• How she got investors on board, including one that had never invested in a plant-based brand and was so keen that they returned for a second raise

• And more