If you follow our podcast, you’ll have enjoyed our recent ‘Battle of the Brands’ competition where a group of our members went head-to-head (Dragon’s Den style!) to win a free place at ‘veg-net’. The veg-net event gives food manufacturers a full day of 1-2-1 meetings with major retail buyers in the UK and Europe who are looking for new, innovative, plant-based products.
I’ve just got back from the event and we managed to get seven of our Vegan Business Tribe members in the room – four as brands who got a day full of meetings with buyers and three as ‘industry experts’ who were on hand to advise the plant-based companies attending.
The reason that I got Vegan Business Tribe involved with the event was because of those two words: ‘plant-based’. I go to a lot of ‘plant-based’ industry events and at most of them I am in the minority as a vegan. At the Meat-Free Strategies Conference in London last year, they were serving bacon sandwiches for breakfast and seafood for lunch. When I pointed out how ridiculous that was to the organisers, they simply said: ‘Well, we have to cater for everyone’.
So I knew I had to get some vegans in the room at veg-net, to make sure it wasn’t just non-vegan companies (that happen to make a plant-based product) having those conversations with the retail buyers. Because, as long as it’s non-vegan companies who dominate the vegan alternatives market, they will always remain just that: ‘alternatives’. Plant-based products will stay hidden away in their own separate chiller cabinets and kept on aisles that fewer people walk down. These companies have no interest in converting people to a vegan diet or removing animal products from the shelves because that would negatively impact the sales of their main animal-based products.
But events like this cost thousands of pounds to attend, and that’s why I wanted to ensure that we had some vegan businesses around that table that might not normally have the budget to buy a seat. And we were really successful, not just our competition winner Louisa from Wildly Tasty who won a free place but the organisers also offered half-price places to our other finalists too.
And that’s why Vegan Business Tribe is here. Whether you make a product or have a service, we’re here to make sure that you have someone behind you who understands why you do what you do. And that doesn’t mean just me being your champion – everyone who is a member of Vegan Business Tribe wants you to succeed, even if they haven’t met you yet. Because we are all on the same mission that you are.
David 💚🌱🐷
David’s thoughts from the week, published every weekend for members only.
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