I interviewed Andy Shovel yesterday, the co-founder of the UK’s fastest-growing food company THIS. They are best known for their vegan bacon that you can now buy in almost every supermarket in the UK. I’ve got to know Andy a little after he headlined our Vegan Business Tribe Live event last year and found we’ve got a few things in common: we were both turned vegan by watching the same online video (what happens to baby chicks in the egg industry); we’re both a fan of dressing up and going out on the street to promote our brand (him as a pack of vegan bacon, me with my backpack banner-stand) and we’re both trying to use our business skills to help save animals.
So he surprised me when he said that “lots of vegans think I’m a knob”.
To add some context for those outside of the UK, that term is mildly-rude slang for someone you find stupid or irritating, and also a euphemism for the male appendage! Andy regularly has other vegans send him, and his company, messages saying that he’s part of the problem. Why is he trying to replicate meat and adding to the view that vegan food is unhealthy? Why doesn’t he put the word vegan on his products? Why does THIS do partnerships with non-vegan brands and retailers? Why doesn’t the company talk about animal welfare more?
I put some of these questions to him in the interview and his answer was simple: he’s not making products for vegans. THIS became the fastest-growing food company in the UK by targeting the most hard-core of meat eaters and getting them to try plant-based instead. It’s a view shared by many other vegan food activists including Heather Mills, as she often says ‘I’m not making food for vegans – we’ve already got them on the team – I’m making food to convert the meat eaters’.
Andy’s not deaf to the other side of the arguments though, which is why he’s also using the fame he’s built as the UK poster boy of the plant-based movement (my words, not his!) to launch his own animal rights campaigning charity called ‘A Bit Weird’. The charity will engage non-vegans directly on the ethics of veganism and weirdness of using animals to get nutrition. It’s not just to answer his many critics, it’s the first step towards his vision of becoming one of the UK’s biggest animal-rights activists.
But many people are first set on their vegan journey through positive experiences of great-tasting plant-based food. And you can’t argue that Andy and the team at THIS haven’t delivered there. And as we always say at Vegan Business Tribe, if you have a vegan business but you only look to sell to vegans, you’ve kind of missed the point of having a vegan business in the first place.
David 💚🌱
David’s thoughts from the week, published every weekend for members only.
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