Trends

Health and wellness continue to drive growth in the global food and beverage industry. Worldwide sales of naturally healthy foods reached $253 billion in 2017; functional/fortified foods totalled $247 billion. (Euromonitor, 2018). The rise in health and wellbeing has also correlated with a rise in veganism. Following from a survey taken in 2020 There are an estimated 3.9 million vegans in the UK. (Veganism Statistics UK, 2020). As a company, it is important to be able to follow these trends and understand consumer needs. So where will this lead? There has been a huge demand for vegan products and services. Brands are constantly coming up with new ways to find vegan alternatives. searches for vegan chocolate recipes up 31% in 2020. Some of the most popular sweets/ desserts contain gelatine or some form of animal product or method. These major food companies are realising the increase in veganism and are now developing plant-based options to people's favourites sweets/ desserts (Vegan food and living, 2020). We may also see a rise in things like vegan butchers. Ruby’s vegan diner is an all-vegan butcher that takes the design of a traditional butchers but stocks all different types of meat alternatives. This will become a new fun way to try out vegan products and be able to see these things in person. Asda, being one of the largest supermarket chains in the UK have also began trialling a vegan butcher counter in Watford, so it will be interesting to see if other large chains will follow suit to keep up with the demand. Companies such as Tesco already stock a range of “accidental” vegan products, but to ensure that they are hitting every possibility for consumers they have released more vegan bakery products in their Wicked kitchen range such as jam doughnuts and cinnamon rolls. It is also interesting to see how many more of these “accidental” vegan products there are on the market. Here are some of our favourite snacks that are vegan, and we didn’t even know it: 

• Jammie dodgers  

• Mcvitties ginger nuts  

• Hobnobs 

• Oreos  

• Bourbon cream biscuits 

• Fox’s party rings  

And many more. We’ve already seen chefs and internet food bloggers create some amazing alternatives such as “carrot bacon”, using watermelon to recreate tuna and many different steak alternatives. It will be interesting to see how brands will redevelop products to suit the vegan community and who will stick with their non vegan recipes.  

 This market will only grow more throughout the years as people become more environmentally conscious and considerate of their health. In the future we could be looking at entire supermarkets just with vegan products, new brands and vegan alternatives will continue to expand throughout the industry. It is often wondered why vegan people are so keen to have products that look and taste like meat. Many vegans would agree that they enjoy the taste of bacon for example but want to be able to enjoy the taste of these things without the use of animal products.