Vegan food taken to the next level: What exactly does a meat-free butcher sell?
British supermarket Sainsbury’s opens London pop-up with soybean steaks, jackfruit burgers and veggie sausages amid growing trend to eat plant-based meat alternatives
“That mince ain’t doing it for me,” says an unconvinced Jane Taylor, peering in the butcher shop window at a pile of pink string that purports to have emerged from a meat grinder. “It looks like a plastic kids’ toy.”
Yet only soybeans, peas and carrots – and some beetroot for the pink colouring – have perished to make this mince, because this pop-up shop in East London, is a meat-free butcher’s shop.
A survey shows more than half of Britons have never tried a plant-based alternative to meat and a fifth of those who consider themselves to be meat eaters regard plant-based foods as ‘rabbit food’
The store – kitted out like a traditional butcher’s shop with strings of (veggie) sausages hanging in the window – is a three day initiative by the British supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, to show vegan food has moved on from worthy plates of lentils and brown rice.
Despite the soaring popularity of “flexitarian” diets – where a largely vegetable-based diet is supplemented occasionally with meat – and the growing trend for consuming meat alternatives and plant-based eating, a poll of 2,000 consumers commissioned by Sainsbury’s found more than half of Britons have never tried a plant-based alternative to meat.
The survey also revealed that a fifth of those who considered themselves to be meat eaters regarded plant-based foods as “rabbit food”.
However, what is billed as the UK’s first ever meat-free butchers aims to change that view.
Among customers there is a sense of trepidation about cooking [plant-based foods]. It’s about familiarity. People see tofu and are not sure what to with it, but if [they] see veggie mince it is simple to communicate what to do with it
The window is filled with slabs of steak (albeit made from soya and wheat protein), jackfruit quarter pounders and chorizo-style “shroomdogs” without the chorizo.
Inside, behind the counter, Antony Maynard, the meat-free butcher, is ready to coax shoppers to try “sweet and smoky” barbecue-pulled jackfruit as opposed to pork and Moroccan “vegbabs”.
Wrong-footed shoppers looking for the real thing will be left disappointed but Maynard is unapologetic:.“I have got sausages – they just haven’t got any meat in them,” he says.
On Thursday afternoon – before it had even opened – the store had already become a curiosity among passing shoppers. “It doesn’t make sense,” said John Roberts, out shopping with his wife, Helen.
“A butcher is a butcher … you expect it [to] come with meat.”