Every week, Plant-based Business Expert Elysabeth Alfano breaks down the headlines with her review and analysis in the Plantbased Business Minute. Elysabeth is the founder of Plant Powered Consulting, the host of the Plantbased Business Hour and the Consulting Managing Director, vegconomist, North America. She doesn’t use a teleprompter.
Here is the Plantbased Business Minute for the week ending January 22, 2021.
Vejii
ShopVejii.com sets out to be the largest online vegan retailer boasting over three thousand lifestyle and food brands, brands like delicious Barvecue and iconic No Evil Foods and Dear Self Skin Care line by pro surfer Tia Blanco and vegan wine.
My business bottom line here is it has long been a pain point for vegan consumers to not find a large selection all in one place. Now with a one-stop shop and drop shipped right to your door, ShopVejii.com is taking on this hurdle and making it a lot easier for vegans and flexitarians to find a plant-based lifestyle.
Lightlife Foods is trying to do the same thing. Lightlife Foods owned by Maple Leaf and also under the Green Leaf Foods umbrella is investing another $100 Million into another manufacturing plant to increase plant-based production.
Their first plant is in Shelbyville, Indiana and it is 420,000 square feet offering 460 jobs and costing a cool $320 Million. Their second plant, which is in Indianapolis, is 118,000 square feet offering 115 jobs and costing $100 Million. This second plant will open in 2022. The first plant is set to open later this year in 2021 and the second plant will focus solely on Tempeh.
My business bottom line is that it has long been a problem that consumer demand has outweighed supply, but now as more brands come online with their own manufacturing plants or as they enter into co-manufacturing relationships, you will see the balance start to shift.
Vegan butchers continue to thrive
Good news from Before the Butcher. They have set out to reduce prices. Before the Butcher owned by Jensen Meats and also already producing the UnCut Burgers brand, is launching a new burger called Mainstream which will be in the frozen meat aisle.
Their UnCut Burgers are in the fresh aisle, but in the frozen aisle the family pack of eight quarter-pound burgers is set to be a retail price of $10.99. This brings the Mainstream Burgers price to almost half of that of its plant-based competitors and close to the price of beef.
My business bottom line here is that we are nailing taste, and we are nailing convenience, and when we nail price, we will in fact have the golden trifecta making plant-based lifestyle easy for everyone.
Wine is basically the answer
Lastly, America has a new president. It remains to be seen if President Biden will indeed take on animal agriculture and its deleterious effects for the environment. Until then, for those of you who are happy about the transition, you might as well go to ShopVejii.com and get yourself some wine. For those of you who are unhappy about the transition, you might as well go get some vegan wine as well. It basically works for everyone.
That’s the Plantbased Business Minute. If you would like a deeper dive into plant-based business, please subscribe to the Plantbased Business Hour wherever you get your podcasts. And if you are a small plant-based business or a large meat and dairy company and you are looking to navigate the plant-based landscape, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. My team and I at Plant Powered Consulting are here to help you with media, marketing, communications strategy and so much more.
Elysabeth Alfano is the founder of Plant Powered Consulting, host of the Plantbased Business Hour and the Consulting Managing Director, vegconomist, North America.
