The Beyond Sausage appears to be this week’s hot topic, especially in the UK press – where the Guardian and the Independent have both published articles about the product in the past few days. Now Neat Burger, the vegan restaurant chain owned by Lewis Hamilton, has announced it will be the first restaurant in the UK to serve the plant-based pork-like sausage.
Vegan sausages may not be a new thing – seasoned veggies in the UK have been purchasing traditional brands like Quorn and Linda McCartney, even going back to the old Sos Mix, for decades. Newer sausages have been arriving onto the scene over recent years, such as Meatless Farm, Heck and Moving Mountains, whose new vegan banger we reported about just yesterday also claims to deliver a highly realistic pork taste.
The difference, as claimed by Beyond Meat, is that this is apparently the first plant-based sausage product to offer “the juicy, sizzling and delicious satisfaction of a pork sausage.” This writer can confirm that, as a vegan, it was indeed meat-like and too realistic for me to eat – but it will clearly suit those vegans which used to enjoy the taste of meat, and especially the flexitarians.
Ryan Bishti, NEAT Burger Founder, said: “Beyond Meat’s products are the most convincing plant-based alternatives on the market and our partnership with them is a driving force behind NEAT Burger. We’re delighted to be able to add the Beyond Sausage to our menu.”
Regarding the cost of the Beyond Sausage – almost twice of other veggie sausages at £4.95 for a pack of two which consumers can pay in Tesco stores from this week – Beyond’s CEO Ethan Brown said to The Grocer, “It’s a very big goal of mine to make these products more affordable,” Brown said. “The challenge is that our scale is so small, but as we achieve greater scale in our supply chain, I have every confidence we can lower that price compared to other plant-based products and animal proteins.