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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

UK

New Year, New Food: U.K. Grocery and QSR’s Cash In on Veganuary

When the New Year hits, some people do juice cleanses, some try to eat fewer sweets, and some abstain from booze. Others do Veganuary (vegan + January), a month-long pledge to not eat any animal products which is backed by a U.K. charity. Started in 2014, Veganuary is reportedly about to have its biggest year yet, with over 170,000 people signed up to participate. And that doesn’t include those participating independently.

Beyond New Year’s resolutions, demand for plant-based foods (especially protein) is on the rise. In 2019, the plant-based protein market is expected grow at a CAGR of over 8 percent globally.

When it comes to feeding this demand, the U.K. is one of the leaders as we start 2019. Over half of all Brits either are flexitarian or are interested in pursuing a flexitarian diet. And retailers, from fast-food joints to grocery chains, are taking notice. Here are a few of the most interesting plant-based products that launched in the U.K. this Veganuary:

Pizza Hut
In celebration of Veganuary, Pizza Hut announced this week it would launch a limited-edition vegan pizza topped with jackfruit, a popular meat substitute, on January 1. Memorably dubbed the Jack ‘n Ch**se (see photo above), the pizza will feature a tomato base, dairy-free cheese, corn, red onions, peppers, and BBQ jackfruit, all covered with a BBQ sauce drizzle. It costs £11.29 ($14.23 USD) and is available at all 253 Pizza Hut locations in the U.K. If Pizza Hut sells at least 10,000 of these vegan pizzas by the end of January, they will become a permanent menu item.

 

Photo: Greggs

Greggs
Greggs, the largest bakery chain the U.K., is embracing Veganuary by vegan-izing its most popular product: the sausage roll. Starting on January 3, the company will roll (ha) out a vegan version made with meat substitute Quorn. The roll will be available in 950 Gregg’s locations for £1 ($1.24).

Last year PETA launched a petition urging Greggs to create a vegan version of its sausage roll. It was signed by 20,000 people. But the quick-service bakery has reportedly been working on a vegan sausage roll recipes for quite a while in order to capitalize off of increased demand for meat-free products.

 

Photo: Sainsbury’s

Sainsbury’s
Sainsbury’s is ramping up its selection of vegan products in the New Year. According to LiveKindly, the U.K. grocery retailer launched 29 new plant-based products on January 1, including mushroom-based minced “beef” to jackfruit burgers to something intriguingly called a “shroomdog.” These additions bring Sainsbury’s lineup of vegan products to over 100 items, which makes sense: the chain recently reported a 20 percent rise in sales of meat-free items.

 

Photo: Waitrose

Waitrose
It’s a widely known fact that Brits love fish ‘n chips — but what about fishless fish n’ chips? Grocery chain Waitrose just rolled out its own brand of Fishless Fingers, which are essentially sticks of flavored tofu breaded with, among other things, seaweed. The vegan fish sticks cost £3.19 ($4.02) per pack through January 30, at which point they’ll jump up to £3.99 ($5.03).

So What?
British QSR’s and grocery chains are reading the tea leaves (or the consumer reports): plant-based foods are only going to continue to grow in popularity, spurring demand for better-tasting, cheaper vegan foods. U.K. companies are jumping in headfirst, launching wide varieties of vegan/vegetarian products at accessible price points. As we in America work to take advantage of the recent boom in plant-based eating, we might want to look across the pond for an example.

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If you get the chance to try any of these products, we’d love to hear how you liked them! Leave a comment or tweet us @TheSpoonTech. 

BioBean Uses Coffee Grounds to Fuel Your Fire — Literally

Strong coffee is sometimes referred to as “rocket fuel,” but London-based startup Biobean uses spent coffee grounds to make a much more literal type of fuel: the kind that powers stoves, fires, and even industrial furnaces.

Biobean was started in 2013 by Arthur Kay, an architecture student who realized that even when a coffee shop is sustainably designed, it still generates huge volumes of waste in the form of coffee grounds. But because they’re usually still hot when they hit the trash and add weight quickly, baristas typically empty coffee grounds into a separate container. That, as Kay noticed, makes it easy to collect out of the waste stream for reuse. 

Biobean works with waste management companies throughout the UK to collect used coffee grounds from over 1,500 small coffee shops, chains, and office blocks. After collection, drivers deliver the coffee grounds to Cambridgeshire, where Biobean has established the world’s first coffee-recycling factory. After cleaning and drying the coffee grounds (which are about 60 percent moisture when they come in, Henderson said), workers mix them with sawdust, compact them, and coat them with wax to create 100 percent carbon-neutral biofuel.

The fuel comes in two formats: the first are logs (or briquettes), about the size of a soda can, are a consumer product meant for fireplaces, stoves, or furnaces (kind of like Duraflame logs but with coffee grounds). They’re available for purchase pretty widely throughout the UK: via Amazon, through grocery e-commerce retailer Ocado, and also available in various garden centers. They cost roughly £6.99 ($9.50) for a bag of 16.

The other product is a biomass pellet, which is intended for B2B sales. These pellets are used on an industrial level to heat buildings.

Biobean’s pellets and coffee logs.

According to their website, Biobean’s coffee fuel burns 20 percent hotter longer than wood (at least according to tests they’ve run themselves) because of coffee’s natural oils. And no, it doesn’t smell like coffee when you burn it — which is actually kind of a bummer, in my coffee-loving opinion.

Biobean is exploring other ways they can make use of coffee grounds beyond biofuel. They have a team of research scientists working to transform oils from the grounds into a commercial-grade product that could be used in cosmetics or foodservice. (It’s still in the R&D stages.) Last November Biobean also partnered with Shell to develop a diesel fuel made in part with coffee grounds.

In 2016 the company first began producing their briquettes, and today their roughly 30-person team is working to expand production of their coffee ground fuel and figure out new ways to use those ground-up beans. 

Biobean isn’t the only company trying to reduce coffee-related waste. In fact, Biobean isn’t even the only company repurposing spent coffee grounds — I’ve seen companies repurpose grounds as body scrubs or turn them into compost — but they’re doing on a much larger scale. In 2017, they converted the waste from 28 million cups of coffee into biofuel. Which puts the amount of coffee grounds destined for a landfill in perspective. 

By taking such a huge waste product and turning it into something that displaces — at least a little bit — environmentally unfriendly fuel sources like coal, Biobean’s concept is a slam dunk. I for one hope they make it to the U.S. so that my future lattés can find a second life as a biofuel heating someone’s home.