Opinion: The rise of plant-based eating

With plant-based products becoming increasingly available, it’s no surprise that Savanta’s BrandVue’s Most Loved Eating Out Brands 2022 research saw a 2% increase in those adopting new diets in the last year, says retail and shopper marketing specialist Julie Vigne...

Data from our Grocery Eye study, a tracker of purchase behaviour within the fast-moving consumer goods sector, tells us that 28% of consumers are aiming to eat more plant-based food this year. This is a trend that eateries and restaurants throughout the UK have been leveraging.

Sustainability, when talking about food or other categories, is complex. The rise in plant-based diets is driven by many factors, from a desire to be more environmentally friendly to an attempt to end animal cruelty or sometimes to simply eat more healthily. This creates many opportunities for innovation but also a very complex landscape to navigate.

Our BrandVue Eating Out study found that, on average, brands that are considered to be environmentally friendly are 9% more loved than brands at an overall level. But does an environmentally friendly food offering really drive brand love?

McDonald’s, which takes the top spot as our number one most loved eating out brand for the fourth year in a row, has announced plans to become the plant-based food and drink leader in the UK. Part of this includes its partnership with Beyond Meat, who will be the supplier of the McPlant patty. The launch of the McPlant in the UK saw a 4% uplift in brand love for McDonald’s, showing that an offering like this does increase love for a brand, when done right.

Yet, although the introduction of a new plant-based offer has certainly rekindled the love of ‘lost’ vegetarian or plant-based customers, it is also because this love was there already, dormant, and just needed a reason to come back to the surface. (I witnessed this personally when I took my very excited husband to his first McDonald’s outing since he was a teenager to try the new McPlant burger in the summer.)

And it isn’t just a plant-based menu that the most loved brands are offering. The top five most loved brands all use sustainable packaging. Costa, who placed fourth in our league table, recently announced a move to using plant-based cups and lids. Since switching to plant-based lids, Costa’s environmentally friendly ratings have doubled to 14%, an all-time high for the coffee shop chain.

Although plant-based eating is on the up, there are signs that we might be hitting a ceiling, at least for now. Grocery Eye data tells us that a plant-based diet is not seen as being as important as it was a year ago. For every successful Veggie Pret, there are examples of consumers not embracing fully vegetarian or plant-based outlets just yet. Honest burgers introduced V Honest in London in January, with an entirely plant-based menu, but returned to its full meat-based offering just six months later due to low demand.

So, is a plant-based offering a key ingredient for brand love? Not necessarily. But it is a key commonality between our most loved brands who are paving the way with ambitious initiatives to help us build back greener, more sustainably and ethically.  Brands looking to enter this space will need to carefully understand what needs sustainable eating meets and consider what will cut through in an already saturated market.

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