This is Dior Olufsen for The Vegan Report. Today,
we're going to talk about supermarkets. How can
we make the retail sector a bit more vegan -friendly,
showing more plants instead of animals? If you'd
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I'm a vegan, and I'm sure many people listening
to this are vegan. So we can all relate to the
struggle of walking into a supermarket and not
knowing where to find the foods that we need
to eat. You know, fruits and veggies, that's
easy. We just go to the produce section. You
know, grains and cereals and everything like
that, also easy. But if we want to get the plant
-based proteins, it's often a little bit more
difficult. Lots of people tend to say that the
best situation is to have an entirely vegan section
of a supermarket with bright green letters, vegan
or plant -based, and that's where you find all
your tofu and your tempehs, your plant -based
meats and your Beyond Burgers and everything
like that. Other people say that those products
should be integrated into the meat aisles or
the dairy aisles. So if you're strolling through
the meat aisle, you pass by all the animal -based
meats, and then you'd find a a box of plant -based
meats right there. Which one is inherently better?
For me personally, it's more convenient for me
if there's an entirely vegetarian or vegan section,
but that's not necessarily better for the animals.
Remember, I come back to this again and again
in my research. What's most convenient for us
vegans or for us animal advocates is not always
what's most convenient for animals. Sometimes,
Our lives need to be a little bit less convenient
so that more people are going to be eating plant
-based and eating fewer animals. And that's more
or less what the data shows. So in one real -world
experiment, having a vegetarian shelf and placing
meat substitutes into the meat aisle actually
had a 30 % sales boost compared to just having
a veg shelf or a meat aisle alone. We're trying
to appeal to multiple types of audiences here.
We want to make sure that the vegans and vegetarians
in supermarkets are able to find the foods that
they want to very conveniently. But we also want
to nudge some meat eaters and vegetarians to
eat more plants when possible. If they're strolling
through the meat aisle, they're more likely to
see, let's say, a Beyond Burger. And they might
say, I'll give it a try. Or, oh, I have a friend
who's vegan. Maybe they'll like this and put
it into their shopping cart. However, if we have
to choose between the two, it is better to have
the plant -based products integrated into the
store to increase the odds of a flexitarian buying
them. Most vegans are more likely to search the
store with a bit more thoroughness and carefulness.
to find exactly what they're looking for, then
a non -vegan is to try new products like a vegan
meat product, for example. I know that's true
for me. When I walk into a store, especially
a new supermarket, I accept the fact that I'm
going to have to be searching through every single
aisle to find the plant -based proteins that
I eat. If we can increase the amounts of plant
-based products in supermarkets and integrate
them throughout the entire store to increase
their uptake, we might be able to make sure that
they are bought more frequently. Not the good
news. The bad news is that in the studies that
I was able to find, an increase in plant -based
meat consumption in supermarkets very rarely
occurred alongside a decrease of meat sales.
Why is that? That's because when people are buying
more plant -based meat products, they are often
doing so to supplement their meat purchases,
not offset them entirely. So I looked at five
different studies, and only two of them were
able to find statistically significant increases
in plant -based meat sales. In those two instances,
there was no statistically significant decrease
in meat sales. In one of them, there was actually
an increase in meat sales. This was during a
vegan worry promotion. So to me, this indicates
that just increasing plant -based meat consumption
isn't enough in supermarkets. We have to start
thinking about offsetting, not supplementing.
I think this is a huge untapped problem for the
vegan movement. We talk a lot about things like
restaurants. We talk a lot about dining halls.
We talk a lot about cafeterias. We talk a lot
about oat milk lattes and things like that. And
that's all great. I love all of that. I think
that is necessary. But I very rarely hear activists
talking about working directly with supermarkets
to decrease their sales of animal -based meats.
We might see things like vegan, you worry promotions
for to increase plant -based consumption in January.
And that's still good, but I very rarely see
long -term campaigns against supermarkets themselves.
There is some, I'm not going to say that there's
absolutely nothing. That's not true. For example,
in many places in central and Northern Europe,
there have been a lot of strides made towards
increased plant -based meat sales and decreased
animal -based meat sales. Many grocery stores
in the Netherlands have taken pledges to increase
their plant -based alternative sales. Lidl, which
is a budget supermarket here in Europe, especially
based in Germany, but it's in many different
European countries, has been doubling their plant
-based alternatives with their Vimondo, which
is a vegan retail brand line. That's pretty good.
When we look at supermarkets outside of this
section of Europe, we're not seeing much progress.
I wasn't able to find any evidence either in
news media or research studies showing that other
supermarkets are committed to decreasing their
animal -based consumption or increase in the
plant -based consumption. This doesn't mean inherently
it's not happening, but I can't really find evidence
of it anywhere. That's a big missed opportunity,
in my opinion. Depending on the country, lots
of people are getting over 50 % of their calories
from supermarkets and can be even higher in a
lot of places where people don't tend to eat
out quite as much. That means that if we are
able to get these big retail stores to commit
to decreasing animal product consumption significantly,
that's going to have huge ripple effects across
that society. So my research did show that increases
of plant -based meat sales don't correspond to
decreases of animal -based meat sales. Some of
my critics have pointed out just might just be
because it's not statistically significant. It's
harder to find decreases in meat sales. I think
that's possible. I don't know if that's inherently
true or not because the data doesn't really show
it. If we look at the demographics of people
who are buying plant -based and animal -based
meats, we can get a little bit more information.
So for example, when we think of someone who
eats a Beyond Burger, we tend to think of a vegan
or a vegetarian, right? But 86 % of people who
buy plant -based meats in the grocery store also
eat meat, or at least they also buy meat in the
grocery store. Think about why this is. So when
I walk into a grocery store, first of all, not
everybody goes grocery shopping. Many households
have a point person who does all of the grocery
shopping, either a parent or somebody or like
one of the partners in a relationship, for example,
and they might be buying for more than one person,
your entire family even or their friends and
family or like a large group of people. So they
If that person isn't vegan, they might buy a
few vegan products for that one vegan family
member, but then themselves, they're not going
to be decreasing their own animal products assumption.
Secondly, most people go into grocery stores
with some sort of an internal list in mind. At
least I do. Maybe I don't have it written down,
but I might have some notes or mental notes somewhere
about various things that I need to get. Oh,
I'm running low on almond milk. Oh, I'm running
low on this. I need to get some fruits and vegetables
because it's January and I'm trying to be healthy,
things like that. And I'm less likely to make
an impulse buy or try something new in a grocery
store as compared to a restaurant where I'd be
more likely to experiment with something new.
So these are some of the reasons that might explain
why we're not seeing much changes in grocery
stores. Despite these promotions, we might get
people to add it into their cart, but they're
not going to take out the animal -based needs.
So what does this mean? Can we fix this at all?
I think the answer is yes, but I think it depends
on something really, really important. is money.
You probably guessed it was money, but it does
come back to money a lot of the time. I found
in one study that people who regularly consume
meat, let's call them the meat lovers, they would
need to see a far lower price point for plant
-based products to buy them as compared to flexitarian,
vegetarian, and vegans. So I'll give you some
numbers here. The lowest amount of money that
a meat lover would pay for an impossible burger
is $4 .80. This is a US study. Compared to vegetarians,
vegans, and flexitarians who are willing to pay
$9 .20. That is basically twice as much. So if
we are to convince somebody who's a meat lover
to put these products into their carts, those
products are going to need to be cheap. really
cheap, cheaper than meat, significantly. Those
meat lovers are willing to pay, for example,
$4 .9 for ground beef, $6 .6 for chicken breasts,
et cetera, et cetera. So it needs to be cheaper,
not even at price parity. It needs to be cheaper
than the animal -based meat products in order
to make it enticing for them. This isn't true
for flexitarians, vegans, vegetarian. I will
buy plant -based meats, no matter the cost point.
I might buy fewer of them. If they are expensive,
I might buy more tofu or more lentils, but I'm
still going to buy it to some degree, right?
And I'm sure many of the listeners can relate
to this. How willing are you to buy these products
compared to maybe a meat -loving family or friend
of yours? So how do I make these products cheaper?
it's going to take a lot of these plant -based
meat companies to scale up their existing resources.
But on the other side, I think there's a lot
of potential for more active organizations to
be working with supermarkets to be lowering the
prices of these products and potentially even
increasing the prices of the animal -based products.
It might be possible for the supermarkets to
make the same amount of profit by slightly changing
the prices into a more sustainable way. to incentivize
their consumers to choose a sustainable option,
and then making more profit off of the consumers
who choose to buy the meat. Most organizations
aren't really working on this. To my knowledge,
I'm not aware of any organizations that are exclusively
working directly with supermarkets. There are
plenty that work with supermarkets that's part
of a larger strategy. But I do think this has
a lot of potential going forward. So what does
this mean? for the vegan movement. If you are
a person who wants to think about systemic meat
reduction, I would encourage you to perhaps talk
to your local supermarkets and see if they could
increase the ratio or see the price of the plant
-based products, especially if you're in a region
that takes these sustainability claims more seriously,
which is more likely in places like I mentioned,
Central and Northern Europe, not exclusively,
of course. think there's a lot more money and
staff power that we can put towards solving this
problem. If we were to build up organizations
to tackle supermarkets more aggressively, we
might be able to make a lot of switches from
animal -based to plant -based products. That
is what my research has concluded, more or less.
Some good news and some bad news, but to me,
this is the huge untapped lever that I don't
see many people talking about, at least compared
to the restaurants and dining halls. If you have
any questions, you can read the full resource,
which is going to be linked in the show notes.
And if you liked this kind of thing, I encourage
you to keep listening to The Vegan Report and
follow my newsletter where I talk about this
stuff. all the time, the science of vegan activism.
Thank you very much. My name is Pior Olufsen,
and I'll see you next time.