By Shel Horowitz, editor, Down to Business and founder, GoingBeyondsustainability.com

When I became vegetarian in 1973, if you’d organized a trade show for vegans, even in a major convention center in New York City, my guess is you would have attracted a few hundred people to visit perhaps 20 vendors.

How times have changed! This year marked the inaugural Plant Based World at the Javits Center in Midtown Manhattan, with dozens of vendors and a few thousand attendees. While most of the vendors were within 100 miles or so (and many within 30 miles), quite a number came from far away, including the West Coast and a few European countries moving into the US market. Exhibitors included both B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) companies. Most were seeking retail customers and/or distribution, but several B2B vendors sold products to make meat substitutes, non-dairy cheeses and milks more attractive in look and feel, or better tasting. In other words, the chemical industry is moving in. If you are looking for natural foods, being vegan may not be enough. Read labels!

Speaking of tasting, most of the booths offered samples. I tried LOTS of non-meat burgers, even one brand pretending to be fish. Lightlife (local to me, in Greenfield, Mass.) has a really nice burger that doesn’t taste like meat.

There seem to be two big debates in the fake meat arena: should these be marketed as real veggieburgers, or as something that looks, feels, and tastes like meat? Of the many I sampled, most claimed to be like meat, but I found only one of them meat-ish enough to be unpleasant to my palate (which has not voluntarily encountered meat since 1973, when I was 16). The other is about soy or legume isolates. Some companies brag about them (including several of the few large companies at the show), while some of the artisan brands actively shun them.

Lots of non-dairy milks (especially oat-based) and spreads. Some really good plant-based ice creams with coconut or cashew bases. One of the oat milks was a brand of dairy giant H.P. Hood. I think we’ll see a lot more big food conglomerates moving into the vegan space. One company, Wayfare, claims a proprietary process for making spreads out of any plant.

In general, the products showed how far we’ve come. When we took my toddler daughter off dairy in 1990, choices were limited and unappealing (see the panelist’s comment about veggieburgers 1.0, later in this article). It was easy to get soy milk and not too difficult to get rice milk and even rice ice cream, but the products were often gunky or flavor-deficient.

One thing that interested me was that several alternative milk brands are formulating special versions for commercial baristas—easier to foam in an espresso machine, for instance.

Interestingly, a huge percentage of vendors have gotten certified as Kosher, which means they’re automatically Halal as well. These two market sectors could fuel enormous growth in vegan products, if producers can find (or grow) the segment that cares about such things. Many Kosher Jews eat a very traditional diet with lots of meat and few vegetables. They are used to going without either meat or dairy at any particular meal, since they can’t combine them. But giving meat, dairy, and eggs up entirely will take a big shift. Of course, they can be customers without going vegan. I could definitely see the potential for Kosher vegan cheeses marketed to meat-eating Kosher Jews with messaging like “Now you can finally try a cheeseburger and stay Kosher. See what you’ve been missing all these years with our vegan, Kosher cheese.”

Educational Programs

I attended several. Some I stayed for, some I walked out on. Here’s what I learned from them, and from an in-booth interview with a speaker whose talk I couldn’t attend.

Tara O’Reilly, O’Reilly Design Studio Brand strategies for companies/orgs creating ethical business and social change

Branding is highly psychological. Most designers talk about visual branding, but that’s only the component that comes at the end. Communities drive culture. Even with a great 7-point mission, a disempowering culture fails in its mission. 70% of employees quit.

Branding starts on the inside. Operationalizing it to specific key information. A culture is a set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an organization. Who will support and align with it? Partners? Employees? Customers? What do they want from life—and from your company? People don’t buy brands. They join them.

Most companies start with a business idea, jump right into graphic work, and then to marketing. But great brands have a strategy. Brand strategy is the missing piece before graphic design. It’s the R&D phase, the strategic framework for your brand. Brand strategy looks beyond the immediate to product line extensions in the next several years. Tools and processes might include:

• Brand team workshop
• Business/competitor analysis
• Audience analysis
• Identifying and developing positioning strategy and style
• Consistent messaging and visual expression
• Internal launch for for feedback and evaluation
• Designing the deliverables based on the resulting blueprint

And having a comprehensive brand strategy will save you money because you won’t have to redesign over and over again. The position permeates every decision and action

A few possible positions

• Conscious: inspiring, thoughtful, transparent
• Disruptive; rebellious, daring, confident
• Innovative: risk-taking, imaginative
• Luxury: glamour, refined, discriminatory

Positioning strategy: what makes employees and customers loyal? What is the emotional connection?

Why your brand?

• Competitive advantage
• Attracts the right and repels the wrong audience—don’t try to build a brand that EVERYONE loves
• Sets expectations and direction or all stakeholders
• Creates stable asset that’s worth more money
• Create the emotional, mental, and psychological experience
• Expedites the buying process.

Google search 2004-present: Vegan is growing exponentially, passed vegetarian several years ago. Plant based [as a search term] is still flatlined.. Vegetarian holds steady but now only 1/3 of searches for vegan. If you’re using “plant based” your competition is lower—but so is the interest. [If I were an SEO consultant working with a vegan food company, I’d make sure my page was in good shape for both “vegan” and “plant-based”.]

85% of consumers think more positively about socially conscious companies. Moms—92% want to buy socially conscious products.

64%: values are the primary reason for relationship with a brand. 80% count authenticity as major factor. 48% expect the brands to know them.

7 signs you need a rebrand

• Don’t know what to say
• Inconsistent messages/ behaviors
• Audience confusion
• Can’t scale because brand isn’t ready
• Merger or acquisition
• Need to disassociate brand from negative identification
• Relentless internal culture challenge

Great branding starts with at least one passionate visionary

Survey people to figure out if they’re happy

Find out what they think, feel, and understand about the brand purpose, value, messaging, customers—this shows your next step

Branding is culture, and culture is driven by community

oreillydesignco.ca

Chris Owen, Plant Made Foods—vegan cheeses

Soak cashews for 3-24 hours. Longer soak = more creamy

Lots of nutritional yeast, acidophilus, cider vinegar, paprika, salt. Load into ring molds, freeze and dehydrate at 109°F. Use something shallow, dehydrate 48 hours. It’ll be tangy, slight sour smell. Put in mixing bowl and flavor.

Amy Longard, Amy Longard Nutrition (chef and nutritionist)—Seaweed

I grew up in Halifax and we used to snack on dulse. And we had Japanese exchange students with fascinating seaweed snacks. Moved to NY and studied at Natural Gourmet Institute. Then returned to Ottawa for grad work and it was all about seaweed.

Agar agar, carageenan, Irish moss are all seaweeds. Seaweeds are microalgae, brown or red, expand 8-10x when rehydrated. Japanese seaweed salad is wakame [she accents the first syllable; I always thought the accent was on the second]. Wakame, arame are brown. Nori, dulse are red [she listed several others in each color category]. MANY kinds of seaweed. Some dulse is naturally dehydrated on sunny rocks.

High in vitamins, minerals (B vitamins, iron, chromium, magnesium, and especially iodine. I use sea salts and get my iodine from seaweed. You don’t need to eat much to get a lot of nutrition.

Because of its fiber content, seaweed expands in the stomach, can help maintain healthy body weight, lower cholesterol. Rumored to help prevent cancer. High in antioxidants.

Get seaweed from places that test water Sustainably harvested, traceable (water tested). quality. You don’t want it full of toxins. Be especially careful of hijiki, which can contain arsenic. DO NOT harvest by yourself. Use a professional. It could be rotten or contaminated. And seaweed filters, maintains pH (acidity level).

If adding seaweed therapeutically or if thyroid issues, check with health provider. You don’t need a lot, it’s power-packed, especially with iodine. Put it on sandwiches and wraps. Fry it up to emulate the flavor and texture of bacon, sort of. Should turn brassy color.

Eden Foods packs its chickpeas in kombu instead of salt. If you’re doing stovetop or instant beans, add a little kombu or dulse flakes in the water to reduce gas.

She prepared and sampled both the “bacon” strips and “chickpea tuna salad” made with vegan mayo, celery, green onion, nutritional yeast (byproduct of molasses), lemon, pepper. Mix with immersion blender, potato masher, or food processor—or keep it chunky, do it by hand. I didn’t think the chickpea spread tasted anything like tuna, but I thought it was delicious.

Plant-Based Milks

Sandeep Patel, CFO, Califia Farms (former banker working with food companies). Our founder, Greg Steltenpohl, had been thinking about plant milks back to the 80s when he co-founded Odwalla. “Califia is building a global health and wellness brand that seeks to be a guide to consumers to transform their health and wellness. We’re looking at the entire dairy case, coffees, nutrition… Based in California, sales around the US and increasingly globally.”

Julie Emsing Mann, Global Plant Protein Program Manager, Ingredion. “You may think of us as a sweetener/fiber/starch company but we invested $40 million last year in pulse-based ingredients. I worked in CPGs for 20 years. My experience was in dairy protein. But when I became a vegan, I wanted to get away from those products. Pea and pulse (lentil) proteins can replace those products.”

Mike Messermith, General manager—US, Oatly ,Swedish food/beverage company making oat-based products, almost 30 years old, looking at food/beverage impact on climate change. The choices we make as consumers are key contributors. Our mission is to make something delicious, nutritious, and that doesn’t overly tax environmental resources. We believe shifting to more plant-based consumption. “The role of food companies in facilitating this is one of the most important tasks in history.”

Moderator Kate Cox, Editor, New Food Economy (nonprofit food reporting service). 2017 resort from Mintel: US dairy category will see continuous decline after 2014 spike (11%). Plant-based milks: $3 billion by 2020, $25 billion by 2028. Have we reached peak plant-based milk yet?

Sandeep: we’re just getting started. It’s only 15% penetration. If you think about how pervasive dairy is in everything. How many times are people confronted every day with the choice to consume dairy? Even at many plant food conferences, you don’t have the plant alternative.

1.0 was soy in the tetra container, in the dry goods. 2.0: silk, almond breeze, put right next to fluid dairy. That’s what is happening in the meat category now. We invented plant milks 3.0, premiumized it, driven by consumer need/desire/taste and it’s better. “We think 4.0 is to deliver a complete alternative to milk with no nutritional compromises. So our new oat milk has 8 grams of protein for 8 ounces, a complete set of amino acids, from dairy avoidance to here’s something better and more interesting. You have the decommodification of coffee, you see in the coffee shops. We’re giving a whole nuther vector of customization and personalization, and a lot of excitement. It’s great that there’s so many brands, because the real elephant in the room is the 85% dairy. But we will see a tipping point. We see this trend as accelerating.”

Mike: I think we see that category shaping up the same way. the 85% doesn’t even tell the full picture. The volume split is ten times lower because plant milks typically have premium pricing. We’ve seen so much innovation in the category in the past couple of years. There’s going to be a shakeup. There’s a also a demographic component by age cohorts. “We joke that 16-year-old Swedish girls [like Greta Thunberg] are going to change the planet, with referral of animal- and dairy-based diets along those age sectors. Soon, she’s going to make the purchasing decisions for her household and she’s not going back to dairy 4 times a day. It better align with her values, be at a fair price, offer nutrition and taste.” We’re still at the beginning and that should be very exciting to anyone working in the space.

Julie: From my background in dairy, the shift is astronomical. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to a tipping point, at the beginning of the curve. People are just realizing that they can have alternatives that match all the checklists. We’re looking at proteins and looking at how proteins work, how to gel a yogurt, how to bake a vegan muffin, how to do a meat substitute—but if you google, there’s still not a lot out there. From food science, function is everything. But there’s taste, mouth feel, nutrition (including protein content).

Kate: how are eaters changing? Who’s drinking your product? What are you hearing from them?

Mike: Are you trying to replace cow’s milk with a complete plant-based copy, or trying to do something different? The ready access to info is breaking down barriers, and all sorts of protein sources that didn’t exist 20 years ago. And you just don’t need that much protein. Your body can’t absorb it and the environmental impact of protein emphasis has ripple effects throughout our entire food economy. “We have to look with a fresh lens. There are new opportunities for balanced pant-based living that are not dependent on one nutrient.” The younger generation has more info than ever before and they’re not looking at government food pyramids.

Kate: Discussion about whether to let sweetened milks into schools. USDA is American farmers’ biggest market. Right now, students need to produce a doctor’s note to be allowed plant-based beverages. What would it take to change that?

Mike: “It’s one of the more shocking things. The implications—perhaps it’s allergy, lactose intolerance. How much access do they have to a doctor? We’ve heard stories of school nurses having to buy plant milks out of their own pockets for kids who can’t produce a doctor’s note. There’s incredibly entrenched government connections,” and companies like his don’t have the leverage. “We need to look at issues of fairness in access to food.”

Sandeep: Lactose intolerance comes mid 50s for Latinx, mid-70s for blacks and Asians. We’re a brand-led company, but in our brand is consideration for other stakeholders: almond farmers, coffee farmers—we have programs to increase their productivity and sustainability. Consumers want to know how animals are treated, how farms are treated. And almond farming uses lot less water, and 80% carbon reduction vs. dairy. Oat is even better. Yet you see the agricultural subsidies go to animal based products, corn, and soy. The vegetable growers get hardly any subsidies.

Kate: What do you hear from growers? Is the binary between plant and dairy milk still a thing on the growers’ side?

Julie: “A lot of the dairies based their production on the knowledge that someone was paying for it. They know the subsidies and have always felt at-risk if they walk away. But they’re seeing this movement coming and they’re afraid that they’re not on that wagon. Last two-three years, I’ve seen it flip from fear” to not wanting to miss the train.

Mike: “When you use 3 times the milk to make a cup of Greek yogurt, the price goes up. And then when it comes down, where did the profits go? Innovation is the path. There’s always this perceived tension, but we’re fundamentally an agriculture-driven product. You’re seeing diversification. It could be AND and not OR. We’re showcasing farmer transitions to food-grade oats, with more desirable economic outcomes. It’s a hard time to be a farmer but they are craving solutions.” And the vegan milk market creates demand for agriculture that wasn’t there 10-15 years ago, and they’ll adapt to meet those needs. And Oatley enjoys the sustainability/climate benefit.

Kate: Competition from global food brands. Yesterday’s Beyond Meat 1st-quarter earnings news was in the same day as Nestle introducing Awsomeburger.

Sandeep: “We were first in nut milks because Greg was thinking about it 30 years ago. But we were not first in the premium space. We’ve been competing with them. They are asking, how can we keep up with Califia?” Some brands expect that “someone will swoop in and buy them,” so they’ve been innovating less and cutting costs. But that innovation pace is not easy for a big company to replicate. Point 2 is authenticity. They want to associate themselves with brands that speak to their view, and there’s a lot of distrust of big food. But they’re always getting faster and better.

Julie: we work equally with small, mid, and big companies. But the large companies are glacially slow. Small startups are nimble and they’re authentic, telling the whole story.

Mike: “We make oat milk because it’s delicious, nutritiously dense, earth-friendly, etc.—but we can’t claim to be the only ones who should make it. If you’re a multinational who focuses on making oat milk, we welcome you in. I’d like to see oat milk take over the category, because it’s the best thing for the climate. I can’t do that on my own. We need other brands, other price points. That helps grow the market penetration. If you’re a small company doing something incredibly innovative, and you’re planting a flag, and the big guys come, what do you do on the ingredient and manufacturing side that gives you some protection and differentiation? Otherwise, you’re in trouble 18 months later when the big guys show up. Do something distinct, you’re going to have to find that. Otherwise, you open the door for others to run over the top of you as they rush in behind you. What is the thing you’re doing that’s different and meaningful?”

Julie: Learning to leverage the experts. The suppliers and mags are leveraging the technologies to make taste as best as they can. We ask, how can we help you get there in this type of ingredient? Pulses bring their own sustainability story, but if you layer on that next piece, whether it’s a change in the protein to create better mouthfeel—it’s a great strategy

Future trends: Sandeep: decommodification, and re-allocating space currently occupied by dairy. It’s a win-win to “premiumize that whole space and offer a much better product. Another Mad Cow Disease could double the plant-based market overnight.” Pervasiveness of availability. In San Francisco and New York, you watch 50% of customers order plant-based alternatives. And the person behind the four orders for oat or almond lattes says, ‘what am I missing? Let me try it.’”

Julie: Different markets want diversity. Sports nutrition wants an isolate protein, not a flour. Understand all those structures and textures—how do we help them get closer with pulse- or other plant-based ingredients?

Mike: Allowing for nuance and varietals. Wouldn’t wine be so boring if it was just red or white? Imagine different properties around fiber content, sweetness profile, etc.? “'We use this specific varietal for our oat-based yogurts.’ You’ll see that in the next 3-5 years.”

Audience question: Who are the friendliest retailers?

Mike: You’re seeing innovation in retail too. Customers are making themselves much more open to working with small brands. Walmart has made a huge press into startups in food CPG consumer packaged goods), to find a fit in 3 or in 500 stores (and we don’t sell there, so this is not a plug).

Sandeep: “We have many great retail partners. The strategy is different for each. What is interesting is the disparity of shelf space. Whole Foods and Target allocate a lot more. Some have a separate section and some it’s fixed with the dairy. The jury is still out, and that’s probably dynamic over time, and in different areas In Hong Kong, one of our partners is setting up dedicated plant-based centers” within the retail stores. In the US, a different strategy (intermingled) night be better.

Mike: Coming into the US, we were really strong right from the beginning on gluten-free, vegan, nut-free. In Europe, we’re looser. We want the brand (logo, descriptions), to stay the same in Stockholm, Hong Kong, or Brooklyn

Keith Tucker, Founder Hip Hop is Green, Seattle (and chapters around the US, London)—interview at his booth.

One of the most important things we can ever do is reach out to urban communities and teach them about plant-based food and food justice They have the biggest footprint when it comes to meat consumption. The biggest footprint in cancer, heart attack, stroke, and diabetes. If we’re going to move the world in a plant-based direction, it’s going to have to go through urban communities.

How do we reach urban communities? We reach them through incentives and programs that come from urban communities themselves. And one of them happens to be Hip Hop is Green. HHIG is urban health and wellness. We teach how to eat food that’s healthy, what food is healthy, how to grow the food, and how to live in balance with theirselves and the planet We’re the first plant-based hip-hop organization in history. Our goal is to move hip-hop in a green direction. Because if you move hip hop, the world will move in a green direction.

Attraction of a plant-based lifestyles comes through the delivery of the information You have to speak in people’s natural—in a way they can understand and digest. Delivering this message of plant-based health and wellness through hip-hop culture to me is one of the best ways to reach young people. Hip-hop is the biggest influence on young people on Planet Earth.

Think about influencers for young people: government, religion, parents. When it comes to pop culture, hip-hop outpaces all three of those. You can see it in the ways kids talk, dress, the music they listen to. We have thousands of hip-hop DJs in every country on Planet Earth. When you go into young communities, the dominant presence of what is cool, what is trendy, what is now is hip-hop culture.

I have a background in radio, I have a show on 1150AM KKMW. I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 25 years. I’ve been an ambassador of hip-hop culture, studied under the one and only KRS1 (Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone). I’ve been a mentor to thousands of youths.

The majority don’t know about vegan food. So we go and educate and inspire them, the parents and grands. You wan into a hip-hop green dinner, you get greeted, you get a hip-hop performance. The artists we bring in have been living vegan life for 10 or 20 years, and they write songs about it. They come into our events. I’ve done 7000 meals, different in different communities. In African community, we’ll do African-Caribbean. In Latinx, we’ll do Latin foods.

We performed at the White House for Michelle Obama, and I was one of five people who won an award from her.

There’s not one idea that going to solve this issue. It’s got to be an amalgam of ideas. Kids won’t listen to [a white academic ]. They will listen to hip-hop. We are the intersection between vegan and hip-hop.

Artists: Dead Prez, Styles P, Sa Roc, Ashel Seasunz, Black Stax

www.hiphopisgreen.com

Beyond Meat—Seth Goldman, Executive Chair (I was late in arriving at his keynote. These notes are from the last 10 minutes.) Veggie burgers.1.0 did NOT help our cause.

We use 93% less water and land, but we could lower our sodium, improve our packaging.

When you go to Bangladesh, you don’t see telephone poles; they went right to cellular. If we scale the way we’d like to, plant-based protein will become available. 9.7 billion people cannot sustain a lifestyle [eating as much meat as Americans]. They don’t have the mindset of ‘I need to eat meat.” They want great-tasting, nutritious food.

(He was involved in HonestTea, noted the their success increased as they went organic, fair trade, etc.

I don’t think banning the meat industry is realistic, but having more people eat plant-based meals can scale.

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