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Vegans in France now have a new line of budget-friendly plant-based foods to tuck into. The French hypermarket chain E.Leclerc has introduced an own-name sub-brand named Végé, which offers an affordable range of vegan foods.
E.Leclerc has been operating since 1948 and has 720 locations in France and 85 stores outside of the country. As a hypermarket, many of its large shops are a hybrid of a supermarket and a department store. The new Végé line aims to make plant-based foods more accessible to French consumers with a strategic approach to pricing the products and by increasing the availability of vegan food across the country.
Végé has launched with 45 items, with options including falafels, vegan mince, sausages, nuggets, Mexican veggie burgers, and breaded cutlets. Desserts and beverages are also available. The plant-based line is competitively priced similarly to the equivalent meat, dairy, and other animal-based equivalent items in the supermarkets.
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It’s important to note that while the large bulk of the line is vegan, a few of the products are vegetarian. The marketing of Végé aims the new plant-based foods at vegans and vegetarians while also seeking to entice those interested in adding more plant foods to their diet. A tactic that has been used by quite a few supermarkets now, E.Leclerc are positioning the line not only in the vegan section of supermarkets, but also across the fresh, deli, and other sections of shops.
Vegan growth in France
France, with a national cuisine that traditionally uses a lot of meat and cheese, initially seemed slow to embrace veganism while it grew quickly in neighboring European countries, including Germany and the UK.
However, France has been catching up rapidly in recent years, with vegan travel companion app and website Happy Cow listing 1,242 restaurants in Paris that are either vegan, vegetarian, or offer a decent amount of vegan options. Lyon has 206 listed, Marseilles clocks up 155, and Nice 162.
Read more: Spanish Vegan Chain PLANT SHACK To Open First London Location
