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After a trial run last year, the McPlant has officially been made a permanent fixture on the McDonald’s menu in the Netherlands.
The Beyond Meat burger is now available to buy at roughly 250 McDonald’s locations in the country.
Stijn Mentrop, McDonald’s Netherlands Marketing Director, said in a statement that the decision was made after they received “many positive comments” from customers about the taste.
While the McPlant is served vegan in the UK, the Netherlands’ variation comes with non-vegan egg mayo and dairy-based cheese. Plant-based customers, however, can ask for theirs without.
The non-vegan McPlant
McDonald’s has previously stated that the McPlant is meant for vegetarians and “flexitarians” who want to reduce their meat consumption.
“We find it important to move with the preferences of our guests, who expect more and more variety,” Mentrop added. “We have been offering tasty alternatives for chicken with our veggie products for some time, and now we are doing the same for beef.”
You can also find the McPlant in the US, Sweden, Australia, Denmark, and Portugal.
Fast food chains embrace the meat-free market
A few years ago, the idea of fast food chains catering to vegan customers might have seemed unusual, but there has been a recent increase in the number of plant-based options available.
The global meat alternatives market was valued at $9.9 billion in 2021, and the industry is growing. And the likes of McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Starbucks, and Pizza Hut have all been tapping in.
Earlier this year, Burger King announced that it would be making half of its menu meat-free by 2030. It also made its flagship Leicester Square restaurant entirely vegan for a month in April.
Leading restaurateur James Lewis, who runs two successful vegan restaurants in London, previously told the Guardian that all fast food would eventually become vegan.
“Fast food is 100 percent the best area to switch to vegan,” he said. “The chains are often sneered at by people but they are setting the trends here.”
“There’s no point starting a vegan chain because once McDonald’s figures out how to make a good vegan burger, they will think: ‘What’s the point in the cost of keeping all these animals when we can make it just as good and grow it in the ground?’”
