UK supermarket giant Tesco will start selling vegan and vegetarian foods in a new fixture in the meat aisle in a bid to ‘promote health and sustainability’.
Products from brands including Heck, Vivaris, Beyond Meat, and Vegetarian Butcher will be available in the fixtures in larger Tesco stores from April 8.
The move follows Sainsbury’s, which started selling vegan mince and burgers in its meat aisle last year, before announcing it would trial placing its vegan meat counters next to traditional meat counters earlier this year. According to Tesco, the initiative comes as 21 percent of UK households have reduced their meat intake (Kantar Worldpanel April 2018).
Vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian
“The rise of eating more plant-based food and people becoming flexitarian is having a massive effect on the way many people shop and as a result the retail industry is having to adapt,” Derek Sarno, Tesco’s Director of Plant-Based Innovation, told Plant Based News.
“We are seeing a new kind of shopper – more conscious of their own health and the environment and perfectly happy to make dietary changes such as becoming vegan, vegetarian or flexitarian to achieve those aims.
“Plant-based alternatives in general have become so high in quality that most life-long meat eaters are now including these foods as part of their diet. It makes sense to range them next to each other in the same aisle and bring a wider breadth of options available to choose from.”