Dairy-free brand Oatly has announced a new collaboration with British rapper and songwriter Giggs.
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The hugely successful artist will release 500 limited edition dairy-free cake and custard kits, which are inspired by his love of the classic dessert. Each kit will feature custom tableware and a pack of Oatly Vanilla Custard. The campaign will see Giggs hand out the kits at Ayres Bakery near his hometown of Peckham, south London, at 1pm tomorrow (Wednesday, November 20). There will also be a small number of kits available to buy online. A series of Custard by Giggs films have also been produced, which depict the rapper as a bake shop owner in south London. The films, directed by Kelvin Jones, will be unveiled on social media in the coming weeks.
Giggs is lactose intolerant, and he approached Oatly after struggling to find one of his favorite dessert products, Oatly Vanilla Custard, on supermarket shelves. Giggs is hoping to raise awareness of the struggles experienced by people who cannot consume dairy for health reasons.
“I grew up on cake and custard, but when my lactose intolerance kicked in when I was around eight years old and started making me sick, the dessert I loved had to leave my life,” Giggs said in statement. “When I found out my son was lactose intolerant too, we used to go all over the place looking for dairy-free alternatives so he wouldn’t miss out. There’s not a lot of options out there, but one day we found Oatly’s Vanilla Custard, and it tasted banging. Not enough people know about it, so I reached out to Oatly, and here we are a few months later…”
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Making dairy-free dessert more accessible
In a press release about the campaign, Oatly cited recent research that found Black, Asian, and other ethnic minorities have the highest rates of lactose intolerance in the UK. When asked how this affects them, 67 percent of respondents said that they miss out on their favorite desserts. More than two thirds of respondents, 68 percent, said that they struggle to find alternatives in supermarkets, shops, and restaurants.
Oatly and Giggs are calling on more retailers to stock the Vanilla Custard product, given that “only a handful” choose to do so.
“Together we are determined to give people choice beyond dairy – for anyone who has to or is opting to remove it from their diet,” Bryan Carroll, General Manager at Oatly UK&I, said in a statement. “With more than 5 million people suffering some form of lactose intolerance, it’s actually mad that the default is still so often dairy and nothing else. This collaboration aims to encourage retailers to think outside the dairy box – there’s a whole big dairy-free world out there…and it’s delicious.”
Concern over health isn’t the only reason why people are moving away from dairy. A growing number of people are also avoiding it due to environmental and ethical reasons.
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