January – the month of new year’s resolutions and healthy habits – is also the focus of the annual Veganuary challenge as hundreds of thousands of ‘vegan curious’ consumers embark on the 31-day plant-based pledge.
With this year’s sign-ups hitting a record rate of one person every 2.4 seconds, the start of the new year also comes with a raft of new plant-based product launches and range expansions to meet the growing demand.
As Veganuary’s popularity continues to rise, Grocery Gazette spoke to head of communications Toni Vernelli about the success of the pledge, the importance of promotion and relationships with the UK’s leading supermarkets.
The rise of Veganuary
Since its initial launch in 2014, Veganuary sign-ups have risen from 3,000 in its first year to 630,000 participants in 2022.
Vernelli says it has seen “phenomenal growth”, particularly as far more people are actually taking part than those who officially sign up via Veganuary’s website.
“Most of the time when I talk to people and say I work at Veganuary they’re like, you mean you work for them? Isn’t it just something you do?,” she says, adding that many people are unaware that Veganuary is a charity which offers support to particpants when they officially sign up.
According to YouGov research commissioned by Veganuary this year, 9% of the British public said they had tried the challenege at least once since 2014, equating to six million people in the UK alone.
For Vernelli, she believes the environment is the leading factor behind people signing up to the pledge.
“We hear about climate change regularly. It’s now very well-established that animal agriculture is a big contributor to climate change and biodiversity loss, which I think is becoming more prominent in people’s minds.”
She adds that more people are also signing up to try, or commit to a vegan diet thanks to the growing availability of plant-based food.
“The fact that we now have vegan options for virtually every animal product out there makes it so much easier for people to change,” she says.
“It’s not just about people going vegan, it’s people eating less meat and dairy and incorporating a lot more plant-based products into their diet. There is exciting vegan food, unhealthy vegan food and decadent or healthy options.
“It blows my mind regularly about the new products continually coming out.”
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Relationships with retailers and promoting products
From Heinz launching vegan alternatives of some of its classic recipes to Tesco rolling out a frozen plant-based meal line and Asda’s expanding vegan range of over 112 products, it’s becoming clear that the market is booming.
Vernelli says that the charity works “very closely” with many of the UK’s supermarket giants including Asda, Aldi and Morrisons.
“They use all our branding instore to promote their vegan products and it makes it easy for people doing Veganuary when there’s a logo to signpost what can be eaten.”
She says that Veganuary also does a participant survey each year to find out which products were most helpful, which they used the most and which are still missing in the market.
“We relay this information back to brands and retailers as well so that they can hopefully work on filling those gaps.”
While the movement is best-known for taking place during January, people can participate in Veganuary all year round. Vernelli says that because of this, retailers are now launching vegan products far more often as people are looking to eat a plant-based diet beyond the beginning of the year.
“It’s really important that we work with the retailers to make sure that products don’t all come out for January and then disappear again. Veganuary creates all these new customers for retailers that will look to buy their products throughout the year.”
The power of social media and celebrities
Vernelli says that social media is “so important” in making people aware that they can sign up for the challenge and receive free support which is “vital for people to be successful in getting the right nutritional information, meal plans and recipes.”
She adds that many vegan products available in supermarkets might not be easily recognisable against their non-vegan alternatives, “so it’s really important to use social media to make people aware that these products are out there and where they can get them.”
Celebrities also play an “instrumental” part in the campaign, as Veganuary works with many influencers who have already taken part in the challenge that weren’t vegan beforehand.
“They really value what we offer people because they wanted to go vegan and we were here to help them make that change permanently. Now they act as great spokespeople for the process of doing Veganuary.”
She says they “raise the profile of the charity. The press are more interested in covering it when Billie Eilish is talking about it so we get the message further and give Veganuary more credibility. Paul McCartney isn’t going to stake his reputation to a charity that isn’t professional, credible and that he completely trusts.”
Looking forward in 2023
With popularity for plant-based food increasing and sign-up’s for Veganuary rising at record rate, Vernelli feels as though this is “definitely just going to keep growing.”
She says this is continually important because “we just cannot sustain the amount of meat and dairy we currently eat. The planet won’t support going forward and retailers know this, they’re not going backwards.”
In the next year, Vernelli believes that supermarkets will “continue to produce an increased amount of vegan offerings”, as she emphasises, “they are responsible as the ones feeding the world.”
