With a loud voice, bold mission and ever-growing product portfolio, VFC – or Vegan Fried Chick*n – has already made quite a name for itself.
In the three years since launching, the plant-based start-up has called out the unsustainable practices of international meat-focused players, taken social media by storm with celebrity factory farm visits and launched its range of vegan fried chicken in almost all of the UK’s leading supermarkets.
But for VFC, there’s no stopping there.
With an ambitious aim of saving 5.5 million chickens over the next few years, co-founder and chef Adam Lyons, CEO Dave Sparrow and head of marketing, Ali Reilly reveal how VFC plans to become the “world’s vegan brand of choice”.
The VFC story: committed to the cause
The VFC brand was created by chef and restaurateur, Adam Lyons and founder of the Veganuary movement, Matthew Glover. The pair met at Lyon’s York restaurant where they decided to create the plant-based fried chicken brand, backed by not-for-profit vegan foundation, Veg Capital.
Although Lyons was a fully signed up meat-eater at that point, things changed for him after seeing the harsh reality of a chicken farm for himself – which he described as a “horrible environment” and an “emotional experience”.
“I came out of there fully committed to the cause and totally understood why people were vegan,” he says.
After a video of the encounter was posted to social media, it quickly went viral, attracting 20,000 followers to the newly-launched brand within a week. Soon VFC was seeing “500 orders coming through each day”.
Since then, VFC has continued to grow and now offers a selection of six products, each made predominantly from wheat, soy and pea fibre. Among its vegan Popcorn chick*n, Fillets and Tenders, which are targeted to the everyday consumer, the brand also offers Chick*n Stompers, which were designed with a younger consumer in mind.
Head of marketing Reilly says shoppers have had great reactions to the products and VFC remains “dedicated to bringing that younger generation in, because that is who is starting to make the change”.
“It’s about re-writing the rules and making your own choices.”
Hitting supermarket shelves
In just three years, the brand has achieved listings in UK supermarket giants Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Ocado and most recently, Waitrose.
From a rollout perspective, Sparrow says: “It’s been a great endorsement going to retail buying meetings, showing the product’s quality, and having buyers say this is exactly what they need to get non-vegans to trade into vegan diets more often.”
He adds that reaching supermarket shelves has created a huge sense of brand awareness, which is helping to grow the business and educate consumers on being vegan.
“It’s been a huge benefit to have an amazing team and to be able to have that engagement with retailers to support our brand.”
In addition to offering sustainable food, VFC also reflects these credentials throughout the entire business. Most of its food packaging is made from cardboard and Reilly says that when it does use plastic, this is always recyclable.
Lyons says that being sustainable and vegan spans across every decision VFC makes.
“From the ink that we use in packaging to the milk that we have in the office coffee machine, it really is that important to us.”
VFC also invests back into the wider industry, donating a proportion of its profits to animal charities via Veg Capital.
“We want to create wealth to put back into the system, to further educate and to make the supply chain more sustainable,” says Sparrow, adding that everyone working at the brand is doing it for the right reasons, “not to become millionaires.”
A positive act of rebellion
As well as looking to bring about positive change through its vegan products, VFC has a serious mission, and looks to educate consumers through what Reilly describes as “edgy marketing that pushes the boundaries”.
“Our mission is at the heart of everything we do,” she adds. “It’s backed up by something that we’re hugely passionate about and actually, that stands us apart from the competitors because nobody else does that.”
Described as a “sit-down protest,” the brand is “really loud and proud” of its mission.
“We’re not ashamed to say that everything we do is about educating consumers so they can make informed decisions for themselves,” says Reilly, who was also unaware of what happens at chicken factory farms before joining the company, admitting that “sometimes people bury their head in the sand because they’d rather not know”.
In its work to spread the word, VFC has worked with celebrities including Harry Potter star Evanna Lynch and Downtown Abbey actor Peter Egan to showcase the truth behind factory farms.
“When we’ve worked with celebrities it gets a big push and a big pull, but they are also all mission-aligned. It gives the brand more exposure and we will continue to have that animal rights activism piece to all of our marketing strategies.
“As we grow the business, we take more animals out the food chain.”
Despite being a relatively small player in the market VFC does not shy away from uncovering the truth behind the meat industry, going undercover at a KFC chicken farm to film the reality of the environment and posting the result to its YouTube channel.
“KFC had worked with a well-known influencer to talk about its farming credentials and how well it treated its birds. We knew it was whitewashing, they were just showing the best of it,” Reilly says.
“The reaction we had from that video was absolutely phenomenal. We had so much PR coverage, it had hundreds of thousands of views – but fundamentally, it was just showing the facts.”
Advancing the VFC mission
Remaining sustainable and ethical through and through, both as a food brand and real voice for the vegan sector, it’s clear that VFC has already achieved so much in such little time.
While the last six to nine months came with “a huge amount of success” for the business, it is now looking to move into “a wide spectrum of meal occasions and as many consumption opportunities as possible.”
To help with this, VFC recently received a £6 million investment boost from Veg Capital to further its UK and international expansion, a move which will allow it to innovate new products and launch in adjacent categories, including chilled later this year.
“If we want to fulfil our ultimate aim to take animals completely out of the food chain, VFC needs to be as widely available to consumers as possible,” says Sparrow. “We want to be the vegan brand of choice.”
