Minute on the clock: Nigel White, chief executive of the Marketing Place

Nigel White, plant-based marketing expert and chief executive of the Marketing Place, shares his thoughts on the rise of veganism and why operators need to pay attention to all their diners' needs.

Why are so many people turning to veganism right now?

Right now, there's this perception that plant-based is better for your health and people should be reducing their consumption of meat and dairy, and secondly the environmental side of things in terms of the need to reduce carbon emissions.

There's a lot of PR and venture capital money moving into the plant-based space, along with various campaigns like Veganuary and Meat-Free Mondays.

It's really fashionable right now, if you go back 20 years ago, the most high-profile vegetarian was Jerome Flynn, but if you look at Hollywood today, pretty much everyone is vegan. Throw in social media influencers and you have a trend that's unstoppable.

Why do operators need to be paying attention?

It's a myth that it's only young people going vegan right now, there's a significant shift in the over-50s too. And thee ‘free-from' market, which includes meat, dairy and gluten, is now over a billion pound product category.

Even if you aren't targeting at vegans, if you have a ‘free-from' avoider in a group of friends they have a disproportionate amount of sway in where that group dines. If a vegan offering is not up to scratch when they look at a menu ahead of time, they can suggest the group goes elsewhere.

Who out there is doing it well already?

There are still a lot of towns and cities in the UK that don't have any good-quality plant-based restaurants, but we'll see more venues and generally an increase in the quality of the vegan offering going forward. One plant-based restaurant I admire is Farmacy in Notting Hill which makes vegan a point of pride and there is no compromise for plant-based consumers who visit.

What do you think of the vegan junk food trend?

Food is incredibly emotional and if you only bang on about the healthy aspects, you miss out on the taste. You need to engage people with taste first, and ‘dirty' vegan food that celebrates deliciousness and the emotion of food is only a good thing for the category.

What is cultivated meat and how might this impact the vegan trend in the future?

Cultivated meat is quite futuristic, but it basically is a way to grow meat in a laboratory from animal cells and it could be a game-changer in terms of how we feed people.

There are a lot of arguments on both sides, but there is a lot of money being invested into cultivated meat. You can't buy cultivated meat in the UK yet, but it's available in parts of Asia.

But I think within 18 months, assuming the regulations allow it to go ahead, we will start seeing cultivated meat being heavily PR'd, which is the first step to introducing a new product to a consumer (like what happened with the Beyond Meat burger) before we start seeing it on menus in pubs or restaurants.

The Caterer's online Plant-Based Summit will be held on 28 January, where White will be speaking alongside Rebecca McGuinness, founder of Temple of Seitan, and Sarah Wasserman, development chef at Mildreds.

Interested in hearing more from Nigel White? Click here to register for the Plant-Based Summit