Since it's National Week Without Meat, we thought it would be interesting to talk to someone who is living the meatless life not just this week, but every week: our kitchen members Sparc.
Q: A lot of people think it's weird that vegan "meat" is starting to look more and more like the real deal. What do you think about that? Do you often get negative reactions?
A: We are not very specifically into meat imitation, we see that more with the better retail brands like Vegetarian Butcher, Impossible, Beyond Meat etc.Â
We work with ingredients such as wheat, oats and hard vegetables. Our main goal is to make everything very tasty rather than like meat. It is also more of a supermarket development rather than something that is very important in food service. We work more in gastronomy and (international) hotels. And there the demand for plant-based or vegan is high, but the specific demand for meat substitutes is maddeningly less. The continuous question from chefs is the following "How to make tasty and healthy plant-based dishes?"
Q: What are your plans for the future? Dreams?
A: The future is bright according to us, we are currently building our new premises in Amsterdam East at Zeeburgerpad 20, where we are creating a miniature factory and studio kitchen specifically focused on plantbased, in order to work with our customers to find the best recipes that we scale in our full-electric Food Lab. This Food Lab has a production capacity of 200,000 KG per year. Focus here is staying ahead and developing, and trying to capture valuable creativity from the best chefs in our network as a photograph in our new studio kitchen. Â
Q: Are you participating in meatless week?
A: Yes, of course. Apart from ourselves we have all kinds of offers together with our customers, for example, as a consumer you can go for our products to all branches of Marqt, Landmarkt, and now in Haarlem to the Slagers Daughter.
Q: Do you have clients/partners you would like to get to work with/sell to?
A: We are mainly focusing on international hotel groups. And now that t season is starting we are also connecting a lot of beach clubs. We also find festival caterers interesting to work with.
Q: Are you noticing an increase in competition?
A: For the time being we don't notice that, we also see that the market is still so big that there is enough room for more providers, maybe we will think differently in a few years. We expect people to become more critical of the quality of food and thus also of vegan products.
Q: Do you have any tips for people participating in meatless week?
A: Yes, buy lots of vegetables, go to the nut store, crack open a cookbook, eat at Meatless District in Amsterdam, or try our products!
Super thanks for the interview Sparc! And to everyone participating in National Week Without Meat good luck.