Swiss food producer Nestle has started to sell plant-based “meat” under the Garden Gourmet brand name in Ukraine.
Now the company offers its Ukrainian customers patties, sausages, meatballs and nuggets made of soy protein and other veggie ingredients, Nestle announced on Feb. 25.
Ukrainians can order Nestle’s “meat” products in restaurants and cafes in Kyiv, Lviv and Dnipro. For example, Garden Gourmet products are offered in Kyiv’s Zhizn Zamechatelnykh Lyudej, The Burger, Okhota Na Ovets, Kanapka Bar, and Veganuti.
In Veganuti, a burger with a veggie patty made by Nestle costs Hr 150 ($5.5).
Nestle says its “meat” is juicy and has the same texture as actual meat, even though it’s made of soy protein and veggies. To make plant-based ingredients look like meat, Nestle uses beetroot juice. For sausage casing, the company uses algae.
According to the Garden Gourmet website, some products may contain eggs and gluten — therefore, they aren’t for vegans and gluten-intolerant people.
A veggie burger by Garden Gourmet, a food producer that belongs to Swiss-based food and nutrition giant Nestle. Garden Gourmet products are now available in restaurants in Kyiv, Lviv and Dnipro.
Restaurants can order free samples of Nestle’s vegetarian products before placing a bigger order.
Nestle plans to start selling its plant-based products in grocery stores at the end of 2021. The company hasn’t disclosed its pricing policy, but according to Elena Shevelyova, head of business at Nestle Professional in Ukraine and Moldova, the price will be “attractive for consumers due to the scale of Nestle’s production.”
“We want to give access to plant-based food to as many people as possible. This will be reflected in our pricing policy,” Shevelyova said by email.
According to Nestle, there is a demand for meat alternatives in Ukraine, that’s why the company decided to start selling its vegetarian products here. Nearly 2 million Ukrainians were vegetarians in 2017, according to a survey conducted by the community organization Open Cages Ukraine and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
“Today the trend for plant-based food is developing in Ukraine, so consumers are looking for tasty and nutritious alternatives to meat and are becoming more eco-conscious,” Shevelyova said.
In Ukraine, Garden Gourmet will compete with U.S. firm Beyond Meat, local company Eat Me At and AVK, one of the largest confectionery companies in Ukraine that rolled out its production of plant-based “meat” in January.
Nestle claims that its plant-based food is more eco-friendly than meat. A plant-based patty requires only 20% of the energy needed to produce its meat counterpart. Hence, the production of plant-based burgers reduces the carbon footprint by 80%.
According to Nestle, the production of 1,000 patties saves four tennis courts of a forest that would be otherwise cut down for cattle pastures; such production, compared to producing the same amount of meat, saves energy equal to 30,000 LED bulbs turned on all day.
Nestle, which employs over 400,000 people worldwide, has operated in Ukraine since 1994. Here, it hires about 5,500 people. In 2019, Nestle Ukraine generated $440 million in revenue.
