UNSTUCK 022: Stop Giving Consumers What They Don’t Want

The start of a new year is always a good time to assess old habits and change them when necessary. In 2025, sustainable food as a category should take a hard look at the efforts poured into “vegan” as a platform for mainstream change and admit it’s a dead end. An admirable and well-meaning dead end that’s gotten some traction over the past decade, but a dead end nonetheless. 

Veganuary continues its downward slide

The longest running multi-national barometer of the consumer appeal of veganism is arguably the Veganuary campaign. Using a basic measure of popularity such as Google search volume the picture continues to be sobering. Significant drops in interest have continued year on year, with the latest January 2025 data down by 60% from the 2020 peak. If you look at the latest Veganuary campaign it’s not difficult to see why.

When, this time last year, we compared Veganuary to Dry January, a start-of-year ritual that has broken into the mainstream, the lessons were clear. Go broad, talk about the benefits your audience gets, and be desirable. The “Weird?” theme does none of that. While it may elicit nods at a PETA convention, calling 98% of the world’s population that is not vegan weird is not going to convert them. It tells you nothing about how going without meat for a month benefits you. And the visuals themselves gross out even the vegetarians among us. Sausages with pig heads and coffee cups with teats? Seriously?

Disruptors trying to reach the mainstream are jumping ship 

While brands that are already mainstream may well still join the January vegan bandwagon in attempts to drive sales volume in what’s typically a slower month (particularly for foodservice businesses), disruptors that are successfully getting market traction are staying well clear.  

Last month in the UK, both Bold Bean Co and Better Nature Tempeh CEOs publicly said they are not positioning their products as vegan. They are leading with deliciousness and health benefits - two things that unfortunately an association with being vegan can detract from. Beautifully put by Elin Roberts at Better Nature “being plant-based is a feature, but it’s not the defining one”.  

Big brand vegan line extensions are being discontinued

The vegan version of Nestle’s iconic KitKat bar was launched in 2021 to much fanfare, with the brand’s marketing director billing it as the “most common request we see on social media”. Last week it was discontinued due to falling demand (whether you should entrust your brand launches to the loudest Instagram user is a debate for another time).

The reason is probably a mixture of changing consumer trends away from veganism, novelty wearing off, and a curiously boring execution of the KitKat V variant’s branding. We would have expected something more interesting from a brand with such strong codes built up over its 90-year history and a global fan base that is open to wild experimentation (KitKat has over 300 flavors including wasabi). Instead the main brand is lost in a jungle overgrown with leaves, and the focus is on an unappetizing V for vegan set on a clinical white background. 

Strategically putting this much weight on “vegan” (and adding a second vegan logo to the bottom right just in case you missed it!) for a brand so rooted in the mainstream doesn’t make sense.

What should we do instead?

Let’s stay with KitKat for a moment. There is so much they could have done beyond creating “same but vegan” which is only ever going to appeal to the roughly 2% of people who claim to be strictly vegan. It also sends the message that the non-vegans get to have all the fun (aka the flavours - crazy or otherwise) whilst if you’re vegan you can have the chocolate equivalent of a lettuce leaf. Imagine if KitKat had released an exciting new flavour, in enticing packaging that played to the strength of their brand, which happened to also be vegan. You keep those demanding vegans on social media happy while also driving mainstream sales and keeping the product in the market.

Going further - in many markets KitKat has a distinctive positioning built over 60 years around the idea of “have a break”. Imagine if they’d brought in some of the heavy-weight creatives that work on the mother brand and got creative with how they could have leveraged and built the ‘have a break’ idea with a plant-based bar.  

Unfortunately, a lot of big brands and new market entrants alike are being lazy with their marketing efforts and are now facing the consequences like KitKat. At the same time, brands like Bold Bean Co are showing the rewards that are possible. These include not only building a brand, but also reigniting a whole category and commanding a significant price premium.  

An important note to close on: we’re not saying that there isn’t a role for industry efforts and collaborations, but these will simply not work if they are mission-driven instead of consumer-driven.