Sales of veggie and vegan products up 24%

Vegetarian and vegan products enjoyed strong growth before the crisis, but today sales are really rocketing: +24% in value for the entire category, according to Nielsen figures up to the end of February this year.
Vegan and vegetarian products have had an excellent year. The category’s rise already started a year ago, to the extent that several supermarkets were already expanding their offerings and their own corner was getting bigger. The growth in the number of flexitarians continues unabated today, especially among millennials, despite (or thanks to?) the health crisis. Consumers, who are more attentive to everything to do with health, are demanding vegetarian, vegan and eco-friendly alternatives.
Delhaize has an extensive range of 137 products to meet the growing demand of vegan, vegetarian or flexitarian consumers. “The reasons for the category’s success are multiple: to start with, more and more Belgians have a flexitarian lifestyle. We also register this via the sales of products in our vegan and vegetarian range, which have risen by 20% in 2020 and even by 30% during the first two months of this year,” a spokesman said.
It is also clear at Colruyt, who remarked: “People have different reasons for choosing vegetarian food. Environmental friendliness plays an important role, as do health and animal welfare.
The category had a strong start to the year in 2020 and this momentum continued during the first months of the pandemic.