Smashburger announces development of 100% plant-based burger
Dubbed the Alternative Burger, it is made with mushrooms, beetroot and other non-meat items.
Smashburger has announced that it has created a burger made solely from plant-based proteins: the Alternative Burger.
In a Linkedin post posted by its Director of Sales & Marketing Iain Duncan, Smashburger Group Managing Director Tracy Gehlan says the burger was made to create a "truly inclusive burger" for vegetarians, vegans, flexitarians, and people who cannot eat meat due to religious sensibilities.
Read the full letter here:
21st June 2018
100% plant-based
100% meat-free
100% delicious
Dear industry leaders
Have you got what it takes to join the meat-free revolution? Here at Smashburger, we’ve created a truly game-changing innovation that is about to redefine the term ‘burger’ and smash up the £5 billion UK fast food market. We believe emphatically that our hand-produced 100% plant-based meat-free burger could make a difference, so we want you to join us from the start.
As Managing Director of the Smashburger Group (UK) and a former Vice President and COO of Burger King EMEA, I have developed, with the help of my colleague Iain Duncan (Director of Sales & Marketing, ex-Hard Rock International), what we have termed the Alternative Burger, made from all natural, 100% plant-based proteins.
Our united goal was to create a truly inclusive burger that can be eaten by literally anyone - from vegetarians and vegans to the growing wave of flexitarians, healthy-eaters, meat-free Monday observers and customers who, for religious reasons, can’t normally enjoy a burger because it’s not Halal or Kosher. We believe the Alternative Burger even satisfies everyday carnivores looking for choice, flexibility but always classic burger joy.
Vitally, the Alternative Burger also aims to make headway into reducing the significant environmental impact of global beef production, which currently accounts for some 30% of the earth’s land surface and is responsible for methane emissions from a global cow population of over 1.5 billion.
Quite simply, the global demand for beef is unsustainable, but as the market innovates to follow changing tastes and behaviours, no-one until now has produced – entirely in the UK - a credible, tasty, healthy and quality alternative from simple, bespoke, all-natural food ingredients. But we have. The Alternative Burger is made from fresh, natural ingredients, including mushrooms, beetroot, kidney beans, chick peas, golden beet, bulgur wheat & soya beans. The burger market has seen limited and very standard vegetarian burgers on menus for several years, but the key has been creating a product that has the ‘wow’ of the contemporary burger build and taste experience that people love, but can be eaten by literally anyone.
What about other recent launches you ask? Yes, other meat-free options are beginning to arrive on our shores from overseas – some hindered by their GM food ingredients - but here at Smashburger, we believe it is important that the UK market now delivers this new, exciting and sustainable category properly to the fast-casual burger restaurant market. So confident are we in the future of the category that Smashburger are the first in the UK to re-engineer our signature core menu recipes to offer alongside them 26 Alternative Menu items, including our famed Triple Double Line-Up, an infinite amount of ‘Create Your Own’ (CYO) Alternative options and three dairy-free, vegan shakes.
The clock is ticking on the environment and we can no longer think of this as something that might need to happen in the future. The customer is showing us the way and we must follow - so have you got what it takes to join us?
Tracy Gehlan, Managing Director, Smashburger Group (UK)
