6 May 2021

UK supermarket slashes prices for its plant-based range

In a bold move, UK food retailer Co-op is permanently reducing pricing on all of its vegan GRO products, in a bid to end the price gap between plant-based and non-vegan foods. Reductions on some products are as high as 50%.

As explained by Jo Whitfield, Co-op Food CEO: "It's an industry-wide standard that plant-based alternatives are usually priced higher than their meat and dairy counterparts. [...] It's Co-op's ambition to make our plant-based range, GRO, even more accessible to our members and customers, helping them make decisions that collectively will have an impact on the world we all share."

Co-op is the UK's fifth largest food retailer with over 2,500 stores — most of them convenience or medium-sized. It introduced GRO in January 2020, and making vegan food more accessible is one part of a 10-point plan to tackle climate change, with the aim of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

Eating more plants and fewer animal products is actually one of the most effective ways to decrease carbon emissions, not to mention reducing deforestation and land clearing. Co-op's decision demonstrates that impactful innovation isn't always about creating a shiny new product or service: sometimes it comes down to nudging consumers in the right direction by way of a price tag.