The can opens. Fish-free tuna, natural. A cheerful label of a tuna with headphones on, and inside grayish chunks that are indeed on skipjack corpses.
But the smell is the crux, says Dennis Favier. He sticks his nose in it. “When you smell this, you understand that people liked it.” And the smell, he says, was perceived by some consumers as “not nice or unappetising.”
An ordinary can of tuna does not necessarily have a nice smell, says Favier. “But you won’t smell that extensively. And you do that with a new product.”
Last April, Favier and his partner Michael Luesink, founders of the company Seasogood, had a small scoop: they made the first vegetable canned tuna in the Dutch supermarket. But less than a year later, they have already made a new version of their product.
The label has not changed much. Some tweaks were made to the structure: the pieces of soy proteins that make up the ‘slice’ became slightly smaller. But the biggest change, according to Favier, who has now also opened a can of the renewed ‘tuna’, is in the smell: „Less intense, right? People can get in a little easier.”
The fact that Favier and Luesink were already developing a new version was due to the rather hasty launch of their first variant. In November 2020 they pitched a prototype of their fish-free tuna at Albert Heijn. The supermarket wanted it, but already in April, the annual moment when the canned goods change. They couldn’t say no to that opportunity. “But normally you have more preparation: you have consumers tested, you learn from that, then you have them tested again,” says Favier in a collection office for food companies in Den Bosch. “But we didn’t have that time. So we chose the product along the way to improve.”
Not only Albert Heijn was in a hurry: Seasogood also wanted to speed up. “Our oceans are in very bad shape.” And in a more business sense: “We knew that more parties were involved. So we couldn’t afford to slow down.”
Those parties are not just start-ups, such as Favier’s company. A few months after Seasogood, Nestlé, the largest food company in the world, also launched plant-based tuna in Dutch supermarkets. It’s called Vuna, and it’s been on sale for a while in a number of countries. The group also came up with Vrimp, vegan shrimps, although they are not yet available in the Netherlands.
There is also a large arsenal of vegetable kibbeling, fish fingers and burgers for sale. They have had private labels for some time now, fish stick giant Iglo has also been participating since last year.
Potency
There is now quite a bit to choose from in the supermarket. But does that also say something about the potential of fish substitutes? Could they ever measure up to the success of oat milk or veggie burgers?
Plant-based meat and dairy have become a multi-billion dollar business. Europeans spent 1.4 billion euros on meat substitutes and 3 billion euros on dairy alternatives in 2019. calculated ING† The market share compared to real meat and real dairy is still modest – except for milk, where the share of plant-based products has passed 10 percent – but the bank expects the alternatives to continue to grow significantly.
In the fish, it’s a different story. The share of fish substitutes is negligible. They were in the Dutch supermarket last year good for a tiny 0.2 percent of fish turnoverwrote trade journal Distrifood recently. Moreover, there seems to be hardly any growth.
Is the consumer ready for it? There is hardly any research into the willingness to buy and eat fish substitutes. However, parallels can be drawn with meat, says Marleen Onwezen, who studies consumer behavior at Wageningen University. “The acceptance of alternatives to animal products has grown in the last five years. Although the behavior is stable – people do not eat less meat – they are more open to it.”
It is a lively market. If you want to participate, you have to be fast and flexible
Oliver Nusslic Nestlé
It is important for success that the replacement corresponds to what people already know. “Veggie burgers are doing well because they come pretty close to burgers. If you like fish fingers, the vegetable version is not such a big step.”
She expects the best chance of success with processed products, which are just as spicy, crispy or creamy as, for example, kibbeling or tuna spread. A salmon steak is more difficult to imitate. Although it is certainly tried. Israeli start-up Plantish presented in January in their own words the first vegetable salmon steak in the world.
What can get in the way of the fish substitute is what Onbe calls the “yuck feeling.” If people find something scary or unnatural, it can be repulsed. Conversely, it can convince consumers if it does not contain too many (chemical) ingredients. This helps to give a product “a natural look”.
growth engine
Nestlé knows that too. “People don’t want long lists of ingredients,” says Oliver Nussli, head of the research department that developed Vuna at Nestlé. Not without pride he says that this tuna substitute contains only six ingredients. It was one of the items on Nestlé’s list of requirements for Vuna, along with things like taste and texture.
Like Seasogood’s tuna substitute, Vuna was developed in a short time. Nine months passed between prototype and supermarket launch – lightning fast for a large company like Nestlé. Nussli: „It is a lively market. If you want to participate, you have to be fast and flexible.”
The Swiss company takes the vegan market very seriously. CEO Mark Schneider called plant based last year “an opportunity that only comes once in a generation.” The company sees vegan products as a growth engine for its own food portfolio, which with chocolate from KitKat and Rolo, Maggi stock and Wagner pizza is not the hippest or healthiest.
It is also significant that Nestlé is now taking matters into its own hands with the development of new plant-based products. Previously, the formula was often: small company develops something hip, large company buys the small company – just like Unilever bought De Vegetarische Slager.
Funnily enough, the big Nestlé is running into the same things as start-up Seasogood. “When you open the jar,” says Nussli, “you can smell a tuna scent. But in the first version it was found to be too strong.” Nestlé also adapted the product.
‘The activism, that’s what I like about De Vegetarian Butcher’
Flexitarians
Who actually bought that fish-free tuna until now? “The vegans found us first,” says Favier of Seasogood. “That is also a group that tips each other online.” The “experienced flexitarian” followed. Profit is not yet made with the Seasogood tuna. The company runs on investor money.
Nestlé saw a PR dream come true when actress Georgina Verbaan, who often reports about vegan products, tweeted that she had just emptied a jar of Vuna. Nothing sponsored, the company assures. “We never approach her, because she doesn’t do all those things,” said Valerie van Schaick, director of food at Nestlé Netherlands.
Van Schaick is “satisfied” with how the product has picked up. In addition, the repeat measured: how often it is bought a second time. More than half of the purchases made in recent weeks are repeat purchases. Furthermore, Nestlé does not share figures.
But if such a product really wants to break through, a large group of flexitarians must also feel the urgency to (partially) stop their fish consumption, as they also did with meat or dairy. There are now enough problems in global fisheries: overfishing, environmentally unfriendly fishing methods, bycatch of dolphins, sharks or turtles. But how do you transfer that to the consumer?
That is not easy, says Onwezen of Wageningen University. In the supermarket, people make decisions very quickly. They do not take the time to absorb all kinds of factual information, but rather choose based on feeling. “And although people as citizens find sustainability increasingly important, in the supermarket they are primarily consumers, who mainly pay attention to taste, price and convenience.”
Seasogood’s Favier also knows that plant-based fish is a more complicated story than plant-based meat. “There are still people who don’t believe that fish can feel pain. It is different with land animals. So you don’t have that with you.”
Another tricky point: the health factor. “Meat contains a lot of saturated fats, we know that processed meat is unhealthy. Fish is known as a healthy alternative.”
That’s why, he says, Seasogood adds Omega 3 fatty acids, from algae. Nestlé does that too. Favier does have a comment about the health of fish: “If you are pregnant, you are not advised to eat canned tuna. There’s a reason. It contains too many dioxins and heavy metals. But there is little talk about that.”
New generations
Current fish producers will not yet see plant-based as a major threat. But they do keep an eye on the category.
Bart van Olphen, of the sustainable fish brand Fish Tales, is not against it at all. He sees three tracks for the future: ‘More sustainable fishing, with an eye for fishermen in developing countries, making farmed fish more sustainable and more plant-based fish substitutes. Those three developments can reinforce each other.”
He has pinned his hopes on new generations: “Thirty-somethings eat more consciously and are more open to new products than older people. A new market is emerging, demand for fish is growing all over the world. If you keep your head above water as a producer of fish substitutes, things can only get better in the future.”
As long as the taste is good – and that might take a while. Van Olphen: “We are on the eve of better textures and flavours. But there is already a market for derived products: most people like fish best when it doesn’t taste like fish.” The best fish substitute he ate yet was admittedly a fish stick.
Yes, such a deep-fried crust immediately puts you ahead, Favier also knows. Seasogood is currently working on a ‘squabble-like product’. Is that easier than tuna? “Absolute. In that regard, we have not chosen the easiest route.”
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