Allplants: Meet the brothers getting the UK to eat more vegan food, one frozen meal at a time

Want to eat less meat? Allplants wants to make it as easy and tasty as possible to make that lifestyle switch 
JP and Alex Petrides, founders of Allplants
Aliza de Lima
Amelia Heathman28 August 2019

Imagine being Greek-Cypriot, living in the UK, the biggest importer of Cyprus’s deliciously salty halloumi cheese, and being vegan. Now times that by two, and you can imagine what it was like when brothers JP and Alex Petrides turned vegan almost overnight and decided to make it the basis of their new business venture.

“When you’re Cypriot, you eat halloumi for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” says JP. “Our uncle was the first person to start selling halloumi in the UK to pay for his school fees. Our family thought we were crazy hippies."

Regardless of the cultural uproar it would cause at home, the duo chanced upon their meat-free lifestyles in similar ways. JP watched the Netflix documentary Cowspiracy and started eating vegetarian food with his then-girlfriend, now wife.

Alex, during his time at Propercorn, began reading into farming practices and the environmental impact of eating meat. This was back in 2015, before Extinction Rebellion and the images of burning Amazonian rainforests were so etched into the news cycle. “The way you choose to put stuff in your body and decide where it comes from has a huge impact on the social fabric and environment of the whole world and how it works,” says Alex.

If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, then take a look at your diet - what you eat makes up around 20 per cent of it. Even small reductions in meat and dairy consumption can reduce this “foodprint” by 25 per cent, and a total vegan diet reduces it by about 55 per cent, according to Mike Berners-Lee's How Bad are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything. Armed with this information, the Petrides brothers decide to make it easier for anyone in the UK to eat vegan by making it incredibly convenient and tasty at the same time, with Allplants, a frozen food subscription company, which delivers appetising meals to your door.

The venture started with weekly supper clubs at a friend’s café, around the corner from where they lived in north London. They cooked two days before each event, freezing the meals and then re-heating them before serving. “We worked out that most people were like, I might eat more plants, but I don’t know how to do it. And it has to taste good, I can’t compromise on that,” explains Alex. “When we told people, by the way it's frozen and we have some you can take home with you, we were selling out.”

Allplants's plant-based take on Rigatoni Carbonara
Allplants

The supper clubs proved such a success that the brothers found a kitchen in north London in which to start making and dispatching the meals from – they think of it as single vegan restaurant serving the nation. They’ve designed the packaging so it’s as environmentally-friendly as possible – using offcuts of cotton denim from the factory floor and transformed it into insulation which goes in its cardboard boxes so it can be recycled and used again, alongside dry ice which keeps the food frozen on the go.

“The entire food industry runs on frozen networks, 90 per cent of the time using those polystyrene boxes which are really not good for the planet. I never could have believed that closing that loop was possible – this one small experiment has given us real encouragement,” says JP.

Delivering frozen meals is another example of the innovation that makes Allplants such a success. Whilst other food subscription companies, such as HelloFresh and Blue Apron, package up separate ingredients for the customer to cook together, Allplants meals are simply frozen and ready to go in the freezer or in the oven when you unbox them, meaning it simply fits into people’s routines. “We’re focusing on making eating more plants more exciting and delicious, as well as easy,” he adds. “We just wanted to slot into people’s lives and be there when they need it most.”

Allplants meals arrive in a brightly-coloured box with a combination of dry ice and cotton denim insulation to keep the meals frozen in transit
Allplants

People are taking notice. Last year, the brothers raised £7.5 million in Series A funding from the likes of Octopus Ventures, behind femtech Elvie and fashion tech Depop, and Felix Capital. They have customers all over the UK, only 38 per cent of which are in London. As well as feeding young professionals and new parents, they do a roaring trade with older customers.

“A friend of mine’s dad had a health scare, he’s 70. He was told by his cardiologist to cut down on meat and dairy. He’s now a weekly Allplants subscriber,” says JP. Figures from Waitrose last year suggest one-third of Britons have stopped or reduced eating meat, so it couldn’t come at a better time.

And why not. The meals are tasty; with flavours such as Cauli Tikka Masala and Rigatoni Bolognese, complete with vegan cheese. You’d never know there were no animal products involved thanks to the efforts made to incorporate the right flavours and textures beloved in those usually meat-centric dishes.

JP’s favourite is the new Rainbow Mezze Bowl, whilst Alex prefers the Carbonara. “At heart, I’m an indulgent meat eater, so the carbonara lets me do that,” he explains. He’s not too keen on the synthetic meats championed by the likes of Beyond Meat and the Impossible Burger. “With synthetic meats, people often ask why do they exist? If you want to be vegan just be vegan, or veggies or whatever.”

The whole thing with Allplants too is that it’s not supposed to be for vegans – it’s aimed at anyone who wants to eat a little healthier and get more vegetables in their diet, which is one of the reasons it leans towards the “plant-based” branding instead of vegan. This goes back to the reactions the brothers faced when switching up their own diets.

“[Being vegan] makes you seem judgemental – people assume that you think you’re pious and better than them. I don’t identify much with the word at all and it’s why as a brand we’ve always let go of that word,” says JP.

Alex and JP with the yellow Allplants delivery box (Allplants)
Aliza de Lima

Eventually, they hope to expand Allplants across Europe and the US – though they’ll have to take on US vegan food delivery company Purple Carrot to do so.

Allplants is a certified B-Corp, so working towards an inclusive and sustainable economy is high on the agenda. “It sets out very clearly to anybody who engages with you as a team member, investor, partner, that we’re doing our very best from a purpose and planet perspective,” says JP.

Maybe it’s all the energy they get from living plant-based lifestyles but the brothers are extremely positive they can do it. “We’ve become experts at making food – it’s meals for now – it’s not a standstill point where we’re going to stop,” says Alex. “We’re about living a healthy lifestyle and we’re going to give you ways to do that really easily."