Support your local vegan baker: How the rise of veganism could hurt vegan businesses (and what to do about it)

If you're a London or UK vegan, you might have heard the sad news about the closure of Ms Cupcake.

Ms Cupcake opened the UK's first vegan bakery back in 2011, selling indulgent vegan treats and plant-based essentials from a cheerful Brixton storefront. When it opened, a few years after I'd gone fron veggie to vegan,  it was still pretty rare to find all-vegan shop. It was the sort of place that you could take your non vegan friends to prove that being vegan didn't mean missing out.

Whenever we went out in Brixton, I'd pick up a cupcake for later. If I went to visit my family on the other side of the country, they wouldn't let me in if I hadn't brought them a box of cupcakes to share. A non-vegan friend would always ask me to bring down an Ambassador or two, the Ferrero Rocher-style cupcake that Ms Cupcake created and everyone else ripped off.

And now, after all those years knocking out cupcakes, brownies, and my first eve taste of a nanaimo bar, it's shutting up shop.

It's not just Ms Cupcake that found itself struggling either - it turns out there are other vegan businesses going to the wall for the same reasons. In Devon, four vegan businesses closed in one week.

What's behind all these closures? The number of vegans and non-vegans choosing plant-based options has mushroomed. Does that mean there's still not enough demand even so? It turns out that the vegan boom might actually be hurting vegan businesses.

"Now you can find vegan cake on pretty much every high street and supermarket across London. This is a good thing! However, with our continued rent raises, soaring expenses and the fact that mainstream retailers are able to mass produce vegan products at a lower cost - we have decided it is now time to close our doors," Ms Cupcake said in a post on Twitter.

Turns out it wasn't a lack of vegan or vegan-curious that caused the demise of Ms Cupcake -- it was just that because there are now so many other vegan options easily available, we're just getting our vegan treats in other places. We don't have to make the effort to track down vegan food in all-vegan shops, because we can just pick it up in the supermarkets. And sadly, that means that those all-vegan places are having to shut up shop.

Vegan cakes are now even cropping up in your local supermarket - here's one I found in Morrison's

We're all poorer for having lost those herbivourous retailers. We can't avoid spending money at places that sell non-vegan goods alongside vegan ones, much as we might want to, but we should definitely try and choose to support all-vegan options where they exist. If there's a choice between buying something from a vegan company or a non-vegan company, I'm going to make sure I'm choosing the vegan version. I used to buy Plamil's garlic mayo as my mayonnaise of choice; when my local Sainsbury's started stocking a Leon version, I bought that instead, as it didn't mean taking a whole extra journey to the health food shop in the next neighbourhood.

Then I started thinking about this very pertinent Twitter thread (I've condensed it a little, you can find the whole thing here)

A thread about the high street and #veganism.

A long time ago in my town there was a market stall. It was the only place in town to sell things we #vegans now take for granted.

Things like nutritional yeast, plant milk, vegan cheese, pate and tofu.... It was the one place where you could get soya yoghurt or things like miso paste and other health / non western foods. It was the only place that stocked gluten free food also.

It was expensive and you had to hope they had what you wanted in stock. It's hard to imagine this. A time when a carton of soy milk was a treat or the only tofu was silken!

One day Holland & Barrett opened, a national chain covering the same market.

It was a little cheaper but had an expensive but for this vegan large frozen range and also vegan fast food items, like chilled sausage rolls and pasties. I often popped into there for lunch and it was a godsend to have something handy to eat when in town!

A year or so ago Holland & Barrett - on the back of the growth in veganism significantly expanded their range. It became almost like a little supermarket for #vegans selling the previously non-profitable things that kept the little stall going.

A year or two ago the little stall that was a lifeline for vegans became unnecessary and closed down after decades of trading.

Holland & Barrett of course are in every high street now... I still popped into H&B regularly and the #vegan fast food was still brilliant when required.

A year ago Gregg's started selling the vegan sausage roll across the road. I don't buy them, preferring instead to stay with the business that killed the little stall but for over 20 years has been a source of vegan fast food when no one else cared.

In the last few weeks, no doubt due to competition H&B have stopped selling #vegan sausage rolls and pasties.

A much smaller company than Gregg's probably supplied those products. Those jobs no doubt will now be at risk or gone.

I think the range of new #vegan products is brilliant. It's great to know I can eat at virtually every restaurant and no longer need to phone ahead but I think the growth has had some casualties. Pioneers of #vegan products are getting the squeeze.

Some #vegans even praise world leaders of animal abuse like KFC, Burger King and McDonald's as though we are on a 'shared journey' with them, rather than strive to put them out of business...

I am not harkening back to the 'golden age of Sosmix' (if you were there you'd know!) AND of course these trends are indicative of a growth in #veganism which of course is what we all want!

I do think though we should be mindful of where we spend if we can....

It's true that #vegan or vegan friendly businesses are suffering at the hands of companies that murder millions of animals.

I think it's important to remember who our allies are and who are not.

We are not a growing market. We are a growing movement

— Barry (@bazhsw8183) January 12, 2020

Not everyone has a choice about where they eat, and how. But I'm lucky, I live in London, there are vegan options everywhere, and lots of vegan companies to support. So, from now on, I've decided to support all vegan businesses whenever I can -- because if I don't, they may not be around in the future.

Sadly, I don't live near Ms Cupcake any more, but my commute home can take me close to another all-vegan baker, Cake Cult. Yesterday, I picked up a brownie and a Viennese whirl, and put a little bit of cash in the pockets of a small vegan business. I guess it shows supporting vegan companies really is no sacrifice at all.

A chocolate orange vegan brownie from Cake Cult