For a long time, supermarkets were not part of our plan.
Like many small, artisanal food businesses, we associated them with everything we didn’t want to become: pressure on margins, standardisation, compromises. We believed that staying independent meant staying small, niche, and somewhat outside the mainstream.
But running a food business teaches you something quickly:
Values only survive if the business itself does.
The reality behind a small plant-based brand
At The Vegan Butcher’s Choice, everything starts in the kitchen. Our products are handmade, developed with care, and rooted in strong values around quality and ingredients. That has always been non-negotiable.
At the same time, being a small vegan brand comes with very concrete challenges: visibility, access to new customers, and long-term stability. As much as we love our webshop and loyal community, not everyone is ready to order from a fully vegan online store.
Many people are flexitarian, curious, or simply not actively searching for plant-based food. And they shop where they’ve always shopped: in supermarkets.
When standing still stopped being an option
At the beginning of 2025, this reality became very clear to us.
Catering, especially in Brussels, is highly dependent on external factors. Political agendas, institutional changes, postponed decisions: all of these directly affect corporate catering. While our catering business is still doing well today and receiving excellent feedback, that quieter moment forced us to pause and rethink our model.
We realised that differentiation alone wasn’t enough. We needed visibility. Accessibility. And a more solid network to support sustainable, long-term growth.
Around that same time, we were contacted by a supermarket. Instead of seeing it as a threat to our identity, we took it as an opportunity to question our own assumptions.
Why supermarkets became part of the solution
Working with supermarkets was never about chasing volume at all costs. It was about meeting people where they already are.
Supermarkets play a central role in how people discover food. By being present there, plant-based meals stop being a niche or “special occasion” choice and become a normal, everyday option.
For us, this meant:
- Reaching flexitarians who wouldn’t actively seek out a vegan webshop.
- Making our products easier to access for existing customers.
- Helping normalise healthy plant-based replacers (among the shelves of highly processed ones) as part of daily life
Accessibility is not a compromise of values. It’s how impact actually happens.
What did not change
From the very first discussions, some things were clear:
Quality had to remain exactly the same.
Our recipes, ingredients, and production methods were not up for negotiation.
We also chose not to engage in aggressive promotions or “2-for-1” strategies that only work for industrial players. We are an artisanal company, and our prices reflect fair work, quality ingredients, and sustainable growth.
Even packaging mattered. We didn’t want to blend in. We wanted people to recognise our products before they even taste them, because we are not like everyone else, and we don’t pretend to be.
Letting go of old clichés
Yes, we had doubts. Supermarkets often have a reputation for being impersonal and purely margin-driven. While profit is essential for everyone, we were positively surprised by the human side of many independent supermarket owners: real conversations, genuine interest, and a shared understanding that partnerships need to work on both sides.
As with any decision, not everyone agreed. A very small minority criticised the move. But growth will always attract opinions. What matters to us is staying true to who we are and growing ethically and sustainably.
The impact so far
The impact has been encouraging. Many people discovered us simply because our products were on a shelf near their home. Some tried them out of curiosity during tastings. Others, including elderly customers, told us they wouldn’t have chosen a vegan product otherwise, but were pleasantly surprised, especially by the idea of finding cheese alternatives with lower or no cholesterol.
During the holiday season, several customers ordered directly from us after first discovering our products in supermarkets. Shelves sold out faster than expected. Word-of-mouth grew organically.
Finally : Big ambitions don’t cancel out artisanal values
There’s a persistent idea that when small companies grow, they inevitably “become like everyone else”. That professionalism and ambition are incompatible with craftsmanship and values.
We strongly disagree.
You can be artisanal and professional. You can aim to grow and keep your values. You can expand without losing your identity.
Working with supermarkets doesn’t define who we are. How we work does.
If you’re curious to see where you can find our products, you can check our website to discover the supermarkets and shops carrying The Vegan Butcher’s Choice near you.