Creating Profitable Restaurants with Sustainable Menus

Award-winning plant-based cheese brand, Violife, spearheaded a panel discussion on a very topical theme at the Fast Food & Café Convention, which took place on 23rd November 2021 at the Conrad, Dubai. The topic of the panel was ‘Creating Profitable Restaurants with Sustainable Menus’, which covered the vegan and plant-based movement that has been picking up steam in the industry.

Violife, owned by Upfield, the global leader in plant-based foods, delivered an important message on how the Fast Food industry can promote sustainable practices in the region by championing plant-based foods on their menus. The conversation also highlighted the growing demand for vegan, vegetarian, plant-based and flexitarian diets and the business opportunity of this trend.

The panel moderator, John Rogers, Group Head of Food & Culinary, Eathos, put forth very interesting questions to the panelists. On being asked about the change in customer demand, Rania Lahori, Co-Founder, Pret To Go, went on to explain how, now customers are making more conscientious decisions than in the past and the two major factors that play a role in customers shifting to a vegan or plant based diet are the depth of knowledge and the communication of the product.

Ghalia Alul, Founder, Little Erth by Nabz & G, went on to add how they are keen on promoting health food as opposed to promoting veganism and how the whole education and communication around it plays a very important role. The discerning customer is very demanding of quality and that pushes them at Little Erth to innovate and create more menu options.