The additions include two vegan burgers, a pie, Quorn nuggets plus a variety of meat-free sides.
The burgers are Meatless Farm plant-based patties with the gourmet version including smashed avocado, salsa and onion rings.
The pub group also launched a Quorn vegan nugget, which is available as a small plate dish or in a wrap but this is only on trial in 50 pubs.
Menu pricing
JDW is also launching a vegan mushroom & vegetable pie, which is also being trialled but if the dishes are successful, they could appear on menus across the estate.
The pricing for the menu varies between pubs but the average prices are £5.30 with a soft drink, and £6.95 with a soft drink for the gourmet version.
Meanwhile, research from Kantar UK in February this year suggested the number of vegans in the UK is significantly lower than thought with just 3% defining themselves as such.
When looking at an average person’s food diary for a week, the percentage of people actually living a vegan lifestyle fell to less than 1% of the population.
Developing dishes
While the diet that sees diners shun all animal-derived foods, as well as honey and sometimes avocados, has become popular among celebrities, the majority of consumers asked by Kantar said they were, in fact, meat eaters (78%).
The figures could call into question the increasing time and effort chefs and chef directors have put into developing vegan offerings over the past 12 months.
In addition, the rise of ‘Veganuary’, where people live a vegan lifestyle for one month, may not have been as mammoth as previously thought, since 5% of those asked by the research organisation said they were attempting the lifestyle for the month.
There is also evidence to suggest that more consumers are living semi-vegan lifestyles, with meat-free dinner consumption rising by 150m to 4.4bn in 2018.
Plant-based meal occasions have also grown by more than a third (37%) in the past four years and are eaten by 10% of the population, which shows making an effort to provide vegan options will appeal to a significant chunk of consumers.
