Photo: Vantastic Foods.
When it was founded in Germany in 2001, Absolute Vegan Empire (AVE) was Europe's first wholesaler for vegan products; today it is the continent’s largest. Tobias Graf founded the AVE brand in a small basement. The brand now has nearly 2,500 vegan and vegan-friendly products that are sold under its banner across Europe. The AVE portfolio includes popular brands such as Oatly, Eat Real, Alpro, Bedda, Simply V, Ami, and GoMaxGo.
In 2009, AVE launched an in-house vegan brand called Vantastic Foods that makes 100% vegan products that are tasty and affordable. Vantastic Foods’ range includes a variety of popular classics and exclusive novelties from hearty vegan sausages, cheese and fish alternatives to vegan spreads and dairy-free patisseries. Their products consistently earn good reviews from vegans and flexitarians alike on our platform.
Vantastic Foods was launched to help customers find vegan products more easily. Osman Zöllner, Marketing Manager of AVE, explains, “Vegans cannot always trust the V label as vegetarian products are also marked with it. This implies reading a dozen ingredients’ lists and labels, maybe even research to find out whether a product is vegan. This is why AVE established the brand Vantastic foods. We wanted a brand people could trust to be 100% vegan and make shopping easier. Our customers can simply just grab one of our Vantastic Foods products and will not have to think twice about the ingredients list.”
Photo by @nicolex of Italian Veyona.
Vantastic Foods currently offers 120 vegan products. One of the first products the brand produced was Dried Soy Vegan Meat Replacements. Check out some of our members’ reviews of this product. Some of the other hero products include their Sim Sala Mi and Fish Fingers.
When we asked about the creation process of Vantastic Food products, Zöllner said,” Once we have found inspiration for a new product, we have chefs we work with who, after many trials and errors, come up with the perfect vegan products. Once the products are evaluated, it is then sent for mass production.”
The brand takes immense pride that people often cannot tell the difference between their products and their animal counterparts. On a German science TV show called Galileo, Vantastic Foods’ Fish Fingers were tested and the results showed that 9 out of 10 testers could not differentiate them from actual fish fingers.
Photo by @vegfraio of Vantastic Fish Fingers.
The brands’ vegan seafood products, in particular, have been gaining popularity among consumers. Vantastic Foods products are currently the 7th most reviewed vegan seafood product line on the abillion platform and have demonstrated the second-highest growth on the platform in the last year.
“The vegan food sector continues to grow significantly. The main reason for this growth is that our vegan seafood products are aimed at flexitarians and not just for vegans. The omnivores and flexitarians are open to trying vegan seafood that tastes good and is affordable,” adds Zöllner.
Photo by @deesy of Schaka Lotta.
