The UK’s First Omnichannel Vegan Supermarket Celebrates 5 Years in Business Co-founders, Paula Alcalde and Anderson Caicedo arrived in the UK some 11 and 13 years ago respectively, Paula with £150 in her pocket and not being able to speak the language and Anderson in nearly a similar situation. Against all odds, they both established themselves in their careers over the following years, with backgrounds in some of the most prestigious firms in the world, such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Bloomberg. Now they are celebrating 5 years of launching what we believe is the UK’s first vegan Omnichannel supermarket, with both a physical and online presence – GreenBay in West London. The business has experienced incredible growth over the past few years: with over 50,000 customers and over half million of plant-based products sold, they now employ 10 members of staff.
Background Around 2014, we both switched to a plant-based diet for ethical, health and environmental reasons, and we quickly realised how time consuming and inconvenient it was to do our regular shopping: scattered and sub-par offerings across different retailers, having to search for suitable products, reading all the labels, and a purely transactional experience
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Customer Demand with a complete lack of expertise or advice. The idea of GreenBay was then born, and we both decided to give up our established careers to start the company. Our mission is to remove animals from the equation by making it easy, fun and convenient for everyone to access plant-based products, inspiring people to make positive choices every day.
In 2017 we established our e-commerce arm, and today we ship thousands of positive impact brands across the UK on a Carbon Neutral Next Day Delivery. This is where we’ve seen the biggest growth over the years, and the impact of COVID has only accelerated the demand for online groceries. There are also some categories that stand out and attract more
