What’s the story Stem & Glory?

I’d been rolling the idea of a vegan restaurant around in my head for a very long time. I ran a multisite leisure business for more 10 years prior to Stem & Glory and had been experimenting with a vegan cafe within that business since we started. Finally, the opportunity presented to open a fully-fledged cafe/restaurant. We did a very successful rewards based Crowdfund on crowdfunder.co.uk raising £97k, and the first place was opened in Cambridge. We were greeted with massive support from the community here and it was very clear we were on to something.

We launched another, this time equity based, crowdfund on crowdcube.com in March 2018 to raise funds for a site in London. It was even more wildy successful than the last one, reaching our £350k target in less than 5 hours of going live, and closing on £610k funded. The London Flagship opened in January 2019. By January 2020 it was absolutely flying.

Looking to the future

As shocking as the lockdown was for hospitality businesses, we suddenly found ourselves with time to get creative. We were so busy last year, many projects were planned, but we were too short on time to get them in motion. So, through lockdown we upgraded all our tech systems, did a complete rebrand with the amazing Afroditi Krassa, which turned out absolutely fab. We developed new concepts for ready meals and other products, along with upgrading all our marketing collateral. We had viewed a new site for Cambridge just before lockdown (we’ve outgrown our existing site and wanted to build the London model in Cambridge), the lockdown created the perfect environment for a good deal from the landlords on the site, so we are now close to exchanging on that and hope to be open later this year. In January we had also agreed terms on a second super exciting City site which was due to open at the end of this year, obviously paused for now, but hopefully open April 2021.

We have developed a new omnichannel business model which we will roll out from the new Cambridge site and beyond which spans in-store dining, delivery, click & collect, and our ready meals and product range. Afroditi Krassa is also designing the new restaurant, so all in all we are very upbeat and positive about the future, and intend to fully resume our mission to get to 5 sites by 2023.

What are the worst mistakes restaurants make when catering for vegans? Serving the vegetarian option minus the dairy, without adding anything for flavour! Historically restaurants viewed vegan food as all about ‘lack’ and seemed to think vegans just want to eat salad (literally lettuce, tomato and cucumber!) and have no desire for a gourmet culinary experience. Stuffed vegetables too are an old school vegetarian/ vegan staple which are still over used and part of the reason I started a vegan restaurant (I never want to see a stuffed pepper again)!

Fortunately, things are much better now, and I greatly appreciate that restaurants and chefs are making much more effort to provide vegan menus. BUT I still think that unless you are in a vegan restaurant where the chefs are working with getting rich depth of flavour from vegetables 100% of the time, many restaurant vegan dishes are about providing vegan options, and don’t have that wow factor. Hopefully, this is now also changing, but obviously for me it’s about vegan restaurants rather than vegan options in non-vegan restaurants. I will always seek out a vegan place as a preference, and my hope is that vegans everywhere will support their local vegan businesses who are doing a brilliant job and are almost exclusively small independents without financial backing - they need your support now more than ever.

Veganism

Honestly, there are many, many reasons to be vegan now, but for me it’s about the animals and always was. The moment in my teens when I was introduced to the idea of compassionate eating for the first time was the most significant ‘aha’ moment of my life. I stopped eating meat on the spot, and almost 40 years later I have not wavered at all in that view. It literally changed my life forever.

The longer I am vegan, the more my love for the other species on the planet grows. I am extremely sensitive to seeing or even thinking about the abuse of animals on any level. I do not view my life as more important than the other beings on the planet. I find roadkill deeply upsetting. The gentle nature of animals is extremely humbling to me. I think in years to come the depth of sentience of animals will be more widely understood, and my hope is that more people will have that realisation that I did and literally no longer be able to eat animals. It’s absolutely clear that we do not need to eat animals anymore, so the justifications for continuing with this will start to be increasingly challenged in the coming years (in my view).

I think we can all learn from spending time with animals, I have dogs in my family (some vegans may have a view on that) and I truly love them. Their gentle loving nature is an example to all of us as to how we should behave.

Considering veganism?

There are two ways to do this - the gradual shift and the life changing moment!

The gradual shift - start to increase the number of days in the week that you

eat vegan, gradually start weaning yourself off over time. Get some vegan cook books and start cooking. Fall in love with vegetables. If you are not into cooking there is such a huge range of vegan produce in the supermarkets these days, everything is clearly labelled too. Give yourself a month to adjust. A bit like quitting smoking, don’t worry if you fall off the wagon. Get back on it again, and don’t give up giving up.

Life changing moment - go and spend some time with animals and really deeply consider why it’s ok to love a dog, but eat a cow or pig. Examine your justifications for eating animals for your own taste pleasure when you really don’t need to and stop making excuses. Change for good.

‘Dirty’ Vegan Food

I think, of course, there is a place for dirty vegan, but my personal path with veganism is also paralleled by healthy eating and good nutrition. This is also the case at Stem & Glory; we aim to offer really tasty, and healthy vegan food, made just from vegetables. I think in the next 5-10 years this will become a dominant conversation as of course just because it’s vegan doesn’t mean it’s healthy. The first vegan I ever met was overweight and living on a diet of potato chips. So yes, whilst your double stacked deep fried seitan burger with lashings of mayo, huge bun and mac’n’cheese and dirty fries on the side might taste delicious, it should probably be an occasional treat and not a staple.

At Stem & Glory, we aim to offer really tasty, and healthy vegan food, made just from vegetables. We are creating healthier twists on classic dishes too. We also believe that calorie awareness will also become increasingly important. If people knew how many calories were in their dirty burger they might think twice. I also think this might make dirty vegan become more healthy but still tasty, as operators also become aware of the calorie content of their food and find ways to make it healthier.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that just eating plant-based food without attention to nutrition and calories will lead to better health.

At Stem & Glory, we believe that gut-friendly food, low in refined carbs, is the way to go. We focus on natural vegetables accompanied by nutrient dense components such as nuts and seeds. There is a big focus on layering umami flavours and flavour combining to get that explosion of deliciousness which overrides any need to eat huge portions to feel satisfied.

Fermented and pickled foods too are really good for your microbiome and overall health. In terms of the future of food, we believe this is where it lies. Fermented foods can also play a huge part in strengthening the immune system, they are naturally probiotic, improving your digestive system and natural gut flora, which support all bodily functions.

In my view, moving away from vegan junk and meat replacements, towards natural unprocessed food is the right way to achieve optimum health and a healthy weight.

For more information, visit:

www.seedrs.com/ stemglory

www.stemandglory.uk