Heinz has discontinued its Vegan Salad Cream to “meet changing culinary trends and tastes”.
The condiments giant used X (formerly Twitter) to confirm the product had “recently been discontinued” after a shopper complained she could not find it “anywhere” in a post.
Another shopper posted that they were “majorly disappointed” to learn it had been pulled. “Why use eggs if you don’t need to?” they asked.
Majorly disappointed today to find out Heinz Vegan Salad Cream Discontinued Salad Cream has always been my favourite since a child but you’d of thought the Vegan recipe would be cheaper to produce why use eggs if you don’t need to??
— Tomas Sarson (@TomasSarson) June 10, 2024
Dubbed as the ‘Plant Pantry’, the products were launched as part of a concerted push by Heinz to bolster its plant-based range.
Research by The Grocer using Assosia data shows Vegan Salad Cream had disappeared from Tesco and Morrisons by late April 2024, followed by Asda earlier this month [12 w/e 10 June 2024].
A spokeswoman for Heinz told The Grocer: “We’re constantly looking at how we can improve and innovate to meet changing culinary trends and tastes, and this sometimes means reviewing our range with consumer wants and needs in mind.”
NIQ data shows that value sales of Vegan Salad Cream fell by 23.6% to £823k in the year to 18 May 2024, on volumes down 26.8%.
Value sales over a four-week period hit a peak of £158k on the 22 July 2022, but had plummeted to just £50k by the four weeks ending 24 February 2024.
While the Heinz spokeswoman stressed that Seriously Good Vegan Mayo was “still available to buy”, value sales of this product have also dropped by 23.7% to £1.7m on volumes down 41.5%, according to NIQ data [52 w/e 31 December 2023].
Meanwhile, the three Beanz Burgerz variants – Original, Texan Style and Italian Style – brought in a combined £580.3k over the 12-month period. They have since disappeared from Asda and Iceland [Assosia 52 w/e 12 June 2024].
It comes after Hellmann’s rebranded its Vegan Mayo as Plant Based Mayo last month, in a bid to boost its appeal to flexitarians.
The table sauce has also been reformulated. It now contains a lower proportion of rapeseed oil, while xantham gum and sunflower oil have been added.
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