Startup interview: Joe Hill, Joint Director, One Planet Pizza
RTIH gets the lowdown on plant-based pizza company, One Planet Pizza.
RTIH: Tell us about yourself and One Planet Pizza
JH: I decided to go vegan in 2014 out of a passion and respect for all animals and this combined with my love of pizza, inspired me to embark on a life long mission of getting the planet eating epic tasting, plant-based pizzas, saving as many animals as possible.
So in 2016, I quit my day job to start building an ethical brand with my Dad and we haven’t looked back since. One Planet Pizza, the UK’s first vegan frozen pizza company, is all about purpose (and pizza, obviously).
We’re a company that does things for the planet, not for our pockets, and we put this message into practice with everything we do.
Using awesome pizzas to encourage planet positivity, we’re here to tell you that the future of food is, and has to be, plant-based, but that doesn’t mean compromising on flavour or quality.
Our plant-based pizzas do as good as they taste (and they taste epic).
RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the brand up?
We noticed there was a growing interest in veganism from around the time I went vegan, and yet you couldn’t find a decent frozen pizza for love nor money.
We wanted to change this, using our passion for plant-based food and home cooking and love for pizzas to build a purpose driven business that does as good as it tastes.
RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?
JH: It’s been overwhelmingly positive. We’ve won a good few industry awards, built a big following on social media and importantly, we’ve changed a lot of opinions along the way.
The big boys like Goodfellas and Chicago Town are now taking this sector seriously and trying to weigh in, but we’re finding that a lot of the time these big faceless corporations are missing the mark.
Consumers are now expecting much more from brands, more authenticity and more action, not just words and less green washing.
RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?
JH: Competing on price with cheap and mass produced frozen pizzas. Our pizzas are worlds apart but it’s a challenge to prove this to consumers in the few seconds we have their attention.
We know our pizzas won’t just please vegans but anyone looking to eat more ethically, yet it can be tough to persuade non-vegan consumers to take the risk and try our pizzas versus their normal choices, but we’re confident they’ll love them if they do.
We’re now scaling up and investing to bring down our costs, so we can start expanding our production and reach. With all the warnings about climate change, we hope that more people will be encouraged to eat our pizza, which isn’t harmful to the planet.
We use zero to landfill packaging and plant trees for every order with One Tree Planted.
Following a plant based diet, will also significantly reduce a person’s dietary carbon footprint, and the government’s National Food Strategy has set a goal of reducing the UK’s meat consumption 30% in the next 10 years for this reason.
And, if you needed another reason to buy One Planet Pizza, our pizzas contain on average 50% less salt and sugar than meat and dairy pizzas.
RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the omnichannel retail sector right now?
JH: For us, the big debate at the moment is the labelling of food products as ‘vegan’ versus ‘plant based’ and what these two terms mean to consumers, because they don’t mean the same thing.
The Burger King incident is a perfect example of why it’s essential customers know if a product is vegan or plant based.
Burger King was sued by a vegan customer who purchased a plant based Whopper but later discovered it was cooked on the same grill as meat, and therefore not vegan.
There’s also a debate as to whether vegan products should belong in the ‘free from’ or ‘plant based’ sections of the supermarket, and how customers know where to go for which item.
RTIH: What's the best question about your brand asked of you recently by an investor and/or a customer?
JH: We recently got asked which brand we’d like to be the version of in the frozen pizza sector. To which we say we want to be the Ben & Jerrys of the frozen pizza aisle, without the dark side (mass produced dairy).
We want to be the premium, epic tasting pizza brand that’s suitable for the whole family and comes with planet saving eco credentials. As well as being a bit healthier too.
RTIH: What can we expect to see from One Planet Pizza over the next 12 months?
JH: The next year is set to be an exciting time for us. Expect to see some major listings announced soon and the launch of a brand new range of pizzas that are more heavily inspired by pizzas’ Italian roots. That’s all I can say for now on that.
We also hope to raise more capital to start building a larger production site, which will enable us to increase our production tenfold and achieve the huge scale we’ve always dreamed of in 2022.
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