How entrepreneur Andy Shovel went from a beefy burger chain to completely plant-based substitutes
Chicken burgers were out, plant-based substitute was in. Shovel had sworn off meat but wasn’t averse to its taste and so THIS was born, writes Andy Martin
Can a leopard change its spots? Can an old dog learn new tricks? I’m inclined to think anything is possible, since speaking to Andy Shovel. This is not just a case of an enthusiastic carnivore turning veggie, at 33 he has gone from setting up Chosen Bun, a “premium/ultimate” but definitely beefy burger chain, to co-founding THIS, a plant-based meat-substitute company.
When Shovel left Nottingham University in 2009 with a degree in business and geography, he had £300 and a laptop. He noticed, in the midst of the financial crisis, that there were a lot of graduates looking for work, so he set up a graduate recruitment company.
He says: “I saw myself as relatively unemployable. So I had to run my own business.” He sold it for enough to buy a used Porsche.
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He may have been the only guy with a Porsche to be working on the “chicken station” at McDonalds. He took a job there to see how to make decent chicken burgers but he was angry with the manager who behaved “like a mafia boss”.
“I hate any bullying or oppression”, he says. After three months, he was called to the manager’s office to be fired for insubordination but he jumped ship first taking all his cunningly accumulated knowledge of burger creation with him, including the following gem: “No one ever ordered the salads.”
Shovel joined forces with Pete Sharman and out of a solid week of brainstorming Chosen Bun was born. He says: “We saw a gap in the market: burgers delivered to your door were soggy. We re-designed the packaging and made them better.”
From 2013 to 2016 they ran a successful fast food company with restaurants and a delivery service. “It wasn’t huge,” he says. “But it was a successful sale and it gave us the capital to start something else.”
Then the former burger king underwent his metamorphosis. “It’s been a weird journey. I was a pure business person first and now I’ve become entirely mission-driven. In fact, I’m pretty sanctimonious about it. Having loathed that kind of person, I’ve become one.”
Shovel and Sharman knew they wanted to do something sustainable. They believed plant-based alternative foods had huge potential.
Shovel says that when he found out what was really involved in farming animals, he was revolted by the sheer cruelty of it. Even egg production.
He says: “Have you seen what they do to the male chicks? They don’t need them, of course, so they just grind them up – alive – to be turned into pet food. A couple of billion are killed like that every year. Farming animals relies on wilful ignorance which I now don’t have.”
Chicken burgers were out. Plant-based “chicken” was in. Shovel, having foresworn meat but not entirely averse to the taste and smell of it, collaborated with scientists around Europe in search of the latest in meat-free research and development. THIS was founded in 2019 to conjure up bacon and other simulated meats using a patented blend of soya and pea protein.
Maybe it’s because he once slaved over a hot stove in McDonald’s that Shovel is not only pro-chicken but also keen to see THIS employees properly paid
They once conned a roomful of food bloggers into thinking what they were eating was real chicken with Balinese chicken satay. On the packets is printed: “THIS isn’t bacon,” (rather as René Magritte said, This Is Not A Pipe).
“There wasn’t a compelling bacon alternative,” says Shovel. “It has to have the right texture and smell and fatty notes.” They must have done a good job because THIS bacon-that-is-not-bacon has won a Great Taste award and was described by one of the judges as, “To bacon-lovers what methadone is to heroin addicts.” THIS is a gateway to non-meat eating. “It’s for curious carnivores and flexitarians,” says Shovel.
There is an ethical core to THIS, “but we’re not preachy as a brand”. Shovel says that the old-style branding of plant-based foods was designed to appeal to a niche market of “legacy vegetarians and vegans”, whereas they wanted to go more mainstream and appeal to meat-eaters, too.
You only have to glance at the website to see that a vein of humour runs right through the brand. “It’s a good way to disarm the sceptics,” says Shovel. “We don’t want to guilt-trip people and tell them all their life choices are wrong.” But if you want to have a good laugh, check out their Trump video, in which the burger-loving ex-president appears to be trashing (and thereby subtly endorsing) THIS: “We are fighting the fake food – it’s phoney! They are the enemy of the people.” As Shovel says, “It’s better than lecturing.”
Even the company name itself came up accidentally, almost as a joke. “We wanted people to say, ‘Why don’t we have THIS for dinner?’ The word is right in the middle of a sentence but we thought, why not?” Their sense of fun has struck a chord. THIS broke the UK record for crowdfunding – the quickest-ever to attract investment of over £1.5m at Seedrs. They’re growing at 20-30 per cent a month and can be found in Waitrose and Asda or via Deliveroo.
Without being preachy, Shovel also stressed that no rainforests were harmed in the making of THIS. Their soya is sourced from the US mid-West. “The surprising thing to some people is that 80 per cent of deforestation is for animal feed. It’s a very inefficient system.”
Maybe it’s because he once slaved over a hot stove in McDonalds that Shovel is not only pro-chicken but also keen to see THIS employees properly paid. To take account of the high cost of living in London, he has fixed a minimum entry-level salary of £35k pa, double the national living wage. He says he wants to make sure that, come the summer, people at THIS have, “enough headroom to not just exist in London but also to show their Tinder date a good time or buy some overpriced Apple headphones”.
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Having been a serial entrepreneur, Shovel is now fully committed to THIS. He says: “I’m not footloose any more. Pete and I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build something really big. I won’t have another chance to do something so constructive.” They have built a plant-based innovation centre in Chiswick, dedicated to replacing all animal products. This spring they’re launching a meat-free pork. Even if pigs can’t fly, at least they can rest assured they won’t be ending up in a bun.
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