Just chew and me
Vegan shop calls for members to drop prices
A GOLD Coast grocer is asking the community to fork out $100 each so he can turn his shop into Australia’s cheapest vegan supermarket.
Brett Page, the owner of Vegan Aisle, the Gold and Tweed coast’s only vegan supermarket, has launched a new start-up campaign to address soaring prices for healthy eaters.
He wants members of the community to buy $100 annual memberships to help cover rent, the bulk buying of stock, electricity bills, staff wages and a new website. In return, members will get products at cost price, plus 10 per cent.
But there’s a catch — he needs at least 800 members, or $80,000, to get started.
“As businesses we usually think we need to get prices higher and higher,” Mr Page said. “It’s a business idea and it hasn’t really been seen in Australia.”
Mr Page said members would generally only need to shop a few times before saving on the membership price.
He said one person he spoke to bought 5kg of almonds at $200, but his shop could offer this at $148 under the deal, a saving of $52.
Mr Page said he was motivated to make the products a better buy after speaking to people who said vegan products were too expensive.
“There’s so many processes (getting vegan food). For instance, Gardein, it comes from Canada. So it gets to Australia, then to a distributer and we have to buy off the distributer, that’s why the prices keep going up and up.”
Large chain supermarkets were also avid supporters of meat and dairy despite their recent increase in vegan products, Mr Page said, adding it was contradictory to continue supporting them.
“It’s us little guys standing up to the big guys. We have lots of local companies from Burleigh Heads and Byron Bay. We support lots of vegan companies.”