If you haven’t yet tasted Hampton Creek’s vegan mayonnaise called “Just Mayo”, you can now head down to your local dollar store and pick up a jar.
That’s right…while it seems pretty counterintuitive, the two-year old vegan mayonnaise brand is targeting stores like Dollar Tree along with Costco, Safeway, and Kroger, in order to reach a market beyond the Whole Foods gourmet vegan mayo buyer. The company wants the Hellmann’s and Miracle Whip customer to give egg-free mayo a try.
Vegenaise, the popular (ridiculously delicious) vegan mayonnaise that’s a staple in every natural food cooler section has succeeded in nabbing the natural food customer, but no brand has taken an egg-free vegan mayo into the mainstream like Hampton Creek is attempting. “Just Mayo’s ambition is far bigger: to replace conventional eggs altogether as the default ingredient in homemade potato salads and restaurant dressings,” reports QZ.
“This isn’t just going to happen in San Francisco, in a world of vegans,” Hampton Creek CEO Josh Tetrick told Mother Jones. “This is going to happen in Birmingham, Alabama. This is going to happen in Missouri, in Philadelphia.” And the reviews support the goal: taste tests haven’t been able to differentiate between Just Mayo and conventional brands, or they liked it just as much. Mayonnaise brands all rely on similar ingredients including oil, water and lemon, but Just Mayo uses a pea protein instead of eggs as the emulsifier.
What’s so great about Tetrick’s approach is the faith he has in lower income shoppers to make healthier and more ethical choices. Do you really need to share a zip code with a Whole Foods to want to do that? When it makes economical sense and tastes good why wouldn’t lower income families choose to do so?
Hampton Creek isn’t stopping with its vegan mayonnaise, either. It’s replacing eggs in a baking product called Beyond Eggs, a Just Cookies raw cookie dough and an Egg Beaters rival called Just Scrambles. For egg-laying hens, this is incredibly good news, because to produce conventionally-raised eggs, they live in some of the most egregious factory-farm conditions on earth. And for humans, it means a decreased risk of foodborne pathogens common in eggs such as salmonella. It also means feeling good about a purchase not contributing to animal cruelty. And at Dollar Store prices, it may even be less expensive than products that can’t say the same.
Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger
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Image via Hampton Creek