Yes, Ocado is one of the few strong real-world examples of what we’re proposing. Similarly, Albert Heijn, the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands, offers a comparable vegan filter and is often cited as a key contributor to the country’s high adoption of plant-based diets.
The key point, though, is that cases like Ocado and Albert Heijn are exceptions, not the norm. Most online supermarkets lack the resources and incentives to systematically review and continuously update tens of thousands of SKUs for vegan status.
Because this intervention has high potential impact but is rarely implemented, it’s exactly where an external, mission-driven actor can add the most value. The goal is to make what works in a few frontrunners common everywhere.
The key point, though, is that cases like Ocado and Albert Heijn are exceptions, not the norm. Most online supermarkets lack the resources and incentives to systematically review and continuously update tens of thousands of SKUs for vegan status.
I’d go a step further: I suspect many supermarkets are going to perceive an incentive not to do this because it raises uncomfortable questions in consmers’ minds about the ethical permissibility/goodness of their other items.
I wonder if this will be more palatable to them if “vegan” is just one of several filters, along with (e.g.) keto, paleo, halal, kosher. Right now the Whole Foods website has the following filters available—would it be such a stretch to have some identitarian ones?
I really don’t know.
I looked into this a bit when i was thinking about how hard it is to get high-welfare animal products at grocery stores (https://regressiontothemeat.substack.com/p/pasturism) and I made contact with a sustainability person at a prominent multinational grocery store and asked if they’d like to meet up during Earth Week to discuss such a filter. They did not write back. I relayed a version of this conversation to someone involved in grocery store pressure campaigns at a high-level, and that second person said, basically anything that implies that some of their food is better/more ethical than other options is going to be a nonstarter.
On the other hand, you’ve had some initial successes and it seems some grocery stores are already doing this! So I really hope it’s plausible. If you’re interested, I’m happy to flesh out the details of these prior interactions privately.
The key point, though, is that cases like Ocado and Albert Heijn are exceptions, not the norm.
As a partial pushback (and for reference for any vegans!), 6⁄8 biggest UK supermarkets which allow online shopping have these sort of filters. (Proof here)
These are definitely different to the ‘whole website vegan toggle’ option, and only available on some subset of pages. They also miss the ‘norm-building’ impact of having a very visible ‘vegan toggle’. However, I’d tentatively doubt supermarkets would consider having the toggle, considering how crammed supermarket website homepages already are. (This of course probably isn’t representative for China, which I think is the main point in this post.)
Most online supermarkets lack the resources and incentives to systematically review and continuously update tens of thousands of SKUs for vegan status.
Tesco uses Spoon Guru to create/manage filters (according to their app). Seems like it could be a more tractable ‘off the shelf’ solution for other supermarkets.
In the US, Instacart has a “dietary preferences” setting where you can opt to have more shown to you from categories like vegan, vegetarian, organic, etc. But when I tried it, it seemed to show me basically the same as usual.
I’m not sure whether these have been improving a lot over time but I feel like they usually miss a lot of items that are vegan? I was shopping with Ocado every week up until October last year and I never found the filter to be very good so I’d still check ingredients myself.
I think you can basically already do this in at least some online supermarkets like Ocado in the UK
https://www.ocado.com/categories/dietary-lifestyle-world-foods/vegan/213b8a07-ab1f-4ee5-bd12-3e09cb16d2f6?source=navigation
Is that different than what you are proposing or do you just propose extending it to more online supermarkets?
Great point—thank you for raising it.
Yes, Ocado is one of the few strong real-world examples of what we’re proposing. Similarly, Albert Heijn, the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands, offers a comparable vegan filter and is often cited as a key contributor to the country’s high adoption of plant-based diets.
We summarized the Albert Heijn case here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Sc1Yun2HXjPx-7jJVrs-lKDzTrlI10Rk4k_5q4ZOs9M/edit
The key point, though, is that cases like Ocado and Albert Heijn are exceptions, not the norm. Most online supermarkets lack the resources and incentives to systematically review and continuously update tens of thousands of SKUs for vegan status.
Because this intervention has high potential impact but is rarely implemented, it’s exactly where an external, mission-driven actor can add the most value. The goal is to make what works in a few frontrunners common everywhere.
I’d go a step further: I suspect many supermarkets are going to perceive an incentive not to do this because it raises uncomfortable questions in consmers’ minds about the ethical permissibility/goodness of their other items.
I wonder if this will be more palatable to them if “vegan” is just one of several filters, along with (e.g.) keto, paleo, halal, kosher. Right now the Whole Foods website has the following filters available—would it be such a stretch to have some identitarian ones?
I really don’t know.
I looked into this a bit when i was thinking about how hard it is to get high-welfare animal products at grocery stores (https://regressiontothemeat.substack.com/p/pasturism) and I made contact with a sustainability person at a prominent multinational grocery store and asked if they’d like to meet up during Earth Week to discuss such a filter. They did not write back. I relayed a version of this conversation to someone involved in grocery store pressure campaigns at a high-level, and that second person said, basically anything that implies that some of their food is better/more ethical than other options is going to be a nonstarter.
On the other hand, you’ve had some initial successes and it seems some grocery stores are already doing this! So I really hope it’s plausible. If you’re interested, I’m happy to flesh out the details of these prior interactions privately.
As a partial pushback (and for reference for any vegans!), 6⁄8 biggest UK supermarkets which allow online shopping have these sort of filters. (Proof here)
These are definitely different to the ‘whole website vegan toggle’ option, and only available on some subset of pages. They also miss the ‘norm-building’ impact of having a very visible ‘vegan toggle’. However, I’d tentatively doubt supermarkets would consider having the toggle, considering how crammed supermarket website homepages already are. (This of course probably isn’t representative for China, which I think is the main point in this post.)
Tesco uses Spoon Guru to create/manage filters (according to their app). Seems like it could be a more tractable ‘off the shelf’ solution for other supermarkets.
In the US, Instacart has a “dietary preferences” setting where you can opt to have more shown to you from categories like vegan, vegetarian, organic, etc. But when I tried it, it seemed to show me basically the same as usual.
I’m not sure whether these have been improving a lot over time but I feel like they usually miss a lot of items that are vegan? I was shopping with Ocado every week up until October last year and I never found the filter to be very good so I’d still check ingredients myself.