EttenLeur, Netherlands
When ninth-generation Dutch farmer Jaap Korteweg turned vegetarian and set up a shop selling meat-free products over a decade ago, his friends thought he was joking.
But the founder of “The Vegetarian Butcher” had the last laugh when the company was gobbled up by British-Dutch consumer giant Unilever in 2018. Unilever has now put the firm at the heart of its plans to carve out a one-billion-euro ($1.2-billion) a year slice of the increasingly juicy global market for meat-free products.“It’s a dream that comes true for me,” Korteweg told AFP at the site of a grass-roofed, eco-friendly house he has built on former farmland that has been returned to nature. “I’m a ninth generation farmer, grew up on the countryside of the Netherlands, between the bulls and the cows for milk,” he adds. “So it’s not logical maybe that I did it this way for the Vegetarian Butcher. But what I now see is that my family and my brother and sisters are very positive about this transformation and the new business.”–APP
