Aussie Plant Based Co returns to supermarkets and strikes deal with Betty’s Burgers after liquidation

A vegan alternative meat brand has returned to supermarket shelves and a national burger chain after it was rescued from a liquidation almost a year ago.

Aussie Plant Based Co is back on shelves and plates.

A ready-made meals and catering group has breathed new life into a suite of popular plant-based brands, signing a national deal with Betty’s Burgers and regaining their place on supermarket shelves.

Aussie Plant Based Co re-enters the market less than a year after the original company

behind the business was placed in liquidation with debts above $2 million.

The brands were bought and restructured by Gold Coast food manufacturer Smart Foods, which made ready-made meals and provided corporate catering.

Its previous parent company, Fenn Foods, was founded by Michelin star chef Alejandro Cancino in 2015 and it became one of the largest suppliers in plant-based products to supermarkets.

The original group created Aussie Plant Based Co in a merger between its retail brand Veef and Love Buds, a brand which belonged to biotech All G Foods.

But Fenn Foods went into liquidation in October last year and it owed an estimated $2.1 million to its creditors, documents lodged with ASIC showed.

The Tax Office was owed an estimated $261,976, employees were owed an estimated $730,552 and other trade creditors were owed about $618,841 in estimated debts.

At the time, Smart Foods bought the company’s major assets, including the Veef and Love Buds brands and IP, along with their plant and equipment, for $275,000.

Aussie Plant Based Co and Smart Foods CEO Raghu Reddy.

Veef products in Coles.

Aussie Plant Based Co has since relaunched the Love Buds brand into Coles supermarkets, with frozen vegan southern US-style chicken and beef burgers.

The Lovebuds vegan beef patties have also returned to menus across Betty Burgers restaurants.

The Veef brand has also regained its spot in both Coles and Woolworths supermarkets, with plant-based patties, sausages and mince.

The Australian plant-based meat industry is projected to grow to $1.65 billion by the 2033 financial year, with about 6000 local jobs, according to a 2024 report from Deloitte.

Smart Foods CEO Raghu Reddy said the company was in “bad shape” when he started working with it, but he had believed there was a future for plant-based products.

“The market is in a big consolidation mode, a lot of people are not able to survive because of the pricing pressures and a lot of consumer awareness is not there as well” he said.

“But I saw the opportunity. I thought, I always like challenges – if something is dying, if I can make it alive.

“This was something presented to me, (I thought) let me see what I can do … without any expectations.

“I wasn’t even sure if the business could be continued at all.”

Over the past nine months, Mr Reddy said his team overhauled the business and simplified its structure.

The result was a tighter operation with about 15 staff sharing some resources with Smart Foods. Fenn Foods had previously employed 32 staff.

Mr Reddy said they had also shifted Aussie Plant Based Co from its previous Sunshine Coast factory to a new site in Melbourne.

The original location, two hours outside of Brisbane, meant truck delivery took almost 20 hours from key suppliers and to customers, the company stated.

“One of the major challenges because of the location was the transport cost and logistics,” Mr Reddy said.

“Until that time, we were just trying to stabilise the operations and stabilise the product quality.

“We moved the manufacturing, we kept the team more lean and focused on execution, (without) any ego.”

It was unclear if Aussie Plant Based Co would survive in the first three to four months, Mr Reddy said.

He added they had also worked to rebuild and replace burned relationships with previous suppliers and distributors.

“It was not easy to fix, because nobody wanted to supply anything to us.

“We earned back a lot of them with transparency.

“One of the main reasons the previous company had gone bad was there was a lot of investors involved and there was no discipline at all.”

Aussie Plant Based Co didn’t have external funding for its restructure, instead using revenue from Smart Foods’ other companies.

New Love Buds frozen burger patties land in Coles. Image: Aussie Plant Based Co

Mr Reddy said he had also personally invested in it.

“You can see our other competitors like V2, it’s all funded companies, with investors and backed by bigger organisations,” Mr Reddy said.

“We don’t have that, (but) we are lean and we are confident about the quality of the products.”

The company is now in talks to launch sausage products with Aldi and has hopes to eventually expand to Costco, Mr Reddy said.

For now, most of its customers are in retail, but it has its eye on distribution agreements with restaurants and venues, he explained.

“The restaurants, they’ve come up with these kinds of products and it gives the consumer a change to try it as well.

“A lot of people don’t know how to cook these products, that is one of the challenges, the awareness is the key.”

Other products in development included lamb alternative and ready-made meals like spaghetti bolognese, Mr Reddy said.

He is confident the company is past its financial strife and there will still a demand for vegetarian products both at home and in restaurants, he said.

Aussie Plant Based Co is also targeting customers who still eat meat, but may have one vegetarian day a week, he said.

“We are up and running, it’s future-proof,” he said.

“The company is pretty strong now fundamentally, financially and we are even launching new products.

“R & D is happening and we are expanding to vegan cheeses as well.”

Originally published as Aussie Plant Based Co returns to supermarkets and strikes deal with Betty’s Burgers after liquidation