Co-founders, Paula Alcalde and Anderson Caicedo arrived in the UK some 11 and 13 years ago respectively, Paula with £150 in her pocket and not being able to speak the language and Anderson in nearly a similar situation.
Against all odds, they both established themselves in their careers over the following years, with backgrounds in some of the most prestigious firms in the world, such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Bloomberg.
Becoming long-time friends, they decided to switch to a vegan diet for ethical, health and environmental reasons, and gave up their high-profile careers to start a business creating a positive impact.
Now they are celebrating 5 years of launching what we believe is the UK’s first vegan Omnichannel supermarket, with both a physical and online presence – GreenBay in West London.
The business has experienced incredible growth over the past few years: with over 50,000 customers and over half million of plant-based products sold, they now employ 10 members of staff. GreenBay has just launched their own vegan food range and with a strong drive, their aim is to help plant-based products become more mainstream.
A former Bloomberg and JP Morgan analyst, Anderson says:
“I’ve been honoured to help small businesses to introduce their innovative products to the market through GreenBay.
It’s been rewarding and I feel so proud to be a leader in a company that cares about the customers, suppliers and its employees. As a result, we have developed strong relationships with our suppliers, and our customers feel valued.
In 2021, GreenBay won the Feefo Gold Trusted Service Award for its “outstanding customer service in 2020.”
GreenBay attracts customers from all over the UK; is a safe haven for vegans, inspiration for plant-based people as well as a non-judgmental space for those who are curious to try out more meat-free and dairy-free options.
Anyone from anywhere in the UK can access their products online as well as visit the supermarket itself.
They stock over 1,200 vegan friendly products – many that are impossible to find elsewhere.
Both Paula and Anderson are passionate about providing a wider accessibility to new and innovative plant-based products to everyone.
Paula says:
“We struggled to find products suitable for our lifestyle. I remember having to go to different shops, health food stores, online shops and supermarkets to find various vegan products, and it was very time consuming and inconvenient: a bit of a nightmare! So the idea for GreenBay was born.”
With an engineering and management background, Paula felt the need to make a switch to her career: “I was not passionate or fulfilled in my career. I wanted to dedicate my life to a bigger purpose and have a positive impact on people’s lives”.
Besides solving the issue of convenience, they realised there was a much deeper issue at hand.
“Animal agriculture is one of the leading causes accelerating climate change and the planet’s destruction.
We know that eating a plant-based diet is considered to be the ‘single biggest way’ to reduce our environmental impact on earth with up to a 73% carbon footprint reduction.
We truly believe that people want to do better, but they don’t usually know where to start. Our diet is such an important part of our lives and traditions, and even our identity, so switching overnight can be daunting.
Our mission is to make it easy, fun and convenient for people to make better choices, by educating them on the positive impact that small changes can make, and ultimately removing animals from the equation.”
GreenBay donates a portion of every new purchase to charities and organizations fighting climate change and supporting rural communities with reforestation projects, in order to offset their carbon footprint. GreenBay has helped plant over 5000 trees in Marotaola, Madagascar since starting the reforestation project.
By helping people switch to plant-based products over traditional ones, to date GreenBay has helped save 38.87B litres of water, 84.97M kg of CO2 and 9.34M of animals.
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