Is Vegan Cheese In Crisis Or Just Finding Its Footing?

Are plant-based cheese alternatives having an existential crisis after one of the biggest cheesemakers refocused its approach to the category?

This week, French cheese conglomerate Bel Group said it was winding down its plant-based brand Nurishh by the end of the year. Bel said Nurishh struggled to gain a foothold and get to profitability after four years in the market.

While the discontinuation certainly signals a shift within the category, it also shows that Bel Group sees a greater opportunity for its own well-established, in-house brands like Boursin, Laughing Cow and Babybel. This route simplifies matters for Bel, so that it doesn’t have to fight to build both brand equity for a new name alongside driving awareness and adoption in a still developing category.

As Nurishh exits, it opens up more opportunity for the alt-cheese arms of larger cheesemakers like Violife (which already dominates about 22% of the category), Schuman Cheese-owned Vevan and Daiya, among others.

Yet, are consumers asking for more plant-based cheese options or is the category stalling out?

• By the numbers, it might be the latter: Plant-based cheese household penetration declined slightly to 4% last year, compared to 5% in 2023, according to data from the Good Food Institute.
• Dollar sales were also down to 4%, with unit sales falling 3%.
• The category’s dollar share of the total cheese market remained at about 1%, relatively unchanged over the last three years.

For conventional cheese and dairy companies, the move into plant-based has been defined by partnerships and investment, such as Kraft’s joint venture with NotCo on dairy-free iterations of its flagship products such as Kraft Singles and Kraft Mac and Cheese.

But among the upstart crowd, recent efforts have landed largely on ingredients and formulations as the category watches the plant-based meat space reckon with consumer adoption challenges. In many ways, lengthy ingredient decks and questions around nutrient equivalence with their animal-based counterparts has hampered the broader plant-based alternative category.

Alt-cheese brands like Miyoko’s Creamery, Plonts, RIND and GOOD PLANeT Foods have embraced recognizable inputs such as cashews, vegetables and olive oil while reducing their reliance on gums, emulsifiers and starches.