If you do not indulge in vegan food then perhaps news that sales of it have increased 1,500 per cent of late might grab your attention.

High street favourite Greggs, whose foray into the vegan market with its sausage roll, recently declared its overall sales had surged by 9.6 per cent with overall sausage roll sales (including meat) clocking 1.5 million per week.

The trend has not escaped one of Gloucestershire's fastest growing and best-known food businesses, Creed Foodservice - which is fast expanding its own already considerable range (6000 lines) of quality produce.

A member of the Country Range group of businesses, which lends the family owned firm extra buying power and value for its customers, the business has been busy working on a new product ahead of Vegenary 2020 - a day celebrating the plant-based diet.

And has been so impressed it has the chosen product on offer for Christmas.

"We have offered vegan products for a while, but the vegan sausage roll and pasty came on the back of the popularity of Greggs' vegan sausage roll," said Ross Taylor, a trader in the frozen category at the Staverton-headquartered company, which recently declared a £77 million-plus turnover.

"Creed Foodservice identified that Proper Cornish were manufacturing a good quality vegan alternative to a traditional Cornish pasty and we introduced it to our product portfolio for this Christmas.

"We're expecting the product to be a popular addition to our range of pies and pastries going forward as while many consumers now wish to reduce their meat consumption, they also enjoy the comfort of a traditional Cornish pasty.

"The Creed vegan sausage roll was benchmarked against the Greggs sausage roll. It's an attractive product that tastes good too. It is made of a mushroom protein, an all-natural non-meat protein which mimics the fibre of meal in a regular pasty to give depth of flavour.

"We find that some customers take vegan products such as this and serve to all customers as it tastes so good. This means less double ordering and finding additional freezer or refrigeration storage space.

"Veganism is the biggest growth of a 'trend' category that we have witnessed, however it is important to note that it is still the smallest amount of Creed Foodservice's product offering.

"However, volumes sold of all vegan cases of product is still small, indicating that customers are buying a few packs of product rather than whole cases. The biggest customers for vegan products are in the education sector then hospitality."

According to the website Vegan Food and Living half a million people in the UK now say they follow a vegan or plant-based lifestyle, with vegan food sales are up 1,500 per cent in the past year.

"More than half a million people in the UK now say they follow the vegan lifestyle, which has increased by 260 per cent in the last 10 years," says the website.

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