This week, Don and I had the opportunity to not only attend but to be part of the exciting launch of Wellness Warehouse’s Plant Power Pop-Up store in Cavendish Square! The Pop-Up store is a 100% vegan space that Wellness Warehouse created within their Cavendish store (where the Wellness Café used to be) and has all their plant-based food, cruelty-free beauty and eco-friendly household products on display.
In South Africa, we don’t have a 100% vegan store like Veganz, so this is an exciting first step for the food retail industry. More and more South Africans are reducing their meat consumption for health, environmental or ethical reasons, and replacing their animal-derived products with plant-based alternatives. This store makes it as easy as (vegan) pie for consumers to shop all things plant-based. No more pondering over labels – just grab and (pay and) go!
Not sure what all the vegan fuss is about? The store serves as an information hub, offering information leaflets on veganism, videos on the television screens and free vegan recipe cards. Since the Pop-Up store stocks my cookbook, The South African Vegan Cookbook, they’ve featured my Healthy Chocolate Granola recipe on one of the cards. What’s more, a dedicated plant-based Health Consultant is on stand-by every day to guide customers who may be unfamiliar with the lifestyle and to make the space as convenient as possible for regulars shopping for their essentials.
Regular vegan food tastings, talks and events will be hosted within this experiential space to help create a community amongst like-minded customers and add to their shopping experience. I am pretty excited to host a cooking demonstration there myself! For event dates, keep your eyes peeled to their Facebook page and the black notice board in store.
Back to the launch. In my capacity as Media & Outreach Manager for Humane Society International/Africa and Green Monday SA, and in Don’s capacity as Director of ProVeg South Africa, we collaborated with the Wellness Warehouse team to host the media launch event. Guests, invited by HSI/Africa and Proveg SA, included a few familiar vegan faces such as Plantdurance’s Gary te Roller and chef Claire Roberto, model Rati Lekalakala, actor Marco Spaumer, presenter Danilo Acquisto, model Micaela Clifford, gamer Grant Hinds, blogger Alez Odendal and social media influencers Sarah Beckett, Chloe Kingdom and Stacy Hart.
During the course of the evening we enjoyed a variety of vegan snacks by Urban Vegan (including the fishiest vegan fishcakes I’ve ever tasted), and refreshing drinks by Good Gut Water Kefir, Cape Apple and Cape Berry, and Almond Creamery, while browsing through the vibrant shelves.
Kudos to Wellness Warehouse for launching the first 100% vegan Pop-Up store in South Africa – and thank you for an awesome evening and an amazing goodie bag containing some of the vegan products available in store.
I am super excited about this one-stop plant-based shop-within-a-shop and encourage you to pop in (Shop L182) when you find yourself in Cavendish Square. Even if it’s just to buy my book and grab one of my recipe cards 😉
