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Just a day after Green Monday made headlines for its long-term collaboration with McDonald’s Hong Kong, launching an industry-first vegetarian menu across locations in the city and in Macau, the plant-based group is expanding its presence yet again. This time, Green Monday is rolling out its OmniEat vegan ready meals across all 800 locations of 7-Eleven Hong Kong, the most popular convenience chain in the city.
On Wednesday (October 14), 7-Eleven launched two new vegan-friendly ready meals across all of its 800 stores in Hong Kong. Developed by Green Monday’s food tech arm OmniFoods, the line of frozen ready meals dubbed OmniEats contains OmniPork, a vegan pork mince analogue made with pea protein, non-GMO soy protein, shiitake mushrooms and rice.
The two ready meals that will be available in 7-Eleven are the Spicy Thai Basil OmniPork Rice and Thai OmniPork Stir-Fried Noodles, both retailing at a special price of HK$30 (US$3.87) until October 27. For comparison, the average non-vegan frozen ready meals in 7-Eleven Hong Kong stores are typically sold for around HK$28 (US$3.61), making the new vegan, low-carbon and cholesterol-free OmniEat meals a strong rival against mainstream products in terms of price.
It marks a huge step up in the challenge to make plant-based food options more accessible to mass consumers in Hong Kong, especially in the city’s fast-paced local culture where many time-pressed workers opt for the budget-friendly and convenient frozen meals that can be bought and microwaved at convenience stores. 7-Eleven is also by far the most frequented convenience chain in Hong Kong with its enormous presence of over 800 stores, with its closest competitor Circle K operating 387 locations as of May this year.
McDonald’s Hong Kong has also taken the leap to embrace meatless meals, with its jointly developed vegetarian menu containing six dishes with Green Monday’s OmniPork Luncheon debuting just the day before 7-Eleven’s launch. Rolled out across the city at all 280 McDonald’s and 122 McCafé locations that serve a total of 1 million visitors per day, the launch again is a milestone in mainstreaming plant-based meat alternatives.
The two QSR industry giants are however only the latest in a line of major companies who are now taking heed to consumer demand for plant-based products and are choosing to partner with Green Monday to reinvent their classic offerings using OmniFoods’ vegan substitutes.
In July, Tong Kee Bao Dim, one of Hong Kong’s most iconic franchises offering takeaway dim sum and other classic Cantonese bites, launched four new 100% vegan OmniPork dishes across all 100 locations in the city, priced affordably between HK$8 (US$1.03) for a single bun to HK$32 (US$4.13) for a meal-sized rice bowl. It followed the move by Wanchai Ferry, the General Mills-owned frozen dumpling brand, to launch two new OmniPork vegan dumpling products, which sold for price parity across all of Hong Kong’s main supermarkets.
Outside of Hong Kong, Green Monday has partnered up with major convenience chain store FamilyMart to bring ready-made Omnipork “cup” meals to Taiwan, which will be sold for just TWD49 (US$1.63) across 3,600 locations in the country. It follows the company’s previous successful collaboration with Taiwan’s biggest QSR chain Bafang Yunji, which is now drawing in 1 million Omnipork dumpling sales every week, no doubt at least partially driven by its affordable pricing at TWD6 each (US$0.20).
Lead image designed by Sally Ho for Green Queen Media.
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