In Northern California’s Silicon Valley, a area globally acknowledged for its technological improvements, meals is present process a revolution. Residence to innovators making every little thing from bleeding plant-based burgers (Unimaginable Meals) to AI-crafted dairy-identical blue cheese (Climax Meals), this area attracts individuals who wish to change the world.
That is true for Alexander Volkov, who left his profession as a software program engineer to develop Inexperienced Wolf Meals. Co-founded with spouse Aleksandra Volkov, the corporate is reimagining conventional Japanese European staples corresponding to salami, utilizing nothing however vegetation, creativity, and a powerful want to create a greater meals system.
“My profession in software program improvement was about creating progressive options, however cooking, notably BBQ, was my true ardour,” Volkov tells VegNews. Volkov went vegan roughly a decade in the past and grew annoyed with the dearth of plant-based cured meats.
That is how Vegami was born in 2022.
From software program to seitan salami
Salami, with its roots deep in European culinary traditions, is a cured sausage of fermented and air-dried meat, sometimes pork. Its lengthy shelf life at room temperature made it a staple amongst peasants in Southern, Japanese, and Central Europe.
With every area growing its distinctive selection, the standard recipe doubtless originated in Italy within the 18th century. The complexity of salami’s flavors and textures displays the wealthy cultural significance of this meals merchandise throughout Europe.
Inexperienced Wolf Meals
Making a vegan various to conventional salami posed distinctive challenges, notably in replicating its flavors and textures. “The primary main problem was attaining consistency,” Volkov says.
His kitchen reworked right into a “culinary lab” throughout the pandemic, the place he experimented with plant-based recipes, drawing inspiration from his Japanese European heritage. “I wasn’t aiming to begin a enterprise initially. My purpose was easy—create one thing each scrumptious and nutritious for me and my vegan household,” he remembers.
This led to the beginning of Vegami, a vegan tackle salami which he describes as “naturally smoked, proper in our yard.”
He targeted on growing smoking and growing older strategies for an all-plant-based product, made primarily with a base of significant wheat gluten (often known as “seitan”) to ship genuine flavors.
Inexperienced Wolf Meals
“Our mission is to deliver vegetation again into plant-based, that’s why the third of our recipe is contemporary greens, mushrooms, and greens,” he says, emphasizing the significance of healthful elements and well being consciousness.
To check Vegami, the Volkovs have been constructing a presence at farmers’ markets across the Bay Space the place all suggestions has been used to enhance the product.
“It was particular connecting instantly, watching individuals attempt Vegami, and listening to their reactions. This previous yr, we’ve devoted over 400 hours to participating face-to-face and have acquired wonderful suggestions from our group,” Volkov says.
“The message from those that’ve tried our merchandise has been loud and clear—they like much less imitation and extra healthful, easy elements with higher taste,” he says.
And whereas the preliminary product was developed with vegans in thoughts, Volkov says curiosity from non-vegans is rising.
“That is thrilling as a result of it means that our merchandise have the potential to assist shift the meals tradition paradigm,” Volkov says. “We’re not simply catering to a distinct segment market; we’re contributing to a broader motion in direction of extra sustainable and health-conscious consuming habits.”
Vegan salami on the rise
Whereas vegan burgers have been all the fashion in years previous, each kind of meat is getting a plant-based makeover.
Inexperienced Wolf Meals is a part of a rising market of plant-based salami makers, together with Renegade Meals and Plantcraft. The founders of Renegade, additionally based mostly in Northern California, use conventional cured meat-making strategies so as to add a flare of authenticity to their vegan salami, which is offered in Toscana, Sopressata, and Spicy Chorizo flavors.
Volkov’s Inexperienced Wolf Meals, presently out there direct-to-consumer by way of the corporate’s web site, additionally goals to increase its attain and proceed innovating within the plant-based market. Whereas its Vegami has solely been out there to shoppers since 2022, the vegan salami has already gained traction—tripling gross sales volumes in lower than a yr.
Inexperienced Wolf Meals
The product has additionally caught the eye of TIME journal, which gave it an honorable point out in its Finest Innovations of 2023 listing. Final September, the World Plant-Based mostly Innovation Awards additionally named Inexperienced Wolf Meals the Finest New Enterprise/Startup.
At the moment, the corporate is working to make its Vegami extra accessible to most people by way of new distribution channels. Additionally it is growing a superfood-based caviar unfold, one other fashionable vegan tackle an Japanese European staple constituted of chia seeds, flaxseed oil, seaweed, soy sauce, and water.
“We’re targeted on bringing a brand new method to the plant-based market,” Volkov says. “It’s not nearly imitating animal-based merchandise; it’s about innovating and crafting one thing distinctive and nutritious.”
In growing these merchandise, the founders of Inexperienced Wolf Meals hope to create a brand new legacy for his or her household title, one which mirrors their choice to ditch meat and embrace a vegan way of life.
Inexperienced Wolf Meals
“Our household title, Volkov, interprets to ‘of the wolf,’ making a pure connection for us,” Volkov says. “Embracing veganism was, for us, akin to turning into ‘inexperienced wolves.’”
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Anna Starostinetskaya is the Senior Information Editor at VegNews and is all the time maintaining a tally of all issues vegan in her residence metropolis of San Francisco, CA and in all places else.
