Napier-based pie maker Goodtime has received top honours for its Café Vegan Sausage Roll, which launched in mid-2020 to fill a gap in the market for a snack sized vegan option.
The Café Vegan Sausage Roll is plant-based, made from pea protein with herbs and spices, and wrapped in flaky pastry. It’s been a hit with meat eaters and vegetarians alike, with the company fielding numerous calls from people who couldn’t believe it didn’t contain meat.
The award-winning vegan sausage rolls are available at Z service stations and selected cafés, lunchbars and dairies and have been met with such success that Goodtime will also be launching a new Cheesy Jackfruit Pie in August.
Goodtime launched its first vegan product in 2015 – a Mexican pie – and has released a new vegan product annually to meet the demand for plant-based foods from its customers.
Its products are no strangers to the Vegan Sausage Awards, held annually by the New Zealand Vegan Society, with Goodtime taking out both the winner and runner-up in the Best Commercial Vegan Pie category last year.
Eric Hill, Managing Director, Goodtime, says that vegan products now make up 14% of Goodtime’s total production.
“Vegan products are now a significant part of our business and further proof that vegans, vegetarians and flexitarian meat-eaters are all enjoying vegan products. Vegan sausage rolls, pies and snacks are appealing to a wide range of people and even meat eaters, an increasing number of whom enjoy eating meat but want to eat less of it.”
Goodtime employs 115 people across its two bakeries in Napier and Christchurch, baking approximately 60,000 pies a day. Around 14 million pies, rolls and savouries are baked every year, with the company’s pies accounting for around 20% of the total pie sales in New Zealand.
“The biggest driver for us is that we produce tasty pies and products, traditional or vegan,” says Hill.
