How a Sydney based Vegan pub changed the game during COVID-19.

The Green Lion was a plant-based pub that was in Rozelle up until recently that had a cult following throughout not only the Sydney Vegan scene but also throughout Australia. This strong connection to their customer based allowed them to pivot into a new business model during COVID-19 and thrive.

Owners Bhavani and Sasha started the pub in 2016 offering gourmet pub meals as we all know and love, but were plant based. Since opening in 2016 they have led the Sydney market in plant-based food eateries with wild burger creations, sensational comfort food and incredible cross promotion nights with other plant-based businesses.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak disrupted the hospitality industry so dramatically, Bhavani decided to take this opportunity to close the eatery at the pub and focus more on the IGA / Harris Farm distribution and home deliveries of Green Lion branded foods such as Pastizzi, Butter Chicken and more https://the-green-lion-vegan-comfort-food.myshopify.com/ 

I chatted with Bhavani about how COVID-19 has changed her business model:

Q: What was been the biggest impact of COVID-19 for you?

A: The closing of our Rozelle pub would have to be the biggest impact for us. After 4 years of hard work and building a brand and a regular following with that location, to then transition all of our energy into Frozen meals for IGA, Harris Farm and home delivery was a big change.

Q: What did you find the hardest thing to do when transitioning to pre-made meals for take away?

A: After coming from face to face transactions with our customers, adjusting that to an online store and understanding how to sell and market online was our hardest adjustment with this venture.

 Q: The Green Lion brand has become a well-known one around Sydney and beyond, what do you attribute to the success of Green Lion?

A: The Green Lion’s mission has always been one of community. The community and the people are extremely important to us as they are the ones who buy our food and support us.

I think also maintaining consistency of our food has been a huge factor for us also, you will note if you had our chicken burger one week and came back again the next it would be the same.

Another contributing factor was the fact that we were a pub serving pub food and beers, but all plant based was a big success. We noticed many people from all over coming to try our food, people bringing in other people who were not plant based or vegan to try the food. Building a sense of community for everyone to eat drink and have a great time.

Q: How do you do your marketing? E.g. Socials vs Email? And what have you found works best and what has not worked in the past?

A: For us social media has been our go to platform for marketing. It has helped keep our costs low and we can engage a bigger audience by using social media influencers to help promote and share our brand through their socials. This has helped us create hype around our specials like the Birthday Burger. Specialty items like that burger were only meant to be for a month but became a menu regular due to the success of it.

We also found that if we posted a special that did not get much feedback / sales, we would move on to the next item quickly. Since we used social media to promote these, we created a cheap platform to scale up our businesses while keeping marketing costs down.

Q: I know you are expanding your range for take home meals, what are some of the items will be coming soon?

A: We are always creating, innovating, testing and pushing the boundaries of new foods and flavors to offer our customers. Some upcoming items will be our famous Jalapeno Poppers, Cheesecakes, Desserts, Shepard’s Pie, Spaghetti & Meat Balls, Massaman Beef Curry and new Pastizzi flavors to name a few! Best to follow our website or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/greenlionroar/?hl=en to stay up to date on what we have coming.

Q: Will the Green Lion pub food offering return to market post COVID-19? E.g. The Birthday Burger, Nacho’s, Pizza’s etc.

A: Well, we are in the process of opening a new take away business in 4-6 weeks in Marrickville. This will also be our factory kitchen for our home delivery and IGA / Harris Farm meals. This will house our famous Green Lion pub menu again with some added extras for nighttime trade.

Stay tuned on this as we will investigate this further on what else we can offer once we are up and running.

Q: Do you have any advice for people who are wanting to pivot into a broader take home offering for customers?

A: The best advice I can give is to do your due diligence. Do loads of research and reach out to people who have already done it and have made the mistakes and learnt from them. There will be a lot of learnings you can gather and help avoid mistakes already made.

Also research the legal requirements of these offerings and do food costings, packaging costings, logistics, staffing etc. This will help you build a model that can be profitable and help you understand how much you can produce and how quickly.

Q: How do you deliver the food and who covers the fee?

A: I use a third-party service. They are great customers of the Green Lion and that’s how we met! They approached us offering to do deliveries and we have been in partnership ever since.

The great thing about them is they are just as passionate about our product as we are, always delivering with a smile and engaging our customer base when they deliver.

With their help we have also been able to broaden our delivery radius from Greater Sydney to Canberra, Newcastle and Bathurst. We are also looking into further logistics on how we can extend our offerings beyond NSW.

Q Who do you use as an online platform?

A: We have been using Shopify for our online store. We have had people we know already using it and have found the services they provide to be really quick and efficient. They have a quick payment system and have really engaging staff.

https://the-green-lion-vegan-comfort-food.myshopify.com/

Check out more of Green Lion or order some delicious food below.

Website: https://www.thegreenlion.com.au/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greenlionroar/?hl=en

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/thegreenlionbistro/

Shopify : https://the-green-lion-vegan-comfort-food.myshopify.com/