The Vurger Co

To all our loyal customers and supporters,

?It is with the most incredible sadness that we have to tell you today that we have decided to close the doors to The Vurger Co restaurants for the last time. So I wanted to share our story for clarity and our hopes and wishes for the industry.

?Building this brand for the last 8 years has been a real privilege. It has been my every waking worry, thought, pain and of course joy for 8 whole years of my life. My mum passing away from Breast Cancer in 2013 made me realise that you can’t just sit and hope for a different outcome in your life, you have to get out there and make your mark on the world in the most positive way possible whilst you still have time. So against all odds that’s what I set out to do. I have sacrificed so much personally, financially, and emotionally to even be standing here today to tell the tale.

When we began, we truly didn’t have a playbook, we had no competitor to copy as you can see below in our list from 2016, no other small vegan burger restaurant business to ask about crowdfunding, no one to ask about how to scale a vegan restaurant brand - and everything in between. Throw in a global pandemic into the mix and we've basically lived 50% of the 8 years in total turmoil. The amount of adversity we have had to overcome year on year is unfathomable, I couldn’t even begin to describe.

We truly started out with a few basic needs, questions and hopes:

1. We wanted to create simply a great burger restaurant that happened to be vegan. It didn't matter who you were, or what your dietary preferences were, you could find a happy home and delicious food at The Vurger Co
2. Mainstream goal - beautiful design, fun spaces, great music & service - places you could go for all occasions and everybody would love it. Sounds pretty 'normal' now but definitely wasn't back then.
3. A better working environment for our staff - Better pay, better perks, better working conditions, less stress, more enjoyment. To this day, we have immensely low staff turnover, and most of our staff had stayed with us for years.

Until March 2020, we were flying! From 2016, we were amongst the brands helping to generate early momentum in this space. There was excitement, there was a lot of attention on the space and what we were doing, and there were a lot of very happy customers. We had opened two restaurants in less than a year, and were scheduled to open our third, in Brighton, in March 2020, but the universe had other plans in the form of a global pandemic.

Like every other hospitality brand, we muddled through the Covid pandemic as best we possibly could. We prioritised our staff and their wellbeing and we battled through infuriating government policy. Like everybody else in our industry, the suffering was indescribable, leaving us as business operators, and our teams, exhausted, and desperately hoping things could return to some sort of normality.

Hospitality in crisis owing to Governmental failures

The last couple of years have seen seemingly endless domestic and international crises in the world, which have all created truly a perfect storm for hospitality and retail businesses in this country. Soaring costs due to international and domestic inflationary factors, plunging sales due to customers' spending power being dramatically reduced, and the complete absence of investor confidence in the sector all of a sudden. Restaurants operate on the finest of margins at the best of times, but the last four years have truly been disastrous for everybody, and so very simply, it feels like a financial impossibility for businesses of our size to survive without some level of external support right now. However the government has shown repeatedly that it is completely incapable of understanding what the industry needs, and the ways in which all operators are suffering right now.

The business rates system is truly nonsensical and completely unfair to bricks and mortar businesses and VAT is even more punishing. A Government promising the world to the public, whilst businesses write the cheques for their promises. This is an industry that employs millions of people in the UK, and is one of the largest single sectors of the economy in terms of the number of people employed, and also the contribution to the economy.

The simple facts speak for themselves: the number of overall company insolvencies was over 33% higher in 2023 than in 2022, and in the hospitality industry, this figure was more than 53% higher in 2023 than 2022. 2024 has continued where 2023 left off, and restaurants and bars are closing at a truly terrifying rate no matter their cuisine, this is not a vegan problem.

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Anti- vegan misinformation

Then we come to the most recent crisis for small vegan businesses - the attack of the anti-vegan misinformation. There is currently a tremendous amount of mainstream press coverage charting (and celebrating in most cases) 'the death of veganism' and 'the end of the trend' etc. with more of these pointing to 'unhealthy and overly processed' foods. The problem here is that these are mainstream journalists covering complicated issues in a ridiculously simplistic and click bait way, and the result is that it has completely unjustifiably, incorrectly and needlessly hammered consumer confidence.

Sounds obvious to most of us, but no two Vegan restaurants for example are the same, they have different cuisines, different operations, different cost base, different staffing schedules, business rates, very different rent etc. Just like a fine dining restaurant in Mayfair and a Kebab shop in Stratford are not the same and wouldn't feature in the media in the same breath other than being a 'restaurant' - why in the Vegan world are such things compared, apparently because we're all the same? 'Vegan restaurants dying' - It's lazy journalism at best.

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Veganism is not dying - far from it - and it is a scientific fact that the world must, simply must, reduce its meat and dairy intake. There are far more people who are vegan, or eating more plants and less meat, now than ever before, and these statistics have never once gone into reverse, despite what these ridiculous click-bait articles say. There are so many things wrong with so many of the articles we've read recently. However, that deep analysis and corrective response is for another day, but please, we urge everybody to fact check everything you read currently.

Whilst the world is moving in so many directions right now, and people want to really hate on burgers, fries etc - trust me, on every menu, everywhere you go, the burger option will always be the best seller. We can all do things in other ways, but if there was a deep rooted problem with anything we truly did at our core, I don't think we would be receiving such incredible organic reviews like this pretty regularly :

The burger is familiar, comforting, affordable and just incredibly tasty to all people everywhere, that's why we just loved The Vurger Co menu so so much. We battled, naturally as any owner does, with the thought of changing the concept to 'fit with the times', and we actually pitched to our Investors last November a whole re-brand and new concept for each store. However we just all ended up feeling like if the framework around us (Costs, Government Support, Rates, VAT, Investor appetite) in the UK isn't there anymore, combined with the above issues stated, we would just be waiting and waiting and waiting for change that simply won't happen to the highest level that it needs to. That is the reality of operating right now as a small vegan restaurant brand.

We want to take this opportunity to say some enormous thank yous:

- Our teams, past and present.

We have had the absolute pleasure and privilege to work with hundreds of incredible people over the last 8 years. Our teams and external culinary expertise past and present have played the most enormous role in what this company has become, and we could not be more grateful and proud of their contribution to its amazing success over the years.

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- Our incredible customers.

Our customers are so loyal, passionate, and incredibly supportive.? From our very first market stall in the summer of 2016, through to pop ups, events, multiple restaurants, meal kits in the pandemic, mayos in supermarkets around the world, their support has meant the absolute world to us. We've had the most wonderful time serving you all, and providing you all with a space to enjoy great hospitality. Throughout all of it, you've shown up, and kept showing up and kept shouting about us, and helped us win so many awards over the years. Every comment, every review, every referral, every recommendation, every tip you've given our wonderful staff, every burger you've purchased - every single thing matters so much to us, and we're incredibly grateful for your loyal support for so many years.

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- Our investors.

It’s been an incredibly tough journey, and it's never been easy (for us or our investors), but we're incredibly grateful for those who never stopped believing. Those early pioneers, those who helped take this forward since last year, those who never gave up on us and those who are in it just to support wholeheartedly, we simply couldn’t have done it without you. You know who you are and thank you.

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- Our families and friends.

On a personal level for us, it has been the most incredible emotional rollercoaster. We've done nothing else, thought about nothing else, and worked on nothing else, but The Vurger Co, for 8 years. We've had wonderful highs, and unfortunately many crushing lows, but through it all our families and good friends have held us up, kept our heads high, and kept us walking forward, even when we felt like we couldn't at times. The last four years have been the hardest of our lives, and without their support, we probably wouldn't be here, so thank you - you all know who you are, and how much you've helped us, and we could not be more grateful if we had a million lifetimes to try.

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-To Neil, I don’t think we could have gotten through these 8 years without us both acting with the highest level of integrity, honesty, resilience, determination, and passion to make a huge difference in this industry.

We opened 4 stores and a whole production site (a massive undertaking in itself) we got our sauces onto the shelves in Ocado, Whole Foods, Co-op, stores in LA, NYC & Dubai, we got that book deal with the most amazing publisher (We did that), our brand served hundreds of thousands of burgers to people up and down the country and yes we even served Billie Eillish and family not once but twice!

Proud would be an understatement.

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We left stable careers to start The Vurger Co, and since then, we've poured everything, literally, into building our dreams. We've built something great, from nothing, from a simple idea, and that something has employed literally hundreds of people over the 8 years, and contributed to the growth of an incredibly important movement in this country. We have grafted every single day, to ensure people were employed, paid and our communities were served. We've given it absolutely everything we've got, in all possible ways, and we won't ever let anything take away from the magic of the journey of the last 8 years.

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We hope you're still with us - a long journey deserves a proper send-off, and we wanted to make sure we signed off properly. We thank everybody for their immeasurable contributions to The Vurger Co, and we've avoided mentioning names only because inevitably we will forget somebody, but you all know who you are, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.?

Our wish for the industry

It only seems right to finish with our wishes for the industry? ….

1)???????? Please support your favourite vegan business

We want to ask everybody reading this to continue supporting your favourite vegan businesses. If you aren’t able to afford spending with them right now, remember, a like on social media, a positive google review, a nice comment, speaking positively about them to others or a recommendation are all free and could make all the difference too. Less hatred towards vegan businesses who are doing their utmost and more love is needed!

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2)???????? Government to WAKE UP

Lower VAT, Hospitality business rates reform, Reduction in National Insurance Contributions, Energy support – it’s all needed and all needed right now so desperately.

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3)???????? Investment

When investment is pulled out of an industry so abruptly and so harshly it causes a severe knock on effect. This industry still needs your support, it’s time to double down. Support real people running real businesses who are truly impacting lives and the climate so positively.

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We're here for anybody who wants advice or support - whatever we can do to help keep the overall vegan train on the track, we'll be doing from here forwards. We can’t wait to get into some of these points i've noted on a deeper level and share with you all in time on LinkedIn. For now, we have a lot to do before we take a well-earned rest and try to enjoy a restaurant without dissecting where their tiles came from or how many staff they have on shift?;)

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All our love,

Rachel and Neil,

Co-founders

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