A visit to Planted

Swiss Youth Hostels go Planted!

I was look­ing for­ward to this excit­ing team trip all week. Togeth­er, Andrea, Ayse and I head­ed to Kempt­thal, where we eager­ly wait­ed for Nina. Ever since the imple­men­ta­tion of the Youm­mi food con­cept, it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine menus at the Swiss Youth Hos­tels with­out veg­e­tar­i­an and veg­an dish­es.

The Swiss Youth Hos­tels make a point to make dish­es more sus­tain­able in a way that’s to everyone’s lik­ing. For weeks, the cooks at our estab­lish­ments have been dili­gent­ly test­ing the plant-based meat prod­ucts from Plant­ed – and with great suc­cess. Our guests are impressed.

On arrival at the head­quar­ters in Kempt­thal, Vicky (Head of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions) and Michael (Sales Man­ag­er) wel­comed us to planted.bistro by Hiltl. This bright, mod­ern bistro, which employ­ees can also use as a work­place, exudes a nut­ty aro­ma. What I notice right away are the huge port­holes at the back of the room. They give all the vis­i­tors a look into the pro­duc­tion site.
Plant­ed them­selves say that they have no secrets when it comes to pro­duc­ing our food. This is why the pro­duc­tion site, where a tonne of plant-based meat is pro­duced dai­ly, is made of glass to some extent, clear­ly vis­i­ble to out­siders.

What does our new partner do?

Who is Plant­ed any­way? Plant­ed is a Swiss start­up that pro­duces meat made of plant pro­teins (oat, sun­flower, yel­low split peas) that is sim­i­lar to the taste and con­sis­ten­cy of ani­mal pro­teins – with­out any addi­tives. They want to reduce the neg­a­tive impact of clas­sic meat pro­duc­tion and save ani­mal lives with all-nat­ur­al ingre­di­ents. For them, it’s impor­tant to encour­age a respon­si­ble approach to ani­mal pro­teins with­out moral­is­ing any­one.

The Planted production site

Vicky then gave us a tour of the entire pro­duc­tion site and answered our ques­tions. First, she told us how the idea came to be after a found­ing mem­ber vis­it­ed the US and then trans­formed into a project with friends. Plant­ed now has over 200 employ­ees and one in every three peo­ple in Switzer­land is famil­iar with the name. In Europe, Plant­ed is the fastest grow­ing start­up in this area.

I asked Vicky whether all employ­ees are veg­ans or veg­e­tar­i­ans. She laughed and said that this is always the first ques­tion asked. She said that not every­one is strict­ly veg­an or veg­e­tar­i­an, but the major­i­ty con­sid­er them­selves flex­i­tar­i­ans. That is, they make it a point to rarely con­sume meat and often turn to plant-based prod­ucts. We were also told that, con­trary to what we ini­tial­ly believed, veg­ans and veg­e­tar­i­ans aren’t even the main tar­get group. Instead, it’s the flex­i­tar­i­ans and meat con­sumers who are open to try­ing new things – after all, this is the only way to make a pos­i­tive impact in terms of sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

After an excit­ing tour of pro­duc­tion, where we fre­quent­ly ran into friend­ly employ­ees, we went to the devel­op­ment kitchen, where Michael was wait­ing for us.

The highlight – the Planted tasting

Andrea, Ayse, Nina and I made sure not to eat too much for lunch to leave enough room for the tast­ing. First, Michael served us my all-time favourite planted.chicken. As a veg­e­tar­i­an, I love cre­at­ing a tasty meal with Plant­ed prod­ucts with­out hav­ing to give any­thing up.
As a skilled cook, for Michael it’s impor­tant to be able to cook every­thing with the prod­ucts – that’s why there are sea­soned and plain ver­sions of each meat.

In day-to-day life, we’ve often noticed that their logo pops up time and again. Whether in the super­mar­ket, at restau­rants or on the Inter­net, the name is omnipresent. This is the company’s goal, to come into con­tact with con­sumers every­where in day-to-day life.

Next up were planted.pulled and planted.kebab. Mmmm, we tried them all and were impressed with the great taste and con­sis­ten­cy of the meat. Michael even man­aged to con­vince our meat-lover Andrea of the Plant­ed prod­ucts. We couldn’t get enough and ate every­thing all up.

With lots of new impres­sions, we said good­bye to them both and head­ed back to Zurich. We’re con­vinced that Plant­ed is a great prod­uct for the Swiss Youth Hos­tels but also for at home and hope to impress our guests just as much!

Community question

Have you ever eat­en Plant­ed prod­ucts? If so, how did you find them? Tell us in the com­ments!

Is your stomach grumbling?

How did we arrive at our food con­cept Youm­mi? You’ll find the inter­est­ing inter­view with our F&B Man­ag­er Tom here.

Taste now

Even though she’s not from Chur “oban­a­ba”, Ari­na is our mod­el Grison­ian: She is a fan of the snow, is quite “pachif­ic” and loves Enga­dine wal­nut cake & veg­e­tar­i­an capuns. She active­ly sup­ports our Book­ing Cen­tre and the Mar­ket­ing team. On the side, she also writes excel­lent blog posts.