The coronavirus pandemic helped expose how meat-processing plants operate and motivated many consumers to embrace plant-based diets. Yet it wasn’t enough to keep vegan businesses going, she says, even though more people adopted a flexitarian diet and ate more plant-based food.

She later became vegan and, through a series of pop-ups, showed that a plant-based diet could be delicious, serving dishes such as cauliflower steaks and beet soups.

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Although the restaurant opened almost a year into the pandemic, when people were working from home, they treated themselves there and returned, bringing non-vegan friends, Barrat says. ‘Oh, this is vegan food I can eat every day,’ was a comment she heard often.

When the restaurant closed temporarily in February, Barrat panicked, wondering if it would reopen. She spoke to her mentor Rahul Bharti, a practitioner of ancient healing techniques, about her fears. He told her not to worry, and instead to take action.

“I shifted my mindset … and didn’t feel so disheartened. I accepted the possibility the restaurant might not be forever,” she says. “When it closed I was ready.”

She is grateful for the outpouring of support she has received, and for the time she has had for herself. She has also been busy with pop-ups, vegan cooking classes and creative private catering.

She sees more people becoming more conscious of what they are eating.

“When I started Ma …, I was planting seeds,” she says. “People I’ve met, or customers, come up to me and tell me they’re eating less meat and it makes them happy. I don’t ask them, they tell me. We are a kind of catalyst.”

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“Our level of disruption was longer than in most of the world,” he explains. “The number of people in Hong Kong has shrunk, tourists could not come in.”

Green Monday champions the adoption of a plant-based diet as part of its mission to develop a multifaceted global ecosystem of “future food” that helps to combat climate change, food insecurity, public health crises, planetary devastation, and meat overconsumption.

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In March, Yeung attended the first overseas trade show for the company in three years, Expo West 2023 in Anaheim, California.

There, the world’s largest plant-based media brand, VegNews, chose 12 of the best new products at the trade show, and OmniFoods’ gochujang buns made the list. Buyers’ interest was piqued in the buns, but also in the brand’s gyozas and spring rolls.

“We started from Hong Kong, and expanded across Asia-Pacific, and then to North America and Europe … this is a mega milestone,” Yeung says in a video call.

The company closed some of its Green Common retail shops and cafes in Hong Kong during the pandemic after the leases expired, including the flagship cafe in the Nexxus Building in Central and the original store in Wan Chai.

Despite observing the plunge in rent for prime retail shops in Causeway Bay, Central and Tsim Sha Tsui, Yeung doesn’t see the need to open more physical stores.

When the first Green Common shop opened in 2015, plant-based products were not available in mainstream supermarkets or restaurants.

“The legacy of Green Common was that we had no channel for these products, but now you can find not just Omni, but a plant-based category in the majority of supermarkets in Hong Kong.

“It’s everywhere: McDonald’s, Ikea, ParknShop, CitySuper, Marketplace. We’re talking about thousands of outlets, and globally, it’s in the tens of thousands.”

There is strong demand for plant-based protein, he says, noting that recent bird flu outbreaks resulted in shortages of chickens and eggs in the United States, Canada, Taiwan and Japan.

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Peggy Chan’s fresh focus on sustainability

During the pandemic, Chan received inquiries about consulting projects, though only one in 10 moved forward. She helped design plant-based menus and dishes for restaurants, hotels and pop-ups.

Her company Grassroots Initiative Consultancy is also helping restaurants in Hong Kong with menu carbon labelling, which is relatively new in Asia. In the UK and other countries, it is common to see a dish’s carbon footprint on menus, enabling diners to understand the impact their food choices have on the planet.

“In Asia and Hong Kong, people are calling their restaurants ‘sustainable’, and saying that they source locally, but that might be once out of 365 days,” she says.

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Chan’s consultancy partners with a UK environmental services company called Foodsteps, which is now conducting an assessment of every food item in a Hong Kong hotel to find out what its annual greenhouse gas emissions are. With this information, the hotel can look at ways to lower those emissions.

Chan is passionate about another project of which she is executive director, Zero Foodprint Asia. This Hong Kong-registered charity aims to mobilise food producers to implement farming practices that mitigate climate change.

Soil health experts provide insights on what a farmer should do, because every farm is different, Chan explains.

Zero Foodprint Asia has around 80 restaurant partners and supporters, which have raised some HK$2.6 million (US$330,000) to fund 10 farm projects in Hong Kong, the adjoining Greater Bay Area in southern China, and Bali in Indonesia. She is setting up a branch in Singapore and hopes the project will expand in Southeast Asia.

Despite having won accolades for her vegan food creations, Chan has no plans to start another restaurant herself any time soon. She is satisfied with the direction her career has taken – and is looking forward to being a first-time mother.