Green entrepreneurship in UK foods and the emergence of the alternative meat sector: Quorn 1965–2006

Abstract

The pioneer in alternative proteins was the British company Marlow Foods, which created the world’s first mycoprotein product under the Quorn brand name. This article explores its emergence and development between 1965 and 2006. This case study supports three of the broad premises in the existing literature on business history of green entrepreneurship; that green innovation typically takes longer than non-green, is therefore more costly, and that green entrepreneurs are typically values- not profit-driven. The article then explores these premises and their consequences in the case of Quorn. With the long period between its inception and market acceptance in the 1990s, there was a significant continuity gap in Quorn’s environmental credentials. Quorn bridged that gap because of a sustained commitment to environmentalism that came via the legacy of its very influential founder. But it was the BSE crisis that permitted the product to move from vegetarian niche to the mainstream.