Zus Coffee, now Malaysia’s largest coffee chain, has launched a vegan menu with Southeast Asian plant-based meat startup Green Rebel Foods at over 200 locations.
With a fifth of Malaysians looking to cut back on meat, its largest coffee chain is leaning into that wish with a collaboration with Green Rebel Foods.
Zus Coffee has introduced a vegan ready-to-eat menu using the Indonesian startup’s meat alternatives at over 200 locations in the states of Terengganu, Kelantan and Pahang.
It’s a marriage of two tech-driven startups in Southeast Asia, blending local flavours with food innovation to help Malaysians meet their health goals while lowering their impact on the environment.
Green Rebel bets on Zus Coffee’s growing popularity
The menu comprises ready-to-eat products that consumers can eat in-store or take home. It spotlights Green Rebel’s mushroom and soy protein, which is the star of all three dishes: a nasi rendang padang, a rendang spaghetti, and a creamy mushroom and truffle pasta, with the latter featuring the brand’s dairy-free cheese.
Its signature meat-free protein solutions are made from the proprietary Rebel Emulsion Technology, which helps recreate the mouthfeel of animal protein via an emulsion of coconut oil, water, and natural plant-based seasonings. The mushroom and soy are mixed with cassava flour, rice flour,r and whole oats.
“We’re proud to partner with a forward-thinking brand like Zus Coffee,” said Max Mandias, co-founder and chief innovation officer of Green Rebel. “Together, we’re not just serving great food, but we’re redefining how Southeast Asians enjoy our cultural dishes while caring for the planet.”
Zus Coffee was founded in 2019 and has grown exponentially with its tech-led approach to specialty coffee. It has highly digitalised operations and had a companion app at launch to facilitate online ordering, takeaway and delivery.
The company collects data on consumers’ tastes and preferences too, using the insights to create new products and improve existing ones. While the uptake of its cashless payment and online ordering approach was slow at first, Covid-19 popularised these soon after.
Zus Coffee has since gone from strength to strength, on the back of an aggressive expansion strategy that has seen its locations jump past 3,300, surpassing even Starbucks. The company has been keen to lower its climate footprint, using biodegradable rice straws, and now with the plant-based menu.
Malaysia is hungry for plant proteins
The partnership comes as awareness about plant-based food grows in Malaysia. A survey by the Good Food Institute (GFI) APAC last year found that 89% of locals have heard of meat alternatives. That said, less than a fifth (19%) eat it regularly or once a month.
At the same time, 21% of Malaysians said they were looking to limit their meat intake in the upcoming year, with beef (24%) and lamb, pork and mutton (27%) overindexing. For these consumers – as is the case in other Asian countries – health is the biggest driver of this consumption trend, with the top three reasons cited as better cardiovascular health, weight loss, and improved digestion.
This is confirmed by a separate poll by GlobalData from December 2023, where 59% of Malaysians said plant-based meat alternatives are healthier than their conventional counterparts.
The GFI APAC survey also revealed that 66% of Malaysians who had never tried plant-based meat intended to do so in the coming year, while 43% of those who had wanted to increase their intake. And for 40% of consumers, restaurants were the most common way to be introduced to these products, a finding Green Rebel’s partnership with Zus Coffee aligns with well.
The plant-based meat maker, which has worked with Starbucks in Malaysia before, has been expanding its presence across the region. It recently entered 7-Eleven Philippines as part of in-store dishes and with on-shelf products.
Further, it has commercial partnerships with AirAsia, Tous Le Jours, NTUC FairPrice and Annam Gourmet, with its products available in over 1,200 foodservice locations and more than 300 retail stores across Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia.
In other plant-based news from Malaysia, Pure Mylk has opened the region’s first dedicated innovation centre for non-dairy milk, featuring R&D labs, sensory testing rooms, a showroom, a training centre, and a full-scale pilot plant for manufacturers.
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