Change of menu: vegan pioneer turns his focus to animal welfare

Andy Shovel, who worked at McDonald's and co-founded THISTM, says A Bit Weird aims to disarm people through fun'

Andy Shovel's career to date has been, you might say, a journey. A little over a decade ago he was working on the chicken station in a branch of McDonald's. He then set up a burger delivery business in west London, which he and a cofounder would go on to sell for seven figures.

A celebratory holiday in the Maldives and a period of research later, in 2019 they launched THISTM, the range of meat-alternative packaged foods, which boomed from zero to more than 20m of revenue, becoming the UK's fastest-growing food brand in 2023.