The rise in popularity of veganism has seen meat-free eating double over the past five years, while a report by Bloomberg Intelligence has found the plant-based food market is set to sky-rocket to $162 billion. Here in the UK, Glasgow boasts the highest number of vegans with Edinburgh following closely behind.

As co-founder of The Vegan Kind it s a consumer trend, and lifestyle choice, Scott McCulloch can appreciate. Speaking on the Go Radio Business Show with Sir Tom Hunter and Lord Willie Haughey, he explained the origins of his firm, which achieved £7.4 million in revenue last year.

“I’d been a meat eater my whole life, my wife Karris being a vegetarian her whole life. One night in our flat in Glasgow Karris, who’d decided to go vegan a couple of weeks before, said: ‘You know what would be amazing? I get that beauty box subscription every month from Glossy Box but there isn’t a vegan one . . .’ ”

Scott, who was working in business banking at the time, told the show’s host Donald Martin, editor of The Herald and Herald on Sunday: “That was the beginning of it. We knew there was an opportunity there for us and we had the skillset between us. That night we registered the The Vegan Kind before we really knew exactly what it could become.”

Karris eventually left her full-time job and a year later Scott left his regional director role at WorldPay. As well as providing subscription boxes, they also decided to set up a supermarket. “Obviously being a next day delivery food and drink business, when Covid happened business exploded overnight.

“We were being stripped bare of every item in the entire building then had to take a full day to replenish stock and turn our website back on with full stock and it’d just be cleared again. That happened consistently for about two months. The premises just weren’t big enough for the sort of trade we were going through so we made the difficult decision to move warehouse with a full team of people in the middle of a pandemic.

“I do not want to have to go through that ever again. It was extremely stressful but it allowed us to be in a place three times the size. This allowed us to do considerable amounts, increase revenue, which led us on to do the numbers that allowed us to do our Series A raise last year.”

The Vegan Kind now has about 50 employees and operates from a 35,000 square foot warehouse in Rutherglen.

“Title-wise, I’m the CEO and Karris is MD and takes a lot more to do with HR and people side of things,” said Scott. “Historically my background’s been in sales really so I’ve taken a lot to do with that and the e-commerce side of things. As with any good business, there are far better people doing most of the jobs now and we’re just overseeing and managing it.”

Asked by Donald Martin to name his business heroes Scott was quick to identify one person.

“My wife, for sure. With The Vegan Kind I had the business acumen and business background and, you know, I’ve been vegan for nine and a half years now. But the core values of being vegan, if you take it back before it was about the planet or anything like that, really do come from compassion. And it was Karris who was a vegetarian her whole life and was on that more natural altruistic path.

“I very much look at myself as being fortunate I got to join her on this. It’s almost hard to imagine how you could ever make that transition.

“If I look back on the 25-year-old me, there was absolutely no chance I was going vegan. I couldn’t even have imagined it.

“Now I’m delighted with the path I found in life. I feel happier doing it. We’ve obviously spawned a great business out of it, but that’s really from Karris. We have three young kids as well . . . that keeps us driven.”