Given that the demand behind a good plant-based meal has well and truly hit overdrive under the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia’s newest start-up meal delivery service is well-placed to snatch a significant share of a fiercely competitive industry. That would be Sydney-based Flave, separating itself from the likes of HelloFresh and Marley Spoon on the promise of a 100% plant-based menu.
Founded by Stuart Cook, former CEO of fresh-focused Mexican chain Zambrero, and his wife Samantha – Flave is on a “quest” to make health-conscious dining more convenient for curious meat-eaters, flexitarians and vegans across Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.
To do this, the couple tapped Executive Chef Scott Findlay, one of the co-founders of notoriously indulgent Milky Lane, and former private chef to noted vegan Sir Paul McCartney, who has come on board to curate Flave’s menu of ready-to-heat plant-based breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals.
Both Samantha and Stuart describe the reason for starting Flave as not only a desire to have a “positive impact on the planet”, but an idea birthed from an ill-fated trip to Costa Rica, where Samantha contracted a severe bacterial infection, needing to switch to strictly plant-based meals to recover. Out of solidarity, Stuart made the same lifestyle change, although both allegedly struggled to find plant-based meals that were both flavoursome and convenient when they returned to Sydney.
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Findlay’s menu is inspired by his time cooking for McCartney on tour, often in locations where the lack of accessibility to familiar ingredients forced the chef to “get creative on a daily basis”, putting him onto a wider array of herbs, spices and produce that he would finesse using the fine-dining techniques he learned while training under Chef Gordon Ramsay. He also lifts recipes from his time serving other celebrity palates like Rihanna, Madonna, and Alec Baldwin.
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The initial menu at Flave will take a worldly approach with Jamaican-flavoured jerk “not-so-chicken”, meat-less balls (reportedly McCartney’s go-to dish), a plant-based twist on Greek staple moussaka, Biryani-spiced Indian curry, and Indonesian rendang. A few more will form Flave’s offering, which is based on a no lock-in subscription model with options for as few as seven or as many as eighteen meals a box.