New vegan shop alert

I have been the announcer of bad news lately, telling you all about the closure of vegan and vegan-friendly businesses all over the country.

But finally some happy news.

A 100% vegan shop is now trading in Sheffield.

The Incredible Nutshell has everything a compassionate Sheffield shopper needs.

I reached out to the owners of Incredible Nutshell to find out a little more information about their store.

Here is what you should know:

The Incredible Nutshell was established around 30 years ago (used to be called ‘In a Nutshell’ until about three years ago) and has always been a vegetarian shop.

My husband Ian and I (Charley) are both vegan. We took over the shop in April of last year and have been gradually adding a lot more stock and also swapping out the non-vegan products that the shop was already selling under the previous owners (although much of the stock was vegan to begin with).

We’ve added a lot of the popular vegan brands and we aim get hold of new and exciting stuff as soon as we can – Tofurky, Vegenaise, vegan Quorn, all the Violife products, Vegusto, Vego bars, Round Ups, Wheaty, MozzaRisella, Amy’s mac and cheeze, Almond Dream ice cream, Soyatoo cream, etc. We try and get hold of things that are harder to find or usually online-only.

We make sure we have plenty of gluten-free products too, including ready-made products and baking ingredients. We also have some vegan toiletries and Vegan Society-registered cleaning products and the Veg1 multivitamin.

We’ve had an all-vegan food range for about the last three months, but we still had Ecover products (inherited from the previous management) so couldn’t say we were a vegan shop because of that – but last week we made the decision to take those off the shelves and be a properly vegan shop.

Now that I’ve been actively advertising and promoting our vegan products, we’ve been getting a lot more people in who’ve discovered the shop for the first time and are becoming regular customers. We’re now at the point where we feel confident enough that we can go 100% vegan and still have enough customer support to make the shop a viable business (and as vegans ourselves this is the only thing that feels right for us to do personally).

If anything I think being 100% vegan will actually increase the amount of support we get, this is what seems to be happening so far! We’re now the first and only 100% specialist vegan food shop in Sheffield.

We also like to help people who are newly vegan or transitioning towards being vegan, so we encourage people to come in to chat about vegan food or vegan living or ask any questions they might have. I used to work for The Vegan Society as an Information Officer, so I’m very happy with answering questions. At the moment we’re encouraging people who are taking part in Veganuary to come in and chat to us, or just shop without having to read the labels!

This is the sort of news I live for. It is beyond heartwarming.

Congratulations to Charley and Ian for transforming The Incredible Nutshell into a 100% vegan business. It is a brave decision but one that will no doubt be rewarded with the support of Sheffield vegans.

Visit The Incredible Nutshell online, like the shop on Facebook and follow it on Twitter.