Dutch 'vegetarian butcher' carves new niche for Unilever

When ninth-generation Dutch farmer Jaap Korteweg turned vegetarian and set up a shop selling meat-free products over a decade ago, his friends thought he was joking. But the founder of "The Vegetarian Butcher" had the last laugh when the company was gobbled up by British-Dutch consumer giant Unilever in 2018. Unilever has now put the firm at the heart of its plans to carve out a one-billion-euro ($1.2-billion) a year slice of the increasingly juicy global market for meat-free products.