Quorn Foods Sees UK Retail Recovery, Faces Challenges in Foodservice

Quorn Foods, a meat alternatives maker, is starting to recover from a prolonged slump, with sales growing modestly in Q2 and margins rebounding. The company's protein segment, which includes the Quorn and Cauldron brands, generated revenues of ₱7.38 billion ($120 million) in the first half of 2026, up 2.2% on a constant-currency basis compared to the first half of 2025.

## New Products and Trends The company is introducing new products, such as Protein Bites, to tap into the protein snacking trend. These products are being placed in both meat-free fixtures and food-to-go sections in UK retail and are now being introduced into the foodservice channel. According to CEO David Flochel, the early performance of Protein Bites has been promising, with a good rate of sale that is helping to unlock further distribution for the second half of the year.

## Foodservice Challenges However, Quorn's foodservice business, which accounts for 18% of the protein business, fell 5% in Q2, a disappointing result. The company is applying a "back-to-basics" approach in foodservice, similar to what has been deployed in UK retail, and is seeking to diversify beyond education and healthcare into higher margin business and industry channels. Quorn is also unlocking new opportunities through Protein Bites and its blended meat offering, which enables foodservice partners to combine meat and mycoprotein to create hybrid products.

## Market Share and Sales The UK accounted for 79.1% of sales in Quorn's meat alternatives business in full-year 2025, with 5.5% coming from the US and the remainder from other regions. In UK grocery retail, Cauldron was the #6 alt meat brand with a 3.5% value share in 2025, while Quorn was No. 1 with 27.8%. The following table shows the sales breakdown for Quorn's meat alternatives business: | Region | Sales Share | | --- | --- | | UK | 79.1% | | US | 5.5% | | Republic of Ireland, mainland Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australasia | 15.4% |

## Outlook and Challenges Looking ahead, CFO Nick Cooper cautioned that the improving sales trajectory will not be linear, with Q2 benefiting from a relatively weak prior-year comparison, while higher input costs due to the Iran war are expected to hit gross margins more heavily in Q3 and Q4. Nevertheless, management expects further supply-chain savings to offset much of that pressure. The company has gone through several rounds of restructuring and layoffs as part of an "organizational right-sizing" process over the past couple of years.