‘It worked because it’s an upbeat campaign’: Veganuary’s founders on 10 years of changing minds

Veganuary founders Jane Land and Matthew Glover. Illustration: Lyndon Hayes/The Observer

Back in 2011, Jane Land, then an English teacher, was single and aware that her next partner would have to be a vegetarian. In Grimsby, where she lived, the prospects seemed quite slim. “I remember being in a restaurant, and ordering a vegetarian meal, and I got chatting to the waiter, asking, ‘Do you get many vegetarian blokes in?’ He was laughing,” she recalls. “‘You’ll probably need to go on the internet for that.’”