Born 40 years ago to Greg Sams, an Anglo-American health food pioneer who helped popularise macrobiotic diets in Britain, the VegeBurger was the first of its kind on the market: an unassuming bean-and-oatmeal patty the colour of mud.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and in the early ’80s Greg and his older brother Craig had accountants breathing down their necks. Despite the brothers’ outward success – their company, Ceres Wholesale generated a £2.5 million turnover in its first year – things were starting to fray. ‘In the food business there are very slim margins. It takes time and effort to sell brown rice to people, and then there’s no brand loyalty: if someone finds brown rice for a penny less they’ll change brand,’ says Sams, who speaks in a transatlantic murmur. ‘I realised I needed to invent a product that was cheap to make, that would sell well, and that no one could copy.’
Just as American-style burgers were wending their way onto British plates; here were two Yanks trying to flog flaxseed and okra, something that, while its nutritional goodness was evident, could not compete. ‘People ate what they saw on television,’ Sams says with barely masked disdain.
While the existence of meatless patties today seems a given, the road to the original VegeBurger was not straightforward. When the Sams brothers relocated to London from America, grey, miserable England was a far cry from southern California, that cradle of vegetarian goodness, sunshine and macramé.
Opening SEED in a Paddington basement was a big risk, but within a year the smooth-talking duo had wooed legions of investors and collected a hessian sack-load of celebrity friends, among them John and Yoko, who became SEED regulars. The restaurant’s existence in a sea of musty antique shops and pubs created an instant stir, and hungry hippies soon came knocking.
All sorts trudged through the door. ‘One of the Paddington railway porters would come down for a bite,’ Sams recalls, ‘I met him again, years later. He told me: “I never liked the food, Greg, but it was the only food I could dance all night on.”’
The brothers catered big music festivals, including Glastonbury, handed out flyers in SEED for the free Stones concert happening in nearby Hyde Park and hung out with Marc Bolan over lentils. Sams started a magazine, Harmony, to which Lennon submitted a cartoon. ‘It was the core of the British counter-culture, and we got to know them all,’ he says with a sigh.
He fondly recalls the day he spent in Lennon’s Rolls Royce, shuttling SEED customers to Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in Chelsea for testing since Yoko needed a transfusion and only wanted to receive blood from a clean, green vegetarian – who turned out to be Vince, SEED’s resident artist.
