The Happy Mix Co – bringing a simple solution to all those who love fluffy, American-style pancakes for breakfast!
“Easy vegan pancake recipe” must be one of the most searched for vegan recipes around. With the majority of ready-made pancake mix’s being non-vegan, and the ones that are vegan requiring the addition of a several ingredients, we’re excited to bring news of a new company called The Happy Mix Company.
The Happy Mix Company has created a vegan ready-made pancake mix that only requires you to add water. The ingredients are simple but by mixing with water and frying for a minute on each side, the results are consistent, fluffy pancakes with a beautiful homestyle flavour each time. It’s that simple.
And what we particularly love is that there are very few ingredients listed in the pancake mix content. And all of these ingredients we would use in from-scratch home baking, for example, organic plain flour, coconut milk powder, ground cinnamon and lemon juice powder.
Inspiration for the company
We had a chat with the people behind this revelation to find out a little more about the development of The Happy Mix Company.
What was the inspiration for you ready-made pancake mix?
We previously started another Caribbean style vegan company and one of the products was a pancake mix. We wanted to make a vegan buttermilk mix that was complete, meaning that the person did not have to add flax eggs, extract or plant milk. Because Barbados is so close to the US, a lot of North American breakfast traditions are in our food culture. We always made vegan buttermilk pancakes as a tradition on Sundays in our family using different flours such as cassava and sweet potatoes. We wanted to put our family recipe into a package without losing the authenticity of it.
But why are buttermilk pancakes your particular focus?
For us, buttermilk pancakes are special because they make the pancake lighter as the buttermilk breaks down the gluten. We were not seeing a complete mix on the market that was also buttermilk and vegan so we decided to take that on as a project and create it.
We think the answer may be clear, but why is it important to make your product vegan?
We think choosing vegan is choosing the future of food. It is very inclusive when you have a vegan product and it is an ethical choice.
Have you faced any particular challenges in the development of your product or company?
One of the challenges we had when we started up was that when you want to create a brand, you cannot do it on a small scale.
A brand is a big financial commitment as no factory would look at you with low indicative numbers. You have to buy packaging in bulk and that incurs high cost when you are starting out.
We had to make sacrifices to start The Happy Mix Co. We had to learn how the UK works in business and while that was not a challenge, it took time to learn. Business is also very cliquey and we are newcomers to the market so we did not know anyone here to get our foot into certain places. Everything started from the bottom up. One major challenge we face now is that we don’t live close to a lot of markets where we can go out and get people to try our product.
So what are your plans for the future? Where will The Happy Mix go next?
We want to make a gluten free version of our mix and also a grain free version of the mix relying on cassava flour and sweet potato flour from the Caribbean. After covid, islands are still recovering from the pandemic and are always looking for ways to boost exports and to create exportable commodities. We would love to be a part of that. We already use sugar from our home country, Barbados, but we hope to do more in the future as our brand grows.
We really hope to be the brand that people think of when they think of Vegan Pancakes.
The Happy Mix’s American Style Vegan Buttermilk Pancake Mix can be bought directly on their website.
