Upton’s Naturals Teams with Buona to Launch Retail Product
Upton’s Naturals, which makes quick-cooking, seitan meat substitutes for foodservice customers and industrial applications, recently teamed with The Buona Companies to make a Plant-Based Chicago Italian Beef & Gravy using their thinly sliced and seasoned seitan. Now a heat-and-eat, frozen product available for retail customers nationwide, the sandwich started as a permanent menu item at the family-owned restaurant group’s 26 franchise locations.
The sandwich was originally meant to be a limited time offering, but based on the overwhelming positive response, the Buona team decided to keep the sandwich on their menu and create a fully cooked version consumers can easily make themselves at home. Created from an original Buona family recipe, the “beef” seitan is soaked in a custom-made, savory gravy that’s crafted from a vegetable-based broth and olive oil to deliver the juiciness you’d usually get from beef fat. It’s 100% vegan, bursting with the familiar flavors of oregano, garlic and pepper and touting 36 grams of protein per serving and currently sold at Whole Foods Market Midwest, Fresh Thyme and Jewel-Osco for an SRP of $7.49.