What is LEON, the natural fast food chain from Britain?

From the end of March I travelled around Europe, from Japan to Britain and on to France and southern Europe. Here I want to introduce LEON, a natural fast food shop I kept seeing in London, the first stop.

What is LEON?

LEON is a natural fast food chain founded in London in 2004.
Under the banner of Naturally Fast Food, it aims to make food that is kind to the body easy to enjoy in the middle of a busy day. The menu is built on Mediterranean food culture, making the most of vegetables,

pulses and spices.

What LEON is known for:

• A focus on natural ingredients: as few additives as possible, cooking that draws out the taste and nourishment already in the ingredient
• Mediterranean food as the base: for example, fragrant spiced tagine, chickpea hummus, quinoa salad
• Plant-forward and healthy: pulses, vegetables and whole grains, balancing satisfaction with balance
• Room for different ways of eating: a good range of vegan and gluten-free options
• Modern convenience: mobile ordering, takeaway, and branches in airports and stations

It now seems to run more than 50 branches, mostly in Britain, as of 2024, with many in London's main stations, airports and shopping streets, so I saw it constantly. British food is often lightly seasoned, but LEON has tomato-based flavours and the like, which I suspect would suit Japanese tastes.

See the official LEON site

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEFAld-6wuk

Healthy fast food as an option

Healthy fast food has been drawing attention around the world these past few years. Fast food used to mean high calories and high fat, trading health for speed. Lately, though, a new kind of place that offers both convenience and kindness to the body has been spreading fast, mostly in cities.

By healthy fast food we mean shops and brands with these features:

• Few additives, cooking that draws out the taste of the ingredient
• Plant-forward menus built on vegetables, pulses and whole grains
• Room for different ways of eating: vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free
• Speed and convenience built for takeaway and delivery
• Bright to look at, designed to suit how people live now

There is something in this style of eating that chimes with yakuzen. Yakuzen starts from choosing food that suits your body and the season, and city life today wants somewhere that can deliver exactly that, quickly.

A brand like LEON is the clearest example: not merely healthy, but offering taste, satisfaction, nutritional balance and a way of thinking about food all at once. This is not a matter of menus alone, but a new way of building food into how you live. That is one way to put it.

Thinking about the food ahead: impressions on the ground

There were plenty of places like LEON serving healthy food around the city. WASABI, a Japanese food chain in Britain, is another, and looking at how they pitch it, they lead with being healthy. In Britain, physically far from Japan, sushi and ramen as traditional Japanese food have shifted into sushi and ramen as health food.

There were also a great many Vietnamese restaurants in Britain, and I felt first-hand how differently Asian food is seen from one country to the next. Japan has yakuzen and kampo as ways of eating that count as healthy, and I suspect these will spread abroad too. What a brand like LEON shows is not simply a food trend but a shift in values: that food from here on should look after the body.

Today, health, climate change, animal welfare and food waste all reach our tables. Taste and price are no longer the only questions; who the food is for, and what future it leads to, are being asked as well. As companies express this through products and menus, how they see the vegetables they use as ingredients, starting with yakuzen, will change too.

Menu and product development built on Yasai Yakuzen

We make video content built on the thinking behind Yasai Yakuzen, and we also develop menus and products. Even in fast food, as with LEON, healthy looks set to become the central word. If there is an opportunity to put Yasai Yakuzen to work in your product development, we would be glad to hear from you.