A vegan burger restaurant will close its doors for the final time, calling the industry “in crisis”.

The Vurger Co first opened in The Lanes in 2020 and proved a hit for its unashamedly 100 per cent plant-based menu.

However, after nearly four years in Brighton, it announced it would be shutting citing the Covid pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and a dip in consumer confidence in vegan products.

In a statement on social media, a spokeswoman for the restaurant brand said: “When we began, we truly didn’t have a playbook, we had no competitor to replicate, no other small vegan restaurant business to ask about crowdfunding, no one to ask about how to scale a vegan restaurant brand – and everything in between.

“Like every other hospitality brand we muddled through the pandemic as best we possibly could.

“The last couple of years have seen seemingly endless domestic and international crises in the world which have all created truly a perfect storm for hospitality.

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“To say that the industry is in crisis doesn’t even come close right now.

“Combined with the most recent anti-vegan misinformation charting ‘the death of veganism’ and ‘the end of the trend’, the result is that it has completely unjustifiably, incorrectly and needlessly hammered consumer confidence.”

The Vurger Co in Brighton Place first opened in August 2020 and offered a fully plant-based range of burgers.

The restaurant in The Lanes was the brand’s third site after first opening in Shoreditch and Manchester.

All three of the restaurants will now close.

The brand first opened in 2016 but said it had been hit by the effects of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis.

The news comes after other vegan restaurants in the city have closed their doors in recent years.

Really Happy Chicken in West Street closed in July 2022 while Flower Burger in North Street closed in October 2023.