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Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

nytimes.com

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Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#91

Post by sokoloff »

dagw wrote: post #51
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole Assuming you can afford to eat meat, which many meat eaters might find themselves less able to do if prices continue to climb and/or beef subsidies end. Ground beef could easily cost $15+ per pound without subsidizes: https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/

Assuming you can afford to eat meat Last I checked, Beyond Burgers cost almost 50% more pr lbs than the cheapest bulk ground beef in the store. If that changed then there might be a market.

Around here (Cambridge, MA) when it's on sale, maybe it's only 50% higher than ground beef's regular price. It's normally 250% the price of ground beef, with Impossible being even slightly higher priced.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#92

Post by pessimizer »

Wyoming23 wrote: post #28

This reminds me of the early days of every new technology when the media predicted doom and gloom. Every time an electric vehicle caught fire it was national news, and then someone in the comments would point out that they weren't catching fire any more than gas cars, but that wasn't newsworthy. The early days of the Internet, the media constantly portrayed it as full of child porn and hackers. Now the ultra-critical…

It also reminds me of the late days of every failed technology, like 3D TV.

They might have to get the price down, the taste better, or better marketing/management.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#94

Post by sokoloff »

shalmanese wrote: post #38
dayvid wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the reduced cost of regular meat due to subsidies? https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/

No, the impact of subsidies is always heavily exaggerated by those who want to promote an agenda, as evidenced by the relatively small differences in prices between countries that subsidize and don't subsidize various things. $38B is only $100 per person. Even if it all went towards ground meat, it could only subsidize 4 lbs at a $30 -> $5 cost reduction.

To add, Americans average around 60 pounds of beef per person per year.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#95

Post by sokoloff »

linsomniac wrote: post #36
jerojero wrote: post #4

I think this shows us that "technological innovation" solutions are not always the right answer to our problems. I've had these fake-patties and they're good, I've gone to burger king and it's more than good enough. But then again, when I go to the supermarket these are still too expensive compared to regular meat and the flavor profile is not as good. So I they would have to come up with a really killer product, but…

They are, currently, expensive for sure. This is largely because of lower demand than beef. The longer term plan is that with increased demand they will be significantly less expensive than beef, because they have lower input costs: instead of processing plants through cows, you remove the middle-man-cow.

I wonder if any of those same microeconomics textbooks could give them any clues as to how they could increase demand...

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#96

Post by noobermin »

lm28469 wrote: post #7

It really is not that complex to understand: You either love meat and won't touch these things with a 10 feet pole or you are vegetarian/vegan and usually take care of what you put in your body, meaning probably a limited amount of junk/processed food, meaning no fake meat substitutes. The market really isn't that big imho, there are already plenty of alternative to meat for most applications, which are cheaper, less…

I guess I don't exist then.

I want to eat less meat not because of mumbo jumbo health stuff but because the meat industry is just cruel to animals. I wish I had the fortitude to eat no meat, but my hope is fake meat will get to the point where I don't miss real meat anymore, so I support it.

And sorry, impossible burger tastes better than most vegan varieties, which aren't really just "vegan" by the strict definition but must fulfill some other strange moral criteria.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#97

Post by bobthepanda »

gwbas1c wrote: post #76
jitl wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a meat eater and I would love to find a faux ground beef or faux ground pork that I can use in the kitchen exactly the way I use beef/pork in my recipes. I would prefer such a food if it was similarly priced to animal, but more sustainable, because I would rather be vegetarian but not to the degree that I need to give up my favorite recipes. I need it to provide essential umami, salt, fat, flavor. Often vegetaria…

Try tempah or mushrooms. (You might want to pan fry the mushroom first.) You could also try shelled edamame. They aren't a one-to-one replacement for meat, but even when I've tried the impossible or beyond meat replacements, I find they taste like tofu instead of real meat.

Seitan is also nice for a ground sausage type texture.

It’s unfortunately not as appealing to many because seitan is wheat gluten. But it’s definitely worth trying; Chinese Buddhists haven’t been eating it since the sixth century on a whim.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#98

Post by pessimizer »

shalmanese wrote: post #38
dayvid wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the reduced cost of regular meat due to subsidies? https://www.aier.org/article/the-true-cost-of-a-hamburger/

No, the impact of subsidies is always heavily exaggerated by those who want to promote an agenda, as evidenced by the relatively small differences in prices between countries that subsidize and don't subsidize various things. $38B is only $100 per person. Even if it all went towards ground meat, it could only subsidize 4 lbs at a $30 -> $5 cost reduction.

> the relatively small differences in prices between countries that subsidize and don't subsidize various things.

Through no-tariff trade agreements, countries like the US who massively subsidize dump on countries that don't.

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#99

Post by bgribble »

I try hard to avoid red meat for reasons but I do like a burger. I tried the Beyond when it was new and I was really impressed. I thought it tasted great and held together as a patty in a way that a lot of "traditional" bean and veg patties fail to do.

Unfortunately after I had cooked a bunch of them I realized what the smell of uncooked Beyond reminded me of: wet cat food. Now I can't get that association out of my head and the smell of the uncooked patties is so revolting I can't really enjoy them any more :(

Re: Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries

#100

Post by shagie »

jitl wrote: post #65
tjpnz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. This upsets me because as a vegetarian the last thing I want is to be reminded of what meat tastes like. Who exactly is this for? Because the last I heard it was being marketed primarily at meat eaters.

I’m a meat eater and I would love to find a faux ground beef or faux ground pork that I can use in the kitchen exactly the way I use beef/pork in my recipes. I would prefer such a food if it was similarly priced to animal, but more sustainable, because I would rather be vegetarian but not to the degree that I need to give up my favorite recipes. I need it to provide essential umami, salt, fat, flavor. Often vegetaria…

I am omnivorous, but I have a sibling who is vegan. When we were both in the Bay Area, Golden Era ( https://www.goldeneravegan.com ) was a place that we found that... wasn't bad.

This was quite a while back but the first time we went in and looked at the menu the question of "is all of this vegan except for these two items with an asterisk?" (It was the 'classic' Chinese style menu with about 200 things on it with numbers to identify them).

I found the "drumsticks" and the pot stickers to be quite good. For an entree, I would have the Mongolian (now the 'Spicy Mongolian Delight') which was again quite good. The only problem with eating there is on the drive back home I'd have a hankering for some beef jerky.

The problem with many vegetarian meals is described in Vegetarian meals that aren't just brown gack - https://everything2.com/title/Vegetarian+meals+that+aren%252...

We encountered that with a vegetarian restaurant in Mountain View (or was it Palo Alto? somewhere on El Camino Real) that had vegetarian food... but it was entirely boring without much flavor, texture, or... spirit. It was a bowl of bland vegetarian chili... with kale. No spices from onions, or garlic or anything really interesting. It was brown and green.

And so, that's what made Golden Era somehow different - it had flavor and did a lot of work with the sauces to make them interesting and desirable.

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