Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop

Nope. The majority of cattle industry has transitioned to factory farming and the cattle in factories are fed with edible produce. Not grass. The current meat demand is not something that mere grazing can support.

Even if it was possible to do with mere grazing, that's still not an argument: Grazing is done on land that could be used for many other purposes ranging from residential urbanization to vertical farming. Its not done in the Sahara desert or Siberian taiga where the land is actually not usable for anything else.

Regarding byproducts: Such biological products are still valuable for many other purposes, leaving aside that many of them can be easily made edible through different processes.

It again boils down to this:

We are turning more food into less food. That's not a rational thing to do.

Nonetheless, I don't know that any of this is unexpected. They're doing about as well as I would have thought they would. Honestly, they have a tricky market in the first place: (a) Vegans that I know[0] don't want a product that makes them "think they're eating meat[1]" and (b) they haven't marketed sufficiently enough to "me".

By "me", I mean, the guy who's only going to buy the meat-free burger if and only if I can't tell the difference between real/fake. I'm also unwilling to buy a fake "raw ground beef" product if I have to substantially change the way I cook it in order to use it.

That gets you through the "I'll try it" gate -- and I ate an Impossible Whopper. I didn't side-by-side it, but I went in expecting I'd be able to tell the difference and really wanted to but I had to concede that it was exactly the "kind-of-shitty-but-you-still-crave-it" Whopper. And that says a lot -- it's a weird flavor and texture (which was slightly different, but it was either unimportant or slightly better).

But then there's the second reason -- if it tastes the same, why am I not eating the regular Whopper? I am not in any way invested in "Animal Rights", I do not have a political or other bone to pick with the meat industry, I don't know enough about the effects of the meat industry, specifically, on climate change so as far as I can tell, this product needs to be one or more of the following: (a) a little (or a lot) cheaper than meat, (b) healthier than meat equivalent to the additional cost, (c) shelf-stable or has an otherwise much longer refrigerator/freezer life than meat.

I found out at Burger King that "it's more expensive" and "tastes the same". I bought it because I read about the company and "I wanted to see if it tasted like a Whopper." On one hand, they nailed marketing it early on. There's no way I would have tried this. I was vegetarian and swore off all forms of plant-based ground beef after throwing up my share of Boca Burgers. Had I not read a bit about the science behind it and "the blood", I wouldn't have been curious enough.

Having now satisfied that curiosity and having even had a good experience, I have never purchased another Impossible Whopper, nor have I even thought about purchasing another plant-based product. I suspect that they may be better for my heart, but they haven't told me[2]. I suspect it's quite a "process" to make and wonder how many ingredients "I can't pronounce and don't understand the origin of" that the product may have. These are the "gut-instinct" judgements that I made with no knowledge, not so much as picking the product up off of the shelf the hundreds of times I've passed it because they haven't given me a good enough reason to get past the price.

Not everybody in this space is failing "me". I probably bought Morningstar Farm's "fake chicken patties" for my family every grocery trip for 10 years. The reason was easy: they were far more consistent and tasted better than processed chicken patties. I only stopped because my kids stopped enjoying chicken patties (buns were going bad too quickly).

And despite the bumps in the road, I don't think any of the bigger brands are really failing ... they need to adjust their messaging a bit, maybe, if they want to extend their market. Or maybe this is the totality of the market for "plant-based meat" at this price point.

[0] I don't know why this phrase is starting to sound like "I have (insert minority) friends" but ... I was (lacto/ovo) vegetarian for a year in my 20s (having nothing to do with animal rights); many friends were vegan.

[1] This topic often came up when discussing Boca Burgers and other veggie burgers; universally they preferred mushroom/eggplant-based patties because they don't taste anything like meat.

[2] OK, so this may be my fault. Maybe they're not reaching me or my family. I've found that living 15 years without Cable Television nor watching any broadcast at home (I stream everything and do not watch sports ... not even the Olympics), having Adblock everywhere and the like means my exposure to ads has resulted in major gaps (gasps of "you've never heard of X" ... and I'll say, the spray-dish-soap was something I wish I had in my life a few years ago, but all in all it's a big plus). But nobody talks about those aspects of the product, either.