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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

#171

Post by scythe »

techno_tsar wrote: post #110
sokoloff wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a pretty hardcore meat-lover (we had sous-vide filets tonight at home), I think Impossible is close enough on the taste and feel side for a lot of dishes that use beef (including hamburgers). They're comically far off on the price side, but if they could get price-competitive with bulk 80% ground beef, they would capture a large amount of that market, I think.

Economies of scale will push the cost down over time. Meanwhile, meat continues to receive significant government subsidies. If we had to pay the actual cost of meat (not even including a tax on the externalities from its environmental costs), it would be a lot less affordable to regular people.

Isn't most of the meat subsidy via the feed? Shouldn't competing plant-based products be able to benefit from the same subsidy? Buy a ton of corn, extract the zein (protein), make a burger, use the excess carbohydrates for ethanol (fuel or liquor).

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

#172

Post by gkoberger »

It's probably because people have been judging a food company like a tech stock, and now things are leveling out.

I'm in tech, and (for whatever reason) I feel more kinship toward Beyond Meat than I do Swanson. It hyped itself up as an innovative product (it is!), raised money like an innovative product (sure, why not) and now is being valued like the product it actually is.

This happens all the time (Peloton! Airbnb!), and every time news articles act aghast. At some point, products collide with the industry they're competing with, and start to be valued by the same metrics.

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

#174

Post by Kon-Peki »

dqv wrote: post #143
gwbas1c wrote: post #32

I married a vegan, and I eat a lot of vegetarian food. (I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day.) One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty.…

>One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty." Veggie burgers are in a weird position because it's hit or miss on whether they are made with eggs. So it a…

I used to go to Dos Toros once a month or so. They used to have a burrito option where the protein was replaced with a vegetable selection. I’m sure that it varied by region, but around me it was usually a roasted variety of squashes. When combined with all the other burrito toppings, it was hands-down the best thing on their menu.

Then they replaced that with beyond/impossible at a higher price. I tried it once, and it basically killed the aura. Now it’s just another burrito shop, no different than any other.

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

#175

Post by JohnFen »

PankajGhosh wrote: post #139
bryan0 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I don’t want a veggie patty. I want a hamburger that doesn’t involve killing animals. Beyond/Impossible is close enough.

Understood that you dont; But before Beyond/Impossible came, there used to be veggie patty that vegetarians enjoyed. And many of them have never tasted meat, and don't want to eat something that tastes like meat. OP's point is that Beyond/Impossible replaced the veggie patty with a non-meat version of meat patty, instead of adding a new item in the menu.

And, honestly, as a meat-eater I really enjoy certain veggie patties. It's not meat, but it shouldn't be. They're their own delicious thing.

When I'm in the mood for a veggie burger, I don't want a hamburger. Restaurants shouldn't replace veggie patties with imitation meat -- they should have both.

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

#176

Post by Hermitude »

I’ve tried the product and I always thought it silly to produce a plant-based version of an unhealthy meat product so that all the healthy dieters that switched away from said foods now have an unhealthy option restored to them that is more conscionable than what they chose to avoid in the first place.

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

#177

Post by cowsup »

adam_arthur wrote: post #153

I can’t for the life of me figure out how they're losing so much money, yet their product is still far more expensive than actual beef. Can a more informed follower provide some insight? Are they just grossly mismanaging their production costs?

Creating "actual beef" used to be fairly expensive, but, over the decades, companies have found out how to produce it for as cheap as possible, while still earning billions in profits, without consumers feeling as though beef is expensive. That efficiency comes with time. Plant-based meat is still in its infancy by comparison. So, even though the costs to consumers is high, the amount of profit the plant-based companies earn may be similar, or even lower than, what the beef industry earns.

Then there's Beyond itself. Striking a deal with McDonald's likely involved a lot of time and money — and then the "McPlant" product immediately failed. If you're going to convince Americans that plant-based meat is good, meeting them where they're at with fast food may seem like a good idea. But the type of people who find themselves in the McDonald's drive-thru, and the type of people who will pay extra for plant-based meat, is a tiny sliver of the theoretical burger Venn Diagram.

Now, you could call that grossly mismanaged, or you could call it the best possible shot they had at catering to a wide audience and breaking out of the niche vegan market. But the fact is, the product failed. Where can they possibly go from here to continue growth?

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

#178

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #32

I married a vegan, and I eat a lot of vegetarian food. (I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day.) One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty.…

FWIW, to each their own, but I have the complete opposite experience and opinion:

1. First off, the vast majority of restaurants that I've been to that offer Impossible or Beyond Burgers still offer at least one traditional veggie burger. In fact I don't know if I've ever seen a restaurant that will only offer a faux meat burger but not offer a veggie burger.

2. I love a good Impossible Burger, fundamentally because it satisfies my cravings for meat in a way veggie burgers never do. Faux meat burgers have very similar protein/fat/carb ratios to real meat, while veggie burgers are nearly always a ton of carbs. I can eat an Impossible Burger and feel full for hours. I eat a veggie burger and I'm hungry again really quickly.

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

#179

Post by notjulianjaynes »

jjcm wrote: post #136

I'm a meat eater, but am a big fan of fake meats - to the point where I prefer them in some situations. Overall I'm not a huge fan of Beyond Meat. While it does feel closer in taste to beef than impossible burgers, I heavily prefer the taste of impossible burgers to beyond. Impossible burgers have a stronger umami taste and tend to add to the experience. Beyond kinda just tastes like lower end beef to me. This means…

The irony is that there is no reason these plant based alternatives should be priced higher than meat. The raw ingredients are dirt cheap.

You can get pound of TVP or soy protein is like $3-4; and certainly less at wholesale prices. It comes dehydrated, so back of the napkin I'd guess the cost for a company producing fake meat products is like $1/lb or less.

I paid $8.50 at a gas station for 2.47 oz of "Noble Jerky." Ingredients: soy protein, sugar, black bean paste, spices.

I imagine the profit margins for these products approaches that of soft drinks.

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

#180

Post by cratermoon »

gwbas1c wrote: post #32

I married a vegan, and I eat a lot of vegetarian food. (I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day.) One extremely frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty.…

I'm with you and a lot of people apparently. I became a vegetarian a few decades ago. I'm of the opinion that there are plenty of vegetarian dishes that feature the vegetables, and I don't seek out dishes that are vegetables pretending to be meat. Probably the most well-known example is ToFurkey. I mean, I've had it, it's OK, but it's a salty processed food product. Just give me something featuring vegetables, no faux meat.
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