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

"delicious" and "bean burger" never have gone together in my experience. To each their own, I understand. Maybe it's because I only had a bean burger at Chili's .

Lol yeah. I figure those are common experiences anywhere ppl take their bbq so serious.

That’s why I do buy the idea that there’s a hard cap on the market size. I think all beers and wines tastes the exact same shade of gross.

When I say this, most ppl think I’m being an edge lord or I’m just a stupid asshole. it’s practically attempted murder!

“MONSTER!” “HOW DARE YOU?!”

As a Texan, just the thought of fake meat gives me indigestion. Im nauseous just writing this. My stomach won’t stop gurgling.

My morning is in ruins.

I do believe in some states of the US it was more popular, but I don’t think it’s everywhere. I bet you that as per usual it’s the red-blue divide.

Exact opposite. I ask them to please not bring me a mashed vegetables patty and call it a burger. It is not.

The idea of a lettuce tomato onion burger stack on a bun is that there's a taste and texture contrast between the stack of vegetables and something that's not another stack of vegetables but mashed. (Doesn't mean it has to be Beyond or Impossible, see last para.)

I suspect displacement happened because folks paying $25 for a "burger" when out are less interested in the garden mash, want something a little edgier. FWIW, before Beyond and Impossible, at any restaurant or diner where I took time to explain the difference in alt-burger types, they were willing to try ones I mention below, and they reported customers preferred it. In many, someone had just told them "have a vegetarian burger" and they just got the mashed veggies patty or mashed beans cake since that's what most products are. Not being vegetarian themselves, they weren't aware of other availability. By contrast, Impossible and Beyond essentially went door to door "educating" them, so they switched.

While Impossible and Beyond displaced the meat alternatives, that doesn't mean you have to go meat in a vat at home, you can do products such as Morningstar Farms Grillers Original, or maybe Boca All-American Flame-Grilled Burger. Those taste stack more reasonably with what goes on a burger than the mashed vegetables patties, without the weirdness (fake blood look, why?) of Impossible or Beyond. Your local diner will probably be happy to stock them as they're simple frozen goods.

I used to love the Morning Star Chipotle Black Bean burger. Then they changed the recipe and now it tastes horrible. It's lost the fresh, garden flavor and now it may as well be burnt bean paste or mush. At this point I'm moving on to my own patties.

I'm vegan. I became vegan because my partner is vegan, and I started eating vegan food (like Beyond) when I was at her house, out of respect. I gradually transitioned to a non-strict vegan diet for health reasons (my Dr. said she's never seen such a turnaround in Cholesterol w/o statins), and then became fully vegan for environmental and animal welfare reasons.

None of this would have been possible without meat substitutes like Beyond and Impossible, as I would not have had the discipline to stick with the diet. I've had previous generation veggie burgers which tasted like fried cardboard. I think these nasty tasting products of the past have left people with the impression that vegan food just tastes horrible, and vegans have to be crazy to eat them (Boca, I'm looking at you). I certainly expected the worst the first time I had a Beyond burger, and I was very pleasantly surprised. I even evangelized it to a guy at the next table who was asking the waiter if it was good. I think once more people try these products, they'll really take off.

I think part of the problem with Beyond uptake is the way that these fast food restaurants test their products, and the way they package them. These chains are national, and they assume that demand for products will be similar across locations, but that's just not true. Like it or not, Vegans live in mostly "Blue" metro areas, not fly-over states. So if you're McDonalds, and you test your products in Dayton OH, or middle-of-nowhere Alabama, then you're setting them up to fail. They should be tested in LA, SF, NYC, Miami, Chicago, etc, and they should gradually spread out from there.

The other problem is how fast food chains package their plant based products so that vegans can't eat them. The Impossible Whopper is an example. Since I'm vegan, I can't eat eggs and dairy, which means I need to order the Whopper w/o cheese and mayo. This means that I almost never get an Impossible Whopper, since I like cheese (and mayo) on my burgers. I'll instead order from a local vegan place that actually offers vegan mayo and cheese. Similarly, McDonalds in the EU has a plant-based chicken sandwich, but the BREAD contains dairy. So I have to order it w/o the bun, meaning I almost never order it, and instead order something fully vegan from a local place. There's a Qdoba just down the street that has an Impossible Burrito. But again, no vegan cheese, so I tend to order from a smaller local place.

My feeling is that once these 2 things are corrected, vegan meat alternatives will take off. I talked to a grocery store manager a few weeks ago in a middle-sized US city (Richmond, VA), and he said that Beyond products are flying off the shelves, and often backordered. After that conversation, I invested in Beyond stock. I figure if they are doing well in Richmond, then there is a huge market opening up.