I always wondered who their demographic was. The core early adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually like the taste of plants are never going to make a lab made ultra processed salt bomb their daily driver (never mind issues surrounding industrial agriculture). Health-conscious folks would take one look at the ingredient list and bail because of the heavy processing and industrial fillers. You've got bodybuilders and athletes skipping it because it lacks the micronutrient density and bioavailability of real animal protein. Everyday folks aren't exactly lining up to pay a "green premium" for something that tastes almost like a burger but costs more and offers less. It feels like they built a product for a tiny, hyper-specific niche: people who desperately crave the experience of a fast-food patty but have an ideological dealbreaker with meat, while being well off enough that finances aren't carefully managed and loose enough in their convictions that a burger-joint is still ok. It always seemed like an odd propsition to me, even if cool in some ways.
Why do you think that "ethical vegans" like the "taste of plants" any more than anyone else? The whole point of being an ethical vegan/vegetarian is to not consume animals, not because you don't like the taste.
Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers. Sure, they're not perfect from a health food point of view, but they're lower in sodium and saturated fat than your average hamburger patty. So from a health conscious point of view, it's a decent substitute.
Then there are the people who just want to reduce their meat consumption overall. Maybe they're not vegan or vegetarian, but they're trying to watch their saturated fat intake, or reduce their carbon impact, or they suffer from gout and are trying to reduce the amount of meat they eat to ease that.
Sometimes you just want to go out with your friends for a burger, and the Beyond patty can make a better substitute than a black bean or mushroom patty that used to be common.
And at most restaurants, I've never noticed a "premium" for it, it usually costs the same as a beef patty; it just provides another option, for the days I want to skip meat. I have, for a long time, done a low meat diet; I don't avoid it entirely, but I try not to eat it at every meal. It provides a nice alternative for that.
Is it a bit of a niche market? Sure. But, not every product needs to be for everyone.
> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers
Not sure what health-conscious people you know, but I'd hazard to guess that most would choose the patty made from a single natural ingredient that's been a staple of the human diet since the dawn of man over the ultra-processed slurry of starches and oils.
"they're lower in sodium and saturated fat than your average hamburger patty"
If you buy a Beyond patty, it has way more sodium than ground beef you'd buy at a grocerty store. Comparing it with a fast food burger isn't really fair.
> And at most restaurants, I've never noticed a "premium" for it
I just did a quick search on Uber Eats in NYC. Every Beyond Burger I found was between $3-5 more than a regular burger. That’s the reason I stopped eating them, I actually quite like the texture and flavor. I just don’t like the price.
I'm a bit of a fence sitter so I might actually be their target market. Very athletic, a bit health concious but not crazy about it in regards to diet. If I am eating out, usually my macros are not a big part of decision making. If there is a meatless option that might actually be good for a bit of a fibre boost, considering all the other protein I am intaking.
It's important to remember also that not athletic individuals are high achieving bodybuilders with super strict macro diets. Most other sports only require a moderate attention to diet, especially at an amateur level. Bodybuilding is very diet focused, rather than strength and skill focused.
It’s ultra processed food devoid of micronutrients with low quality protein and poor bioavailability.
Health conscious folks would definitely not choose this. In fact, it’s all the things you try to avoid as soon as you start being health conscious. Folks who want to believe they are being health conscious may be convinced via marketing to buy it, but anyone seriously invested in their nutrition would steer very clear of these.
> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers.
I don't know man. I'm a health conscious person and I could just as easily choose normal chicken meat, or a beef steak that's not a hamburger, or fatty fish (omega-3!!). Why would I choose a hamburger substitute? I don't even particularly crave hamburgers.
I took a look at the ingredients list of the Dutch version, and it seems to be okay when it comes to amount of industrial fillers. It seems the preservative (potassium lactate) is the only problem, everything else seems acceptable. So I guess it's not that bad, but I still don't still really have a reason to choose it.
On days when I don't particularly want to eat a lot of meat, I just eat more rice, vegetables and beans. It's not that hard?
I think the OP is right: their niche seemed to be people who crave something like a hamburger or at least real meat while having an ideological opposition against meat and enough money.
It does seem like that is literally what happened.
The only people i ever hear say anything positive about beyond burger (after the novelty wore off) was meat eaters. Vegeterians, for whatever reason, tended not to like it. But meat eaters were always going to choose meat anyways, so it seems like nobody actually bought it.
You did such a good job of listing out reasons why niche demographics would skip a meat-free burger, without listing the actual core demographic who consumes them: Vegans and vegetarians, i.e. people who enjoy eating burgers but don’t eat meat.
> The whole point of being an ethical vegan/vegetarian is to not consume animals
You can agree with this sentiment (ideology?) and not be vegan, if you aren't willing to give up meat. giving up meat is what defines this demographic.
Relative to a population of people willing to give up meat, would you assume there is no difference in "liking how plants taste" versus the general population? I'd assume it correlates directly with "willingness to give up meat".
> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers.
Maybe, but in context its a false dichotomy, why wouldn't they pick better substitutes e.g. non-average meat?
> And at most restaurants, I've never noticed a "premium" for it, it usually costs the same as a beef patty; it just provides another option, for the days I want to skip meat
I'm a vegetarian. I have never _not_ paid at least $2 premium to sub in an Impossible or Beyond patty. I've had tons of them, there are some in my freezer.
I think it's pretty obvious from their financial results that this company is a commercial failure, and the subset of people who consume their product on a regular basis is vanishingly small.
Do some people occasionally eat fake meat? Sure. Enough to build a sustainable business? Less clear.
Yellow Pea Protein, Avocado Oil, Natural Flavors, Brown Rice Protein, Red Lentil Protein, 2% or less of Methylcellulose, Potato Starch, Pea Starch, Potassium Lactate (to preserve freshness), Faba Bean Protein, Apple Extract, Pomegranate Concentrate, Potassium Salt, Spice, Vinegar, Vegetable Juice Color (with Beet).
Except for Vinegar, every one of these is an industrially processed/extracted/refined ingredient that humans never ate until within the last ~50 years.
We have no way to even know if many of these are safe let alone healthy.
I don't know of any evidence that these things are a decent substitute for meat and salt which humans have been eating for our entire history. And for those who actually believe animal fat and salt are unhealthy one could make burgers with lean meat and less or no salt.
> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers.
I seriously doubt that health-conscious people would pick hyper-processed plants that are meant to resemble meat over plain meat+bread+vegetables that make up a non-fast-food hamburger.
I have friend who was vegan for 20 years, and when we went to good restaurant and he wanted to choose between vegan patty burger and real one, he chose real one due to all chemical industrial crap they put in those veggie patties and chose a good Swiss beef instead of questionable worse-tasting content. Yes, he literally stopped being vegan at that point, although he still is on most days since then.
Its subpar product, with way too much questionable chemistry, worse taste (or more like structure&taste) and impact on environment is... questionable too, maybe less than real beef but probably not massively. What could be acceptable for environmental impact is lab grown real meat but even that seems to not go the direction one would expect.
> The core early adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually like the taste of plants are never going to make a lab made ultra processed salt bomb their daily driver
Why not? I think there's a false conflation of veganism and health food (and gluten-free, though that's not relevant in this discussion). I love burgers, and fried chicken, and crappy chicken nuggets, but I don't want more animals to have to suffer for my sake than is necessary. I disagree on how hyper-specific that niche is.
IMO the core problem is that meat is so heavily subsidized that it's hard for them to compete.
> IMO the core problem is that meat is so heavily subsidized that it's hard for them to compete.
This is the real problem. Without all the government subsidies, a pound of ground beef would be closer to $30-$40 today instead of the $8-$10/lb it is now. $38 billion dollars in the US each year to subsidize meat and dairy, but only $17 million goes to fruit and vegetable farmers. It's completely backwards, especially considering the climate impact on meat and dairy farming.
> I think there's a false conflation of veganism and health food
Indeed. I ate at two different vegan restaurants in a city I visited recently and they both were on par with bar or diner food, but vegan. Plenty of vegans (I'm not one, but I've got eyes...) clearly don't have a problem with that.
The key difference between the old vegans and the new vegans is hiding in plain sight. It's the Internet. It used to be that vegans went to vegan restaurants and had their own particular tradition of vegan cookery. People didn't just become vegan in isolation like they do today. The acculturated vegans still exist and I think that's who gp is referring to in that statement. The Internet vegans are different but they aren't that numerous — few people even today would make such a change in their life based on something they read online.
Based on my bubble, vegans, vegetarians, and meat eaters that do want to decrease their meat consumption.
At this point, in Germany at least, discounter brands like Lidl and Aldi have beaten Beyond Meat at their game though. They produce alternatives that taste as good or better, for significantly less money.
I have been vegan for 12 years. It is not that hard to make vegan burger patties at home. Or you can just cut up a block of tofu and season it to be eaten in a burger. Takes about the same time or less to cook as these Beyond grease fests. Besides there is so many cheaper alternatives these days that I very rarely buy them.
We don’t need meat alternatives. Vegan diet is cardiovascularly extremely healthy, seems to protect against most cancers, tastes good and is most importantly ethically and environmentally only viable option at this point. It’s pretty cheap as well, tofu, lentils and veggies are not exactly expensive even without all the gazillion subsidiaries pumped into meat production. [Of course your vegan diet can consist of eating only canned soda and potato chips and that is not healthy nor cheap, but the problem there is that you are a moron, not that you are vegan].
So the problem with meat alternatives is that you don’t really need them and if you want burger patties etc. you can make them at home pretty easily or these days buy cheaper alternatives sold in most supermarkets.
Yeah, I never understood what Beyond's core innovation was. Impossible had that whole synthetic heme thing going on. Beyond seemed almost like opportunistic mimicry. But Impossible turned out to be pretty expensive IIRC.
I love meat and I love good hamburgers. I’ve tried those Lidl and Aldi alternatives and they were uneatable for me and my family. They have slowly disappeared from the shelves. Only a couple of products remain.
I have never tried BeyondMeat but I’d be surprised that it’s so bad.
And I have eaten many classic vegan burger alternatives based on lentils, peas and chickpeas. They didn’t aim to taste like meat and were actually edible.
My vegetarian friends can now go to a restaurant (or better example yet, any event space like sports event or theme park, since having a veggie burger is pretty easy to check a box and satisfy dietary restrictions) and get any of the burger offerings on the menu with a beyond patty. Before that, the vegetarian option of only resort was often much more depressing and unsubstantial.
Reading this somewhat reminds me how the Gluten Free trend led to a lot more options for my friend with celiac.
Still, one wonders does “buying a fake burger at the ball park with my friends” translate to actual fandom and further consumption or is it just a a captive consume picking the least-worst option.
i actually miss black bean burgers being more common. now it seems like all you can find are beyond/impossible burgers at restaurants. i don't mind em once or twice a year but they knock me out more than melatonin so i usually avoid them.
This is the insight that most people need but will never have, empathy for other living things seems to be greatly lacking amongst the general population.
> lacks the [...] bioavailability of real animal protein
I never understood this argument: what's the problem with consuming proportionately more to make up for the reduction?
I'm not rushing to demand IV tylenol because its oral bioavailability is only 80%-90%, which is around the "loss" we're talking for plant vs animal protein on average. And the ultraprocessing should improve plant's profile here.
Eating raw Miso a few times a month can move one's biome to get more plant protein digested per gram than even from egg whites. So the issue with protein is somewhat overhyped. The main potential shortfalls in the vegan diet are vitamins B-12, D & K.
>what's the problem with consuming proportionately more to make up for the reduction?
Because the macros suck. If you’re trying to hit certain protein / carb / fat ratios, eating more of the “protein” means eating a lot more carbs and fat too, which often isn’t the goal.
Your analogy is not accurate, it would be more like waking up in pain in the middle of the night after a bad injury, and taking t3s with codeine+ caffeine, and wanting more codeine without wanting the added caffeine.
On top of that, there seems to be a pervasive misconception of the effectiveness of plant vs animal-based protein on things like muscle growth. Older studies showed that plant-based proteins had lower digestibility scores via metrics like PDCAAS. In turn, people interpolated that muscle growth would be lower. Some early studies comparing the two protein sources on muscle synthesis didn't do gram-for-gram comparisons and that increased the misconception. Newer studies are showing that, if you match the protein amount at or above the 1-1.6 g/kg for muscle growth, you will get the same level of muscle growth.
I feel like it'll take another 5 years for this "bio-availability" myth to die out.
Ethical vegans and vegetarians may like the taste of meat but be sworn off it because of their ethics. I see this so much in these discussions - if they don't like meat then why are they going for a subsitute? They love vegetables so should stick to vegetables.
Do people genuinely think that 'ethical' vegans and vegetarians are doing it because they don't like meat? Or genuinely not comprehend the idea of taking an ethical stance even if you actually like something?
For illustration, human baby could be the best tasting barbecue on the planet, but even if it was I would still think that murdering children for my dinner would be wrong and wouldn't do it. Ethical vegans and vegetarians feel similarly about eating meat, that it's (often) delicious but killing animals for food is wrong. Offering them a "meat without any of the suffering" option, in theory, has quite a large audience.
Plus as a meat-eater who had a vegetarian partner for a few years, things like impossible mince also made it easier for me to cook things we could both enjoy, and things like beyond/impossible made eating out a little easier in burger joints etc.
The way you say "ultra processed" just shows the agro lobby did it's thing. You have to realize processed in the case of beyond is mechanically separating whole pea to use the protein.
You are right. I assumed it would be full of junk like most meat substitute products. But I took a look at the ingredients list of the Dutch version, it seems the preservative (potassium lactate) is the only problem, everything else seems acceptable. I'm quite surprised by how decent the ingredients are.
Still, I don't really have a reason to buy it. I don't avoid meat. I specifically eat beef for, for example, creatine and iron. But I guess it is good for people who crave beef yet have an ideological resistance against meat, a niche which I'm not sure how big it is.
Beyond Meat aren't unique, there are dozens of brands offering the same product. Tens of millions of people eat these type of products. Any (or most) burger-serving restaurant in Europe will have a Beyond Meat or equivalent on the menu. They're not always advertised as vegan (because of preparation and extras) but these fake burgers are very popular, for many reasons.
At the time it was a unique product. My alternatives reminded me more of basically black-bean patties than beef. Then impossible meat did it better, industry decided there was money in this direction, and now there’s “or equivalent” everywhere.
That's a really good point. Maybe in part because Beyond had a highly visible IPO they became the poster child for the success or failure of meat alternatives but in reality their story is pretty much just their own story.
In my part of the world, a burger is a type of sandwhich, and the definition doesn't require meat. So it's a burger whether it contains beef, fish, chicken, a vegan patty, a large slice of tomato, or whatever.
As a vegetarian of 20 years, I like being able to go to restaurants and have something that is on par with what my friends and family are eating (although I do prefer Impossible to Beyond, by far). Even without friends and family, there's a social (and distinctively American) aspect to being able to have a realistic burger and beer at my local sports bar/grill and not just have a salad or some Sysco frozen black bean burger.
There's no reason ethical vegans wouldn't go for ultra-processed foods. Beyond Meat just isn't a great option, it's expensive and not good enough to justify it. The selling point for them seems to be that they taste more like meat than most meat substitutes but as someone who has been vegan for a while that doesn't matter to me (unless I'm trying to match a non-vegan recipe). I get Morningstar Farms products vastly more often than Beyond Meat ones. Beyond and Impossible are maybe like my 4th and 5th most bought meat imitation brands and it's not like those other brands are less salty or processed. Idk why I only ever hear non-vegans mention Beyond and Impossible.
I haven’t been eating meat for 14 years, and I sometimes buy stuff like beyond meat patties or similar, but definitely not as a daily food, but like a fast food to eat with beer, or to take with me when grilling with friends. So I assume same way how other people eat meat burgers (am I correct to assume that people don’t eat McDonald’s or supermarket burgers everyday?).
And it’s not really about the taste, it’s more about form factor of a “protein fried patty” in a sandwich. Could easily be falafel.
Normal daily food is of course actual vegan/vegetarian food that doesn’t need to pretend to be meat.
being an ethical vegan does not mean you like the taste of plants (or, at least, that you don't miss the taste of meat). I'm veg and very much miss having access to meat.
I'm an occasional buyer of their product, but the issue for me is just the versatility. It's really only a replacement for the most generic ways to prepare a burger/sausage. The moment you try to use the ground beef in, say, a chili recipe, it's a totally mis-matched flavor
I'm like technically the exact demographic they should be chasing. Plant based eater who loves the taste of meat and just stopped eating it for ethical reasons. But like, I'm not gonna eat a heavily processed food often for the reasons stated above, and also it's just not great nutritionally compared to Seitan, which also actually just tasted better when prepared right. And it also doesn't stack up compared to high protein / extra firm tofu, which is incredible for cooking when frozen and then defrosted and cooked. And also made of soybeans, one of the cheapest food commodities in the world. So why would I pay 2x or 3x the amount of money for a drastically inferior product? Just when I want an exact burger replica, and once you are plant based for 3 or more years, you just don't really crave that anymore except as maybe a guilty pleasure once or twice a year.
So like, sure it's fine, but it is already in a tough competition with other plant based foods.
I haven’t done a comparison of Beyond vs seitan for their nutritional value, but as someone who used to eat a lot more seitan I gleefully moved over to Beyond/Impossible. Seitan is packed full of gluten, which is much harder to digest. Seitan makes me uncomfortably bloated whereas Beyond/Impossible do not. And no, I don’t have a gluten “intolerance” or Celiac.
The large Beyond patty has 260mg of salt. The American Heart Association recommends a daily limit of 2300mg, with an ideal limit of 1500mg for most adults, including those with high blood pressure. How is this a salt bomb? You can eat 4 of them a day and still have salt to spare in your diet.
I guess for people like me. I eat meat, and I eat burgers. I can't speak for Beyond Meat, but when at restaurants, the Impossible Burger often tastes better than the real beef (likely because the former is pre-seasoned).
There are plenty of meat eaters who want to eat these as a way to cut down their meat consumption. They don't want to become vegetarians, though.
People like me: who prefer not to kill animals to live but enjoy the taste of some type of meat in moderation. I am absolutely happy to pay for a premium meat alternative for the occasional visit to a burger joint. There are lots of them where I live alongside the Beyond patties and they're quite popular. I'm not quite sure what desperation has to do with it - you just eat things you enjoy that fit your dietary preferences.
Obviously there is a big enough market for plant-based meat alternatives. At least in the European countries I have lived, if you go into a grocery store, you will see a large aisle that sells this stuff. Many big companies likes Nestlé are in this market. They sure as hell are not doing it for ethical reasons, they are making money.
Just because Beyond as a company is doing bad doesn't mean the whole category of products is doing bad.
I'm vegetarian and used to live in EU. Strong +1 to this, many more meat alternatives than in Canada/US, and the options taste better whilst being overall healthier. The amount of fat and salt in the products in NA is sad to see.
Just because someone is vegetarian or vegan doesn't mean they don't like the taste of meat.
I'm a strict vegetarian myself and have been for about ten years. But as much as I love plant foods, I absolutely miss meat — I was never a big meat eater, but I would enjoy burgers, salami, pepperoni, bacon, Italian meatballs, prosciutto, things like that.
I dislike Beyond products, which taste a bit weird and metallic to me. The only imitation meat product I've remotely enjoyed is Impossible Burger. Nobody has managed to make anything else — if someone would nail plant-based pepperoni or bacon I would be all over it.
I’ma regular guy who likes burgers but is very worried about the effects cattle farming has on the planet. I don’t love killing animals so I can have a tastier meal either.
"Ethical vegans" are just as capable of wanting a salty, oily piece of junk food to slither down their gullet. I'd wager practically every vegan that exists in the US spent at least a decade of their formative years eating burgers at least a few times a year.
Thats the thing... Really really good vegetarian and vegan food tastes amazing and is filling. And unless you're intentionally picking around for meat or meat products, you're not going to notice.
A lot of Indian/Brahmin food is exactly that. Its insanely delicious.
And we have Beyond Meat and Impossible Meat(is that the name?). Both instead of going "vegetarian done well is superb" went to "sorry its a sad reminder of a hamburger". And thats a problem. Nobody wants to be reminded that this is $10/lb and real hamburger is $5/lb.
Ive also had problems with other 'meat substitues'. They're almost always plasticy or fake tasting, or chemically off.
Whereas my tofu saag is delicious. And no meet or cheese needed... Although my favorite is saag paneer (cheese). I stay away from the fake-almost-but-not-quite foods.
I feel like fast food is a pretty big market for stuff like this. Burger King in New Zealand has had plant based alternatives to the whopper and chicken burger on the menu for > 1 year now so it must be doing ok. I'm not even vegetarian and I get them sometimes, they're pretty good (especially the chicken one - they changed the recipe a while ago and it's now practically indistinguishable from the real chicken option, although that probably says more about their standard chicken than it does about the meat free option).
There's no premium for the plant based versions I don't think (or if there is it's small enough that I never noticed), and I think you're underestimating how many vegans/vegetarians still want junk food.
There’s plenty of vegetarians due to ethical or cultural reasons that never acquired the taste for traditional plant based foods and are looking for a more substantial, protein heavy alternative.
Is it niche? Yes, but vegetarians were always niche.
While the late 2010s fixated on “protein” and “macros” - allowing products like Beyond or Soylent to shine.
Much of the health discourse around the 2020s has focused on quality of the ingredients and “processed foods”. So naturally Beyond is caught on the crossfire.
Is there a future where this stuff is proven to be better for you in the short and long term? I sure hope so. But there’s way too many unknowns right now and it’s expensive to boot.
I'm not a vegan but I eat Beyond. The stuff is perfectly good on its own merits. The steak tips have great protein numbers, take hot sauce well, and therefore makes a great breakfast.
> The core early adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually like the taste of plants are never going to make a lab made ultra processed salt bomb their daily driver (never mind issues surrounding industrial agriculture).
I don't see why this follows. There are a lot of ethical vegans and vegetarians who like junk food. And these patties have higher protein than less processed plant based alternatives, which is important to a lot of people. It's just that vegetarians and vegans are a small portion of the overall "burger" market.
I suspect the "meat" branding helped early on, because it got some people to give it a try who otherwise never would have. There were other plant-based burgers on the market already but Beyond really exploded quickly.
It's just that it didn't really live up to the hype enough for meat eaters to go back for a second helping after the novelty wore off. So at this point the "meat" in the brand name isn't doing anything.
I’m their market. I don’t eat processed food all the time, but I’m looking for ways to reduce my animal consumption. I’ll pick it over animal usually, though I’ll pick good quality animal or less processed plant based.
I think the part that’s accurate is that it’s hard to get past the highly processed hurdle for the kind of people that think critically about food.
Ethical vegetarians are exactly the people who might like meat but refuse to eat it because of the impacts. Maybe you mean "natural" vegetarians - people who just don't like meat any way so don't eat it
I actually like Beyond Meat patties, but I eat maybe a half-dozen "fake meat" burgers per year - that's not going to sustain a competitor when Americans eat an average of 3 beef burgers per week.
I'm the demographic. I became vegan a several years ago when I was in my late 40s for health reasons -- all males in my family my age or older have had multiple heart attacks except for me. I didn't become vegan because I like eating salads. I miss the taste of meat, and beyond does a decent job of it (Impossible is far better).
If animal agriculture was not subsidized, I expect plant based "meats" would be on par or cheaper than real meat.
1. non-vegans eating with vegans at a vegan restaurant, where eating there wasn't their choice (they were craving a burger), and so, being forced to order off this menu, will choose the most burger-like thing on the menu.
2. non-vegans eating with vegans at a non-vegan restaurant, where for whatever reason they feel the need to impress / not-offend the vegan by eating vegan food as well. (Think "first date" or "client meeting.")
There is a huge thread basically refuting the parent's "nobody wants this" claim.
The fact that the Beyond Burger sells in mainstream grocery stores tells you all that you need to know: it's popular (enough). There are muliple products in this niche in my not-very-large grocery store.
Grocery stores don't stock products that don't sell. No matter how you personally think it doesn't have a niche.
Right, so because no one in this thread has the ability to remember past their own personal preferences:
The demographic that Beyond and Impossible claimed to be chasing was the like 85% of Americans that answered polls about wanting to eat less meat (back in the early 201Xs). "Meatless Monday", weeknight vegetarian... Whatever. Thats who they pitched investors on.
It's also a market that never materialized, whether because it was always a mirage of push polling or because an ascendant fascist GOP has made meat eating a cornerstone of their identity or COVID or whatever.
As an ex-vegetarian, I never understood the premise of the Impossible/Beyond stuff because when they launched there already was a really good soy burger in the supermarket frozen aisle that had excellent macros, priced reasonably, and tasted great.
I never thought the notion of "let's make the veggie burger taste like meat" made any sense.
Veganism is a fake health conscious diet. You can eat whatever you like while simultaneously feeling superior about it. Oreos, chips, pizza, fries, candy, soda, etc. why not also highly processed burgers?
I say this after having lived with vegans who literally ate vegan pizza every day.
My wife often quips that on our first stay-at-home date during Covid she made me a fruit bowl for my desert whilst she had ice cream. The fruit was amazing but I (much to my wife’s surprise) also immediately Uber Eats’d a full tub of Vegan Ben & Jerry's.
I’ve personally never met another vegan who chose this lifestyle for “diet” reasons. They’ll be out there for sure, but for the folks I know It’s always been about the animals.
Just because I choose not to eat animals doesn’t mean I’m choosing to be healthy :) I should focus more on the food that I eat but alas, it’s just not how I roll at the moment.
You do get some unintentional health benefits here and there (lower cholesterol in my case) but other trade-offs too for those like me that aren’t as diligent as they should be (lower b-12, iron etc).
This is completely unrelated to the question of “can you be healthy as a vegan”. To that I would say absolutely. Is it the reason most people choose to be vegan - my gut would say no (but I’m not claiming this as fact).
Goddamn I love me some Oreos.
Plus, it’s easier to sit atop a high horse when you’re not eating it ;)
You can be vegan as part of a health conscious diet, but strict veganism is usually motivated by ethics, not health. (That being said obviously there's more market share if you're in the intersection of the venn diagram.)
so in order for vegans to be legit for you, they not only have to find alternatives for everything, constantly be on the lookout not to accidentally buy or consume products related to animals, no - they also all have to be eating healthy and organic constantly in order not to be phony fakes.
what a weird form of gatekeeping. at least they're using some form of ethics and trying to change the world in a way they're able to.
coming from a non-vegan, btw, even though this shouldn't even be a requirement.
The demographic is people who have tricked themselves into thinking there are "healthy options" at a hamburger restaurant and who are willing to pay $2 extra for that validation.
That's too bad. I don't expect fake-meats to be healthy, or cheap, but I like that they can be made without killing animals and without raising them in inhumane conditions.
I had really hoped that people would say, "Well, if it tastes close enough, then how about I go for the cruelty-free version." And it is close-enough -- it's at least as good as a fast-food hamburger.
Perhaps the cognitive dissonance is just too much. The world would be a better place if we ate less meat, even if we don't eliminate it entirely. But to acknowledge the cruelty by avoiding it sometimes means facing it when you do choose animal protein.
Maybe it's just me, but beyond has never tasted close to the original. Impossible does.
The fact that it doesn't taste close to the original and that it commands a price premium is why I ultimately gave up on it. Where I might use beyond, I can usually get a healthier option using ground turkey instead with a much more agreeable flavor and price.
But really, I've just focused on making more meatless dishes in general. Highlighting the flavor of legumes and mushrooms beats trying to fake the flavor of beef.
Impossible definitely has more of a "dead cow funk" taste to it. Which is why I actually prefer Beyond Meat, because it tastes better without "that taste".
I think it actually is "Beyond" meat, in that sense.
But at a much higher price? The value is not really there IMO.
From their performance it seems like the intersection of (cares about animals | methane emissions) & doesn't mind health effects & less price sensitive & must eat hamburger-likes is too small.
Interesting point on cognitive dissonance though. I think it's possible to draw a rational tradeoff between acceptable amount of (externalised) cruelty and personal benefits of eating meat - no cognitive dissonance needed.
I’m completely against factory farming, confinement barns, etc and always avoid meat produced this way.
But I do wonder what you mean when you say “cruelty” in the context of cattle.
Having lived in/around rural livestock production most of my life, I can tell you that most cattle operations I am familiar with take excellent care of the their animals. Minimizing stress is absolutely a top goal for them.
Pork, on the other hand, is almost always produced in a horrifying, cruel way. Confinement barns are terrible in every sense of the word. Pigs are treated without respect from cradle to grave.
It depends on the laws of your country, but here in Canada, you can't slaughter cows on your farm. They have to be transported, often long distances, to a slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouses, and the metal box that brings them there, aren't very nice places for a cow.
Personally, when I want to eat less meat, I just eat something else, because they are enough vegetarian/vegan alternatives out there that I don't really see the point of a poor imitation that's even more expensive than the real thing.
lol Way to jump to a conclusion and then use it as your basis for your entire comment. Most people don't want some expensive fake ass meat that is so packed with chemicals and additives that they would rather just buy meat instead and eat it, even if it isnt as healthy as it could be if it were raised more sustainably and naturally than most of it is nowadays.
It was close enough for me and I do acknowledge the cruelty and abstain from many kinds of meat. I was super excited when I tried it first. But after about a year of being part of my regular diet it started being disgusting unfortunately. Now I can only eat it once a in a while.
Are you saying that opting for a beyond burger patty instead of a beef patty is going to "poison and destroy" your health? That's a bit of a stretch no? Are they really any worse for you than a regular burger from a fast food joint or something?
There are no studies I’m aware of where focusing on a plant-based diet makes you “very ill” and gives you “chronic diseases”. On the contrary, it’s not that hard to be healthier.
Meat, on the other hand, is linked to diseases. Especially red meat and cancer.
So your scenario is more like “imagine telling a parent ‘Give meat to your kid. They will get sick, unnecessarily kill animals (as we all know, kids hate animals, right?), and accelerate destroying the environment (who needs to live in a good environment, anyway, as long as there are burgers?)’”.
I think it's a question of degree. For instance, if you grow an acre of corn you kill a few animals right? And you have an acre of corn which would feed a few people for a year.
A cow takes about 10x as much corn per serving of meat, so that's 10x as many critters killed, and then you have to kill the cow.
The creatures that are killed in the field, or on the road or whatever, they are living their little lives eating and screwing and doing all the fun stuff creatures do until they get brained by a tilling disk or whatever.
A cow on the other hand, in a U.S. cafo? I mean if you like wading through your own shit, nose to asshole with all your compatriots, eating food that your GI tract doesn't even like that much so that you can get overweight? No stimulus, no sex, no variance in diet, then you'd love to be a cow.
I think beyond nailed the texture of their burger patties. When you fry one up it has the same texture as a cheap frozen hamburger patty. Their sausage links also have a similar texture to a cheap frozen bratwurst. I think beyond nailed the taste a bit better than impossible. Also beyond seems to use better ingredients than impossible. All these products are high in sodium like all processed food and you definitely shouldn't live off them, just like you shouldn't live off cheap frozen burgers and sausages. Price-wise they cost more per pound than good quality beef in my area. For any meat eater you should definitely amuse yourself and fry up some of this "Internet Meat" and try it out.
I think nature nailed the texture of their burger patties. When you fry one up it has the same texture as a beyond patty. Nature's sausage links also have a similar texture to beyond sausage. I think nature nailed the taste a bit better than beyond. Also nature seems to use better ingredients than beyond. All these products are high in sodium like all processed food and you definitely shouldn't live off them, just like you shouldn't live off beyond burgers and sausages. Price-wise they cost less per pound than beyond. For any vegetarian or vegan you should definitely amuse yourself and fry up some of this natural meat and try it out.
Vegetarian here. I like Beyond products, such as their chorizo, and eat them all the time. I don’t eat animals not because I’m trying to “eat healthy”, but because I’m trying to opt out participating in a system that is brutally cruel to sentient beings.
I'm in a similar boat and have to give up cheese since it's part of the chain. It's a bummer, I'm pretty addicted to it, and plant-based cheese is just nothing compared to a good young cheese
I tell myself that in the long-term the pros outweigh the con, if you value being on the right side of morality
My wife developed lactose and gluten intolerance both right around the same time. Dealing with gluten free alternatives has been annoying, but manageable. Milks and butters I can easily sub in recipes to good results. I no longer use dairy butter or milk in any of my cooking. The vegan cheese stuff has been so gross that she's basically dropped it altogether. The texture and taste are so wrong and they basically don't melt. I'm sure it'll be "solved" eventually but a cheeseless pizza is better than a pizza with vegan cheese at this point in time.
I want to do what you're doing, but if I can't do it well, why bother? If had the whole "cooking at home for yourself" thing down, maybe I could buy only beyond (not-meat?), but when i cook for myself, I don't even like cooking meat. I use eggs but that's about it.
A lot of the meat i consume is from restaurants and fast food, it isn't easy to get a meat alternative, that isn't part of a "veggie" item that has different ingredients (if available at all). For example, a "beyond cheeseburger" that uses the same sauce,buns,prep as a regular cheeseburger would be nice, but usually it's under a "veggie burger" with vegetable centric things with it.
Tangentially, indian food is awesome for avoiding meat, but restaurant ordered indian food isn't healthy if you eat all the time (a couple of times a month is ok, if you're fit).
I'm not sure what motivates you to write a comment like this, but maybe you should reflect on it.
The person you are replying to is consciously trying to make the world a better place, and probably succeeding in a small way. Are they perfect? No. But they are literally sacrificing something for the good of someone (or something) else. This is the definition of altruism.
For some reason, you felt the need to criticize them for not being more altruistic?
Finally, if you really want to live cruelty free and 100% sustainably, the only option is to throw yourself off of a bridge because any time you interact with modern society you are producing CO2 indirectly and potentially harming animals, no matter how careful you are.
Who says they eat dairy and eggs? “Vegetarian” isn’t such a simplistic label like that. It doesn’t mean “I eat exactly these things”. For all we know, they eat only eggs and from a local farm (or have their own chickens).
Furthermore, it’s a bad argument to imply vastly reduced complicity with a system is the same as full complicity.
I disagree with the idea that it's "not the moment for plant-based meat". Beyond Meat has a fantastic product that does very well in lots of markets. The problem is that Beyond Meat the company was valued as some sort of once in a generation radical reimagining of the way we eat. Beyond Meat's product is not going to change the world, it's just a good product.
If Beyond Meat had grown organically, instead of raising hundreds of millions of dollars, it would be a great company doing great things today. Instead, it has failed to live up to the unrealistic expectations that were set for it. Beyond Meat is no different than any of the other zirpicorns.
Yup, the product is fine, but there's a reason all the other brands in the freezer aisle aren't raising hundreds of millions of dollars at 100x multiples. Burgers don't scale like smartphone apps.
Here's a comparison - Tyson Foods, best known for their frozen meat, had a revenue of $54.44 billion last year. Their current market cap is $21.77 billion.
Beyond Meat reported an annual revenue of $87.9 million in their 2018 S-1, and post-IPO reached a peak market cap of $14.1 billion.
I think that 'real product' (as opposed to software) companies would actually benefit more from raising capital from equity instead of 'bootstrapping', because of the taxes on retained earnings, which have a disproportionate impact on capital-intensive business. That said, I agree that the P/E multiple on Impossible and Beyond were best described by the descriptors in their respective names...
The way the market has moved away from valuing "just a good product" (and, by extension, "just a good service", "just a good business", and "just a good employee") is one of the factors destroying life as the developed world has known it for 80 years.
I have the opposite reaction. Beyond Meat is not a good product. It tastes gross.
It's not as good as the meat it's comparing itself against, and it's not as good as the vegetarian options also available in the store, and it's more expensive than either.
Anytime can "be the moment" for plant-based meat if the product technology was there, but it's not.
> it's not as good as the vegetarian options also available in the store
I've tried the beyond burgers, they were alright taste wise, but yeah there's many other options for a protein source.
Beyond Meat was never going to convince people to eat less meat by substituting it for fake burgers and steaks. For people that already eat vegetarian there already tastier sources of protein. Lentils, beans, quinoa, chickpeas, mushrooms, nuts & seeds, etc. All of those have much more flexibility with how you can incorporate them into dishes than a fake slab of "meat."
> more expensive than either.
This is a political problem. In the US animal agriculture receives far more funding than plant-based protein. Without government subsidies, a pound of ground beef would cost closer to $30-$40. We've historically defined food security int he US as "meat and dairy," two of the things we really need to consume less of because of environmental impacts.
But yeah, Beyond Meat wasn't going to get us there. We need real political changes, not fake meat.
I know that there's a lot of reasons for this, but at least in my area, the Beyond Meat products are considerably more expensive than actual animal meat.
I'm sure that's due to depressing subsidies or economies of scale, but regardless of the reason it's kind of hard for me to justify buying something that will taste like a "not-quite-as-good-as-the-thing-half-the-price" burger.
They are pretty good, don't get me wrong, it's just something that I have trouble purchasing.
100%, a product can't be just good and succeed now. Market's expect something to be "the next thing" or become a failure.
Also, price is always going to be an issue. The US spends billions and billions of dollars supporting the meat industry. The fact meat is cheap is a political choice, which makes direct plant based substitutes a tough financial proposition.
As a vegetarian that regularly uses plant-based substitutes: I'm super reluctant to believe a market for a product like Beyond ever existed. Between Beyond and Impossible they've got this weird chimera market, especially the latter, with their too-realistic product. If meaters cared they'd switch, there wasn't really a whole lot of fence sitting I don't think—not in reality. I think people were pretty well committed. I also think the sympathetic market of vegetarians and vegans didn't find the premise of these too-realistic products especially thrilling. And I don't think that's a huge market in the first place, at least not in a large portion of the US.
Then you factor in the costs and it's Beyond insanity.
And frankly I don't know if Beyond was doing anything legitimately novel. Impossible was over-engineering their burger to the extent that I wouldn't eat one from any restaurant because I couldn't tell whether it was be'f or beef. Beyond just seemed to be nu-gardein which I'll grant you—it's a Monsanto subsidiary—but the product is palettable, consistent, and available almost universally and has been as long as I've been on the diet, 12 years.
I think there was a fallacy that suddenly the whole of the general public would rush to stop eating meat and would accept a meat-like substitute; and that vegetarians craved something that tasted like meat.
This of course was completely false, but far too many people let themselves get caught up in hype instead of reason.
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I remember having an excellent veggie burger at a bar, and then when I went back a year later, it was replaced by Beyond or Impossible, and the bar tender was pretty open about how it was gross but their distributor pushed it on them. That of course pissed off the vegetarians who didn't like meat and had no desire for a meat-like substitute.
I can think of reasons they would need to diversify or collapse that relate to regulatory capture of the FDA by the current U.S. administration. Better some business that maintains continuity through hostile times than to collapse and see their future evaporate.
Maybe it wasn't cooked properly? I think they're delicious too. And they taste pretty genuine to me (I do eat meat too).
The first time I ordered one I honestly thought they got the order wrong and gave me a real burger.
Even the texture inside, a little but redder and more rough really felt like a fresh ground beef burger.
Impossible are really good too, I've had both and to be honest I have trouble remembering which was which but I enjoyed them both. I wish they were easier to get here.
Haven't these guys been to a Taiwanese restaurant, they have great mock meats, and of course vegetarians have great mock meats too, love a good black bean pattie. The hubris this company shows is amazing.
They are focusing on an American palette, which is averse to things like tofu, seitan, or tempeh as they are considered not masculine enough by a significant portion of the population. This is reinforced by both genders.
Tofu is so ridiculously OP in terms of nutrition, production costs, and culinary versatility. It's a shame society here in the US is so strongly stymied by the manipulative meat lobby.
There's no hope trying to sell "plant-based hamburger" with any name to toxic masculinity advocates who think soy feminizes you (even though seitan isn't soy). These guys are getting hospitalized from eating all-beef diets because chicken is "too feminine".
Back in Europe I had many good meat alternatives in grocery stores that were quite budget friendly as well. Like vegetarian 'Schnitzel', 'chicken', 'fish'. Here in NA, most of the meat alternatives are breaded, or high in fat and salt. It's disappointing.
Also (at least in germany) their burger patties are nearly twice as expensive as groundbeef. I really like them but since I am neither vegan or vegetarian I either opted to groundbeef or to haloumi or something as a replacement. I think the substitutes could work well when they are reasonably priced or actually cheaper than what they want to replace so people are more likely to try it.
Same goes with soy milk. Alpro costs like 2.80€/L while common dairy milk is less than a euro per liter.
> Alpro costs like 2.80€/L while common dairy milk is less than a euro per liter
Sure if we are cherry picking the "premium" brand this comparison works. Store brand soy or oat milk are 0,95€[0] and 0,90€[1] per liter respectively, so about what cow milk costs. For milk and milk alternatives there hasn't been a financial differentiator between them for about 5 years now.
With meat replacement patties there is still a significant price difference, though there Beyond Meat is also one of the more expensive ones (which is bold, as they've also been lapped by the competition in taste and variety of products).
It's because the meat industry is a welfare queen. In my local supermarket last year I could buy pork for ~8 EUR by kg, but champignons costed 10 (Nordic country).
Judging by other comments I guess I'm in the minority here: I'm a meat-eater that just enjoys the flavor of the Beyond Meat products. They taste absolutely delicious to me. I don't view it as a meat alternative, so I couldn't care less about that side of the debate. I enjoy it like I enjoy a good falafel.
High-protein everything is riding the wave of GLP-1 popularity right now. Doctors are begging people on that class of drugs to chase protein targets more similar to what might have previously been reserved for heavy weightlifters just to prevent muscle wasting.
As a result, the entire packaged food industry is pumping up protein numbers and marketing it as the primary attribute of the food (where they might have previously marketed low fat or low sugar or whatever else in the past).
So, saturated market... but certainly one people are investing in now.
Don't forget the US administration jumping on the train and throwing the full weight of the diet culture, sorry "Healthy eating" clique at "Ending the war on protein" as an absurd part of the culture war.
Very fun. The only war on protein I have been a part of is personally removing hundreds of pounds of protein from circulation. By eating it. I think I'm winning.
I hear the most ironic stuff on glp from the people I know on it. So doctor is obviously a reasonable person with an interest in making people healthy, not trying to set up glp addicts, and are encouraging better diet and increased exercise while eventually tapering and getting them off the glp entirely as the final end goal.
The whole time they are telling me this I can't help but wonder what the hell is the point of the glp1 here? You still have to improve diet and regularly exercise anyhow. So its like there is no point. Might as well just rip the bandaid off, diet and exercise, get there 6 months slower, while not taking the glp. Like wouldn't you want to actually increase muscle mass while burning fat?
I badly wanted no other market to develop but synthesised meat, to produce something at par with natural one.
The industry has successfully marketed and packaged meat as "that thing you buy", hiding the immense and unconscionable cruelty which sentient beings are subjected to.
Maybe I've missed it but I see a much more palatable market in "light" meats. It has great flavor and texture but it needs to be part of a composition even if it is just salt and pepper. I've seen really great tasting meatballs in the wild that had less than 4% meat in them, say 5% for lazy calculations. You can feed it to 20 people and get the same results as 19 vegetarians + one meat eater.
Some are so much into meat the vegetarian evangelism has about as much chance as trying to convince them cannibalism is the solution to all world problems.
If you sell them something cheap that tastes great and tell them it has meat in it there is no need for all that tiresome talking about saving the world on an empty stomach. They become easy to catch and kill.
In the UK there's a meme that Richmond's plant-based sausages taste better than their "meat" sausages because they already had years of experience making sausages with no meat in them. "Meme" in the sense of "funny because it's true", even many meat-eaters agree. In processed food so much of the "meat" product is already pork eyeballs and chicken anuses that there's zero difference in substituting it with something that doesn't count as "meat" but with a similar texture.
This is the moment, but they refuse to market the product in a way that is acceptable, (and adds affordability) to consumers.
If they would do a 55/45 beef/plant-based meat blend and burgers, I think adoption rate would pick up significantly. Anybody who questions the taste is going to see that beef is the main ingredient. If the product comes in significantly cheaper than beef alone, more consumers will try it and look to it as an affordable way of eating beef.
For the bigger picture, 65 cows will stretch as far as 100 cows previously did, lowering suffering, environmental damage, inputs, etc.
For the people who like the 55/45 blend, it would open the door to an 80/20 blend plant vs. beef, and a 100% plant-based product.
I'm not sure how well it would integrate into a cohesive unit. Veggie meat is pretty weird stuff in terms of cooking with it. It doesn't really want to form cohesive paddies. It is almost like feta cheese where there is a tendency for it to break down into smaller and smaller pieces the more you work it.
Also really hard to cook with imo compared to meat. Meat is nice to cook with from all the fat in there. It just renders out perfectly and also separates it from the pan. You get some nice carmelization, maillard reactions, all the nice stuff going on.
The fake meat is like a sponge for grease on the other hand. Nothing renders out. Stuff gets sucked in. It is like being on the opposite side of the osmosis reaction going on here. And boy do you need grease to cook with this stuff. Otherwise it just fuses to the pan like nothing, and again crumbles apart getting it off. It pretty much needs to be pan fried and soaks up a ton of grease after. You therefore can't trust nutrition guidelines because of the grease requirement to get anything out of this stuff. I bet if you air fried it, it would be absurdly dry.
I mean if we were really concerned with lowering animal suffering we would be changing farming practices. Factory farming is only saving a small amount of the cost of beef over more traditional style cattle farming.
Nothing against mixing beef with plants and the like, but there are far easier ways to improve the welfare of cattle that only costs pennies.
A protein soda pop, as they're pivoting to, sounds like a gross version of Coca Cola.
The protein bar could work. I personally don't like them, because most of them are just candy bars with added protein.
Meat substitutes (e.g. fake turkey made of tofu) are generally an inferior good, in both the economic sense and the sense of taste. It's not surprising to me that they don't work. Maybe if they're made much cheaper.
For the whole industry is trying to solve a problem that never really existed.
Folks can not like meat for ethical issues but it is a good source of protein and our bodies are designed to eat it. If you don’t want to eat meat there are other good sources of nutrients from a carefully designed vegetarian diet. The whole “fake meat” thing was always just a silly gimmick.
More broadly, as others have highlighted, the result is mostly over-processed lab goo that most health conscious people would avoid. There are plenty of good sources of protein without the need for magic shakes either.
Net here is a business trying to solve problems that aren’t really problems. The stock being down 98.9% is a reflection of that cold reality.
Even if that were true, our bodies were designed in a different era. Long before factory farming and antibiotics, long before curing and flavorings. Yes, high quality meat can be healthy but how many people are eating high quality meat?
If you want to criticize Beyond Meat for being processed goop, you must compare it to the meat regular people are eating every day… which is also processed goop but with added antibiotics and disease. The average American consumer would be much healthier if they immediately swapped all of their meat consumption with plant-based alternatives.
You can like the taste of meat but think it's unethical to kill animals for food. It's not necessarily a "problem", but it is something a reasonable person might want, and so there can be a market for it.
There is nothing that says we are "designed" to consume animal protein.
Beyond, Impossible, and the like have suffered from misinformation and an industry-funded, influencer-laden social media smear campaign to paint these alternative products as highly-processed franken-foods.
They are a good alternative for health and environmentally-conscious folks, solve real sustainability challenges, and aren't terrible for you in moderation.
Somehow I liked the goal of Beyond meat, but could never get past the fact that it is too "processed". My rule of thumb regarding food is that the less the processing, the better. I think I was the ideal demographic - meat eater, who doesnt want to kill animals. Id rather have vegetarian alternatives rather than beyond meat.
I think this is an example of an idea which looks great in the hype phase, but doesnt translate to real world traction.
It’s a company that turns plants into meat like substance. There is no plant that grows like this, of course it has to be processed to get from its original form to the new form.
Likewise, not all processing is bad. Cooking food is a form of processing and just makes the nutrients much more easy to digest.
$BYND is also filing their 10-K Annual Report late[1]:
the Company requires additional time to complete a review and analysis related to its inventory balances, including amounts recorded for the provision of excess and obsolete inventory
The problem with the value prop for beyond meat is that good vegan food exists. There's no reason why you need to pretend to eat meat, and every meat product they made was clearly inferior to real meat.
Or, in other words, why would you eat mediocre fake meat when good vegan food that doesn't pretend to be meat exists, if your goal is to eat vegan.
I never understood these engineered ultra processed meat imitation products, they are not healthy - period. There's already healthy and delicious cuisines that have developed over thousands of years (Indian, Nepalese, I'm sure many others). This desire to just recreate the SAD (standard American diet) with goo is beyond strange...
> I never understood these engineered ultra processed meat imitation products, they are not healthy - period.
People don't eat burgers for health reasons.
> There's already healthy and delicious cuisines that have developed over thousands of years (Indian, Nepalese, I'm sure many others).
Why eat ice cream when chicken is healthier?
You're comparing apples and oranges. Yes, there are plenty of delicious vegetarian foods, but you can't just substitute one for the other. If you're craving eggplants, replacing it with lentils will not satisfy you.
Then eat a burger if you want a burger, they are healthy if you skip the buns and sugar ketchup and use quality beef. Throw it on a veg salad for a balanced meal.
I wouldn't go as far as saying that. I think for them they want something that has the "utility" of a burger, as in here is some easy protein plus some sundry stuff packaged into a hand holdable unit that is pretty filling on its own and cost like $12 at a restaurant.
The reason is for a lot of them is that they become repulsed by the smell of meat after not eating it for a long time. So they would very much not want something that tastes like meat. They just want the function of the burger really. And to be fair there isn't a lot of good options otherwise for vegetarians that are truly comperable to a burger in terms of it as a product. Veggie lunch meat is even sadder state of affairs than the burger meat so sandwiches are out. Then you have bean burritos I guess, falafel wrap. All stuff that tends to be found solely in ethnic specific restaurants than democratized across the entire globe like the burger is, which you can probably find anywhere you find reliable electricity in 2026.
I'm a vegetarian who likes burgers, but all the flavour in a burger comes from vegetables anyway: the sauces, garnishes, etc, plus cheese, of course. So I just go one step further and replace the patty with something made from veggies too. More delicious, and cruelty free.
You can make thousands of absolutely delicious vegetable dishes. You can adapt another few thousands by replacing the meat with veggies. Why the obsession about ultraprocessed "meat substitutes"?
Low-protein Indian diets are not healthy. The food certainly tastes good, but let's be real, there's a reason heart disease and diabetes in the subcontinent are stratospheric.
You’re getting downvoted but they do seem to have some of these issues, including the skinny fat problem. But their cuisine sure is tastier than the fake meat and other goop that is pushed, which is even worse for health.
Is animal meat healthy? In small amounts (10% less caloric intake) disease correlation does not increase, but higher then 10%, disease rates see a direct correlatory increase.
The plant meats are healthier than the animal meats.
There’s so such thing as “plant meats”, and yes, animal meat is healthy when balanced with a good diet. What’s killing everyone is the white carbs and sugar, not the meats and fats. Anyone telling you otherwise is ideologically motivated vs science-based.
In a world without animal rights, this is sadly inevitable. It would be like doing work without slaves in a world without human rights. Like, yeah, well done, mate, but I'll still be using my slaves, thanks, it's much cheaper.
Obviously Americans have no qualms about artificial foods or "inferior" substitutes, but it has to be cheaper. Paying a premium price for something that's even a decent facsimile guarantees that the product will remain niche.
I also am disappointed there was no iteration or improvement of the product over time. There was clearly room to innovate or make it taste better - it feels like the product hit, there was some excitement about the novelty... and then they didn't capitalize on it by pushing new variations and updates.
As a rare non-ideological vegetarian (I just really don't like the taste) you've got the market for this completely backwards. Beyond meat is for ideological vegetarians and vegans who like the taste. Non-ideological ones who would really prefer not to have a meat substitute.
At something like 6% of the world the market the population of ideological vegetarians and vegans is huge. With another handful of percent who are ideologically opposed to eating meat on certain days but not entirely vegetarian.
PS. Your claim that "most people are not ideologic with their food"... Not all food ideology is related to vegetarianism so it's not terribly relevant but I think this claim is just wrong. Islam + Hinduisim + Buddhism make up nearly half the world and all have pretty strong religious ideological beliefs about food, and a non-trivial fraction of the quarter of the world that is christian has at least a few scruples like avoiding meat during lent. And that's just people preaching religious beliefs not less documented ideologies like believing real men eat their steak raw or whatever.
> Beyond meat is for ideological vegetarians and vegans who like the taste.
I must be in bubble or have a very different definition of "idiological": of the dozens of vegans/vegetarians I know none would actively seek the "taste" of industrialized "ready-made" "meat replacement". They may put up with it if must be, but seek it? Desire it?
> Lets be real: unless fake-meat products become at least the same price as equivalent meat options what's the point?
If you were to make fake plant-based products that were (a) noticeably healthier than meat, and (b) indistinguishable from meat taste-wise (or better-tasting), I'm quite confident a lot of people would pay a premium for that.
The problem is the current products just don't deliver that. All they deliver is eco-friendliness at a premium, at which point they're basically offering something more akin to the optional climate fee on flight tickets.
To me your basically describing a climate fee in your paragraph.
You can already eat healthy, better and more sustainably but doing what humans have done for millions of years. You dont need an industrialized, packaged, convenient and standardized flavour.
Honestly, i have come to see beyond and impossible as a variation of soylent. Its for a very specific and narrow market of people that I'd rather not describe
I don't think it was ever the moment, even though there has always been a market for plant-based foods, the company assumed that market was far larger than it ever was or will be.
So true. All protein on the planet, was made from sunlight and photosynthesis. You can eat the animal that ate the plants, but then you lose out on tons of micronutrients and fiber.
Costco and similar do have them at a decent price, currently see them 20$ for 10. I think most people just look at the 2 packs, which are more expensive.
One of the underrated ways of reducing meat consumption, imo, would be to mix a certain percentage of plant-based meat to regular meat products. Imagine a world in which McDonald's would just mix 20% plant-based meet to their patties. I can see some risk for them, but honestly, long-term, I don't think people would actually mind much.
The did that in Tesco (uk supermarket) for a couple of years - sold fresh mince that contained 30% carrot and other veg. I used it quite a lot and it was good. But they stopped. I guess it wasn’t popular
oh, what a shame! Also interesting that they stopped that after a couple of years... You'd think that it would either flop from the beginning or just work
On this subject, my university rolled out mushroom-blended beef burgers in the 2010s. They were poorly received for replacing beef burgers entirely.
I wasn't vegan or vegetarian at the time and I thought they were just a complete improvement over beef burgers. But I think that thick congealing beef fat is gross and that it's just better mixed with mushroom juice, and I also already liked mushrooms.
Isn't that already being done to a certain extent with things like chili? They add TVP to supplement the meat, and people see it as a very negative thing.
You can already do that to great effect by mixing in mushrooms, the end result tastes great and doesn't require a billion dollar company providing fake meat.
We bought and tried their products several times only to find they were no different than a basic veggie burger or whatever. We couldn’t figure out what the hype was even about. And then I started reading about how their ingredient list wasn’t the healthiest.
Just seemed like just another weird Silicon Valley money bubble built on hype and vc cash instead of any kind of meaningful product differentiation.
Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s our genuine experience.
Proprietary food.. that you can only buy from a single company are all doomed? Might I offer an example that, under some definitions, has not failed despite that strategy. The McRib.
I was going to offer the twinkie but I guess hostess declared bankruptcy, so maybe you're right.
It's not an unreasonable statement though that for the concept to work it has to "jellybean" though: many manufacturers, many variations, same basic product, ubiquitous availability.
Where it sits as a "premium" good doesn't really work as a value proposition.
beyond meat was a super cynical bet that ordinary non-vegetarian consumers would no longer be able to afford meat, so they would turn to meat substitutes even if they were more costly than meat had been in the psat
now they are publicly listed, and their cynical premise has not born fruit
I’m curious about how much money was taken out by insiders who must have known what their costs were internally and how little advancement was made on making the same product at a lower cost.
I remember going to a grocery store for the first time during the pandemic: the meat aisle was completely bare, but there was plenty of Beyond products left on the shelf.
Nowhere near real meat, full of ultra-processed junk and more expensive than the real thing. The solution some people here propose: "let's make real meat just as expensive". Yeah sorry, you're not getting my sympathy.
I always wondered who their demographic was. The core early adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually like the taste of plants are never going to make a lab made ultra processed salt bomb their daily driver (never mind issues surrounding industrial agriculture). Health-conscious folks would take one look at the ingredient list and bail because of the heavy processing and industrial fillers. You've got bodybuilders and athletes skipping it because it lacks the micronutrient density and bioavailability of real animal protein. Everyday folks aren't exactly lining up to pay a "green premium" for something that tastes almost like a burger but costs more and offers less. It feels like they built a product for a tiny, hyper-specific niche: people who desperately crave the experience of a fast-food patty but have an ideological dealbreaker with meat, while being well off enough that finances aren't carefully managed and loose enough in their convictions that a burger-joint is still ok. It always seemed like an odd propsition to me, even if cool in some ways.
This is such a weird comment.
Why do you think that "ethical vegans" like the "taste of plants" any more than anyone else? The whole point of being an ethical vegan/vegetarian is to not consume animals, not because you don't like the taste.
Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers. Sure, they're not perfect from a health food point of view, but they're lower in sodium and saturated fat than your average hamburger patty. So from a health conscious point of view, it's a decent substitute.
Then there are the people who just want to reduce their meat consumption overall. Maybe they're not vegan or vegetarian, but they're trying to watch their saturated fat intake, or reduce their carbon impact, or they suffer from gout and are trying to reduce the amount of meat they eat to ease that.
Sometimes you just want to go out with your friends for a burger, and the Beyond patty can make a better substitute than a black bean or mushroom patty that used to be common.
And at most restaurants, I've never noticed a "premium" for it, it usually costs the same as a beef patty; it just provides another option, for the days I want to skip meat. I have, for a long time, done a low meat diet; I don't avoid it entirely, but I try not to eat it at every meal. It provides a nice alternative for that.
Is it a bit of a niche market? Sure. But, not every product needs to be for everyone.
> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers
Not sure what health-conscious people you know, but I'd hazard to guess that most would choose the patty made from a single natural ingredient that's been a staple of the human diet since the dawn of man over the ultra-processed slurry of starches and oils.
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"they're lower in sodium and saturated fat than your average hamburger patty"
If you buy a Beyond patty, it has way more sodium than ground beef you'd buy at a grocerty store. Comparing it with a fast food burger isn't really fair.
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> And at most restaurants, I've never noticed a "premium" for it
I just did a quick search on Uber Eats in NYC. Every Beyond Burger I found was between $3-5 more than a regular burger. That’s the reason I stopped eating them, I actually quite like the texture and flavor. I just don’t like the price.
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I'm a bit of a fence sitter so I might actually be their target market. Very athletic, a bit health concious but not crazy about it in regards to diet. If I am eating out, usually my macros are not a big part of decision making. If there is a meatless option that might actually be good for a bit of a fibre boost, considering all the other protein I am intaking.
It's important to remember also that not athletic individuals are high achieving bodybuilders with super strict macro diets. Most other sports only require a moderate attention to diet, especially at an amateur level. Bodybuilding is very diet focused, rather than strength and skill focused.
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a bubba burger (grocery store frozen burger) has 90mg sodium (https://bubbafoods.com/nutrition/bubba-angus-beef-2lb/)
a beyond burger has 310mg https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-US/products/the-beyond-burger
They are lower in fat and total calories but they are obviously more processed = salt. Even a mcdonalds burger patty (without the bun) has less salt.
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FYI most beyond burgers have more in sodium not less and beyond uses coconut oil which is still fairly high in saturated fat.
If those 2 things are your barometer for healthy… it’s not a clear win.
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This is such a weird comment.
It’s ultra processed food devoid of micronutrients with low quality protein and poor bioavailability.
Health conscious folks would definitely not choose this. In fact, it’s all the things you try to avoid as soon as you start being health conscious. Folks who want to believe they are being health conscious may be convinced via marketing to buy it, but anyone seriously invested in their nutrition would steer very clear of these.
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> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers.
I don't know man. I'm a health conscious person and I could just as easily choose normal chicken meat, or a beef steak that's not a hamburger, or fatty fish (omega-3!!). Why would I choose a hamburger substitute? I don't even particularly crave hamburgers.
I took a look at the ingredients list of the Dutch version, and it seems to be okay when it comes to amount of industrial fillers. It seems the preservative (potassium lactate) is the only problem, everything else seems acceptable. So I guess it's not that bad, but I still don't still really have a reason to choose it.
On days when I don't particularly want to eat a lot of meat, I just eat more rice, vegetables and beans. It's not that hard?
I think the OP is right: their niche seemed to be people who crave something like a hamburger or at least real meat while having an ideological opposition against meat and enough money.
It does seem like that is literally what happened.
The only people i ever hear say anything positive about beyond burger (after the novelty wore off) was meat eaters. Vegeterians, for whatever reason, tended not to like it. But meat eaters were always going to choose meat anyways, so it seems like nobody actually bought it.
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You did such a good job of listing out reasons why niche demographics would skip a meat-free burger, without listing the actual core demographic who consumes them: Vegans and vegetarians, i.e. people who enjoy eating burgers but don’t eat meat.
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> The whole point of being an ethical vegan/vegetarian is to not consume animals
You can agree with this sentiment (ideology?) and not be vegan, if you aren't willing to give up meat. giving up meat is what defines this demographic.
Relative to a population of people willing to give up meat, would you assume there is no difference in "liking how plants taste" versus the general population? I'd assume it correlates directly with "willingness to give up meat".
> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers.
Maybe, but in context its a false dichotomy, why wouldn't they pick better substitutes e.g. non-average meat?
> And at most restaurants, I've never noticed a "premium" for it, it usually costs the same as a beef patty; it just provides another option, for the days I want to skip meat
I'm a vegetarian. I have never _not_ paid at least $2 premium to sub in an Impossible or Beyond patty. I've had tons of them, there are some in my freezer.
I think it's pretty obvious from their financial results that this company is a commercial failure, and the subset of people who consume their product on a regular basis is vanishingly small.
Do some people occasionally eat fake meat? Sure. Enough to build a sustainable business? Less clear.
Beyond Burger ingredients:
Yellow Pea Protein, Avocado Oil, Natural Flavors, Brown Rice Protein, Red Lentil Protein, 2% or less of Methylcellulose, Potato Starch, Pea Starch, Potassium Lactate (to preserve freshness), Faba Bean Protein, Apple Extract, Pomegranate Concentrate, Potassium Salt, Spice, Vinegar, Vegetable Juice Color (with Beet).
Except for Vinegar, every one of these is an industrially processed/extracted/refined ingredient that humans never ate until within the last ~50 years.
We have no way to even know if many of these are safe let alone healthy.
I don't know of any evidence that these things are a decent substitute for meat and salt which humans have been eating for our entire history. And for those who actually believe animal fat and salt are unhealthy one could make burgers with lean meat and less or no salt.
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> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers
Why? Carbs and processed oils bound together by stodge isn’t healthier than fried ground beef.
Nah, it definitely costs extra at restaurants.
If any of this were true they’d be doing much better and not pivoting
Trying to avoid Mad Cow disease from ground meat is a thing too.
> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers.
I seriously doubt that health-conscious people would pick hyper-processed plants that are meant to resemble meat over plain meat+bread+vegetables that make up a non-fast-food hamburger.
But soy products contain high amounts of phytoestrogens.
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This is a way weirder comment than the one you're replying to
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This is such a weird comment.
I have friend who was vegan for 20 years, and when we went to good restaurant and he wanted to choose between vegan patty burger and real one, he chose real one due to all chemical industrial crap they put in those veggie patties and chose a good Swiss beef instead of questionable worse-tasting content. Yes, he literally stopped being vegan at that point, although he still is on most days since then.
Its subpar product, with way too much questionable chemistry, worse taste (or more like structure&taste) and impact on environment is... questionable too, maybe less than real beef but probably not massively. What could be acceptable for environmental impact is lab grown real meat but even that seems to not go the direction one would expect.
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> The core early adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually like the taste of plants are never going to make a lab made ultra processed salt bomb their daily driver
Why not? I think there's a false conflation of veganism and health food (and gluten-free, though that's not relevant in this discussion). I love burgers, and fried chicken, and crappy chicken nuggets, but I don't want more animals to have to suffer for my sake than is necessary. I disagree on how hyper-specific that niche is.
IMO the core problem is that meat is so heavily subsidized that it's hard for them to compete.
> IMO the core problem is that meat is so heavily subsidized that it's hard for them to compete.
This is the real problem. Without all the government subsidies, a pound of ground beef would be closer to $30-$40 today instead of the $8-$10/lb it is now. $38 billion dollars in the US each year to subsidize meat and dairy, but only $17 million goes to fruit and vegetable farmers. It's completely backwards, especially considering the climate impact on meat and dairy farming.
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> I think there's a false conflation of veganism and health food
Indeed. I ate at two different vegan restaurants in a city I visited recently and they both were on par with bar or diner food, but vegan. Plenty of vegans (I'm not one, but I've got eyes...) clearly don't have a problem with that.
I would argue the core problems are the massive amounts of salt and the fact that none of the meat alternatives tasted good. They all taste off.
The key difference between the old vegans and the new vegans is hiding in plain sight. It's the Internet. It used to be that vegans went to vegan restaurants and had their own particular tradition of vegan cookery. People didn't just become vegan in isolation like they do today. The acculturated vegans still exist and I think that's who gp is referring to in that statement. The Internet vegans are different but they aren't that numerous — few people even today would make such a change in their life based on something they read online.
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Based on my bubble, vegans, vegetarians, and meat eaters that do want to decrease their meat consumption.
At this point, in Germany at least, discounter brands like Lidl and Aldi have beaten Beyond Meat at their game though. They produce alternatives that taste as good or better, for significantly less money.
I have been vegan for 12 years. It is not that hard to make vegan burger patties at home. Or you can just cut up a block of tofu and season it to be eaten in a burger. Takes about the same time or less to cook as these Beyond grease fests. Besides there is so many cheaper alternatives these days that I very rarely buy them.
We don’t need meat alternatives. Vegan diet is cardiovascularly extremely healthy, seems to protect against most cancers, tastes good and is most importantly ethically and environmentally only viable option at this point. It’s pretty cheap as well, tofu, lentils and veggies are not exactly expensive even without all the gazillion subsidiaries pumped into meat production. [Of course your vegan diet can consist of eating only canned soda and potato chips and that is not healthy nor cheap, but the problem there is that you are a moron, not that you are vegan].
So the problem with meat alternatives is that you don’t really need them and if you want burger patties etc. you can make them at home pretty easily or these days buy cheaper alternatives sold in most supermarkets.
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Yeah, I never understood what Beyond's core innovation was. Impossible had that whole synthetic heme thing going on. Beyond seemed almost like opportunistic mimicry. But Impossible turned out to be pretty expensive IIRC.
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I love meat and I love good hamburgers. I’ve tried those Lidl and Aldi alternatives and they were uneatable for me and my family. They have slowly disappeared from the shelves. Only a couple of products remain.
I have never tried BeyondMeat but I’d be surprised that it’s so bad.
And I have eaten many classic vegan burger alternatives based on lentils, peas and chickpeas. They didn’t aim to taste like meat and were actually edible.
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My vegetarian friends can now go to a restaurant (or better example yet, any event space like sports event or theme park, since having a veggie burger is pretty easy to check a box and satisfy dietary restrictions) and get any of the burger offerings on the menu with a beyond patty. Before that, the vegetarian option of only resort was often much more depressing and unsubstantial.
Reading this somewhat reminds me how the Gluten Free trend led to a lot more options for my friend with celiac.
Still, one wonders does “buying a fake burger at the ball park with my friends” translate to actual fandom and further consumption or is it just a a captive consume picking the least-worst option.
The impression I’ve gotten is for the latter.
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i actually miss black bean burgers being more common. now it seems like all you can find are beyond/impossible burgers at restaurants. i don't mind em once or twice a year but they knock me out more than melatonin so i usually avoid them.
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This. They can now eat more than french fries off the menu.
Personally I really fucking like meat but having done a couple of weeks in a slaughterhouse, I don't want to eat it. Gives me nightmares. Seriously.
This is a good filler product.
This is the insight that most people need but will never have, empathy for other living things seems to be greatly lacking amongst the general population.
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> lacks the [...] bioavailability of real animal protein
I never understood this argument: what's the problem with consuming proportionately more to make up for the reduction?
I'm not rushing to demand IV tylenol because its oral bioavailability is only 80%-90%, which is around the "loss" we're talking for plant vs animal protein on average. And the ultraprocessing should improve plant's profile here.
Eating raw Miso a few times a month can move one's biome to get more plant protein digested per gram than even from egg whites. So the issue with protein is somewhat overhyped. The main potential shortfalls in the vegan diet are vitamins B-12, D & K.
>what's the problem with consuming proportionately more to make up for the reduction?
Because the macros suck. If you’re trying to hit certain protein / carb / fat ratios, eating more of the “protein” means eating a lot more carbs and fat too, which often isn’t the goal.
Your analogy is not accurate, it would be more like waking up in pain in the middle of the night after a bad injury, and taking t3s with codeine+ caffeine, and wanting more codeine without wanting the added caffeine.
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On top of that, there seems to be a pervasive misconception of the effectiveness of plant vs animal-based protein on things like muscle growth. Older studies showed that plant-based proteins had lower digestibility scores via metrics like PDCAAS. In turn, people interpolated that muscle growth would be lower. Some early studies comparing the two protein sources on muscle synthesis didn't do gram-for-gram comparisons and that increased the misconception. Newer studies are showing that, if you match the protein amount at or above the 1-1.6 g/kg for muscle growth, you will get the same level of muscle growth.
I feel like it'll take another 5 years for this "bio-availability" myth to die out.
Ethical vegans and vegetarians may like the taste of meat but be sworn off it because of their ethics. I see this so much in these discussions - if they don't like meat then why are they going for a subsitute? They love vegetables so should stick to vegetables.
Do people genuinely think that 'ethical' vegans and vegetarians are doing it because they don't like meat? Or genuinely not comprehend the idea of taking an ethical stance even if you actually like something?
For illustration, human baby could be the best tasting barbecue on the planet, but even if it was I would still think that murdering children for my dinner would be wrong and wouldn't do it. Ethical vegans and vegetarians feel similarly about eating meat, that it's (often) delicious but killing animals for food is wrong. Offering them a "meat without any of the suffering" option, in theory, has quite a large audience.
Plus as a meat-eater who had a vegetarian partner for a few years, things like impossible mince also made it easier for me to cook things we could both enjoy, and things like beyond/impossible made eating out a little easier in burger joints etc.
The way you say "ultra processed" just shows the agro lobby did it's thing. You have to realize processed in the case of beyond is mechanically separating whole pea to use the protein.
You are right. I assumed it would be full of junk like most meat substitute products. But I took a look at the ingredients list of the Dutch version, it seems the preservative (potassium lactate) is the only problem, everything else seems acceptable. I'm quite surprised by how decent the ingredients are.
Still, I don't really have a reason to buy it. I don't avoid meat. I specifically eat beef for, for example, creatine and iron. But I guess it is good for people who crave beef yet have an ideological resistance against meat, a niche which I'm not sure how big it is.
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Beyond Meat aren't unique, there are dozens of brands offering the same product. Tens of millions of people eat these type of products. Any (or most) burger-serving restaurant in Europe will have a Beyond Meat or equivalent on the menu. They're not always advertised as vegan (because of preparation and extras) but these fake burgers are very popular, for many reasons.
At the time it was a unique product. My alternatives reminded me more of basically black-bean patties than beef. Then impossible meat did it better, industry decided there was money in this direction, and now there’s “or equivalent” everywhere.
That's a really good point. Maybe in part because Beyond had a highly visible IPO they became the poster child for the success or failure of meat alternatives but in reality their story is pretty much just their own story.
Fake?
In my part of the world, a burger is a type of sandwhich, and the definition doesn't require meat. So it's a burger whether it contains beef, fish, chicken, a vegan patty, a large slice of tomato, or whatever.
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As a vegetarian of 20 years, I like being able to go to restaurants and have something that is on par with what my friends and family are eating (although I do prefer Impossible to Beyond, by far). Even without friends and family, there's a social (and distinctively American) aspect to being able to have a realistic burger and beer at my local sports bar/grill and not just have a salad or some Sysco frozen black bean burger.
There's no reason ethical vegans wouldn't go for ultra-processed foods. Beyond Meat just isn't a great option, it's expensive and not good enough to justify it. The selling point for them seems to be that they taste more like meat than most meat substitutes but as someone who has been vegan for a while that doesn't matter to me (unless I'm trying to match a non-vegan recipe). I get Morningstar Farms products vastly more often than Beyond Meat ones. Beyond and Impossible are maybe like my 4th and 5th most bought meat imitation brands and it's not like those other brands are less salty or processed. Idk why I only ever hear non-vegans mention Beyond and Impossible.
I haven’t been eating meat for 14 years, and I sometimes buy stuff like beyond meat patties or similar, but definitely not as a daily food, but like a fast food to eat with beer, or to take with me when grilling with friends. So I assume same way how other people eat meat burgers (am I correct to assume that people don’t eat McDonald’s or supermarket burgers everyday?).
And it’s not really about the taste, it’s more about form factor of a “protein fried patty” in a sandwich. Could easily be falafel.
Normal daily food is of course actual vegan/vegetarian food that doesn’t need to pretend to be meat.
being an ethical vegan does not mean you like the taste of plants (or, at least, that you don't miss the taste of meat). I'm veg and very much miss having access to meat.
I'm an occasional buyer of their product, but the issue for me is just the versatility. It's really only a replacement for the most generic ways to prepare a burger/sausage. The moment you try to use the ground beef in, say, a chili recipe, it's a totally mis-matched flavor
I'm like technically the exact demographic they should be chasing. Plant based eater who loves the taste of meat and just stopped eating it for ethical reasons. But like, I'm not gonna eat a heavily processed food often for the reasons stated above, and also it's just not great nutritionally compared to Seitan, which also actually just tasted better when prepared right. And it also doesn't stack up compared to high protein / extra firm tofu, which is incredible for cooking when frozen and then defrosted and cooked. And also made of soybeans, one of the cheapest food commodities in the world. So why would I pay 2x or 3x the amount of money for a drastically inferior product? Just when I want an exact burger replica, and once you are plant based for 3 or more years, you just don't really crave that anymore except as maybe a guilty pleasure once or twice a year.
So like, sure it's fine, but it is already in a tough competition with other plant based foods.
I haven’t done a comparison of Beyond vs seitan for their nutritional value, but as someone who used to eat a lot more seitan I gleefully moved over to Beyond/Impossible. Seitan is packed full of gluten, which is much harder to digest. Seitan makes me uncomfortably bloated whereas Beyond/Impossible do not. And no, I don’t have a gluten “intolerance” or Celiac.
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What's making you believe Beyond is more "heavily processed" than seitan? I think you might be surprised...
> once you are plant based for 3 or more years, you just don't really crave that anymore except as maybe a guilty pleasure once or twice a year.
This has been the exact opposite of my experience.
source: vegan for 14 years, vegetarian for 2 years prior to that, carnist for the initial 22 years. :)
The large Beyond patty has 260mg of salt. The American Heart Association recommends a daily limit of 2300mg, with an ideal limit of 1500mg for most adults, including those with high blood pressure. How is this a salt bomb? You can eat 4 of them a day and still have salt to spare in your diet.
I guess for people like me. I eat meat, and I eat burgers. I can't speak for Beyond Meat, but when at restaurants, the Impossible Burger often tastes better than the real beef (likely because the former is pre-seasoned).
There are plenty of meat eaters who want to eat these as a way to cut down their meat consumption. They don't want to become vegetarians, though.
People like me: who prefer not to kill animals to live but enjoy the taste of some type of meat in moderation. I am absolutely happy to pay for a premium meat alternative for the occasional visit to a burger joint. There are lots of them where I live alongside the Beyond patties and they're quite popular. I'm not quite sure what desperation has to do with it - you just eat things you enjoy that fit your dietary preferences.
Obviously there is a big enough market for plant-based meat alternatives. At least in the European countries I have lived, if you go into a grocery store, you will see a large aisle that sells this stuff. Many big companies likes Nestlé are in this market. They sure as hell are not doing it for ethical reasons, they are making money.
Just because Beyond as a company is doing bad doesn't mean the whole category of products is doing bad.
I'm vegetarian and used to live in EU. Strong +1 to this, many more meat alternatives than in Canada/US, and the options taste better whilst being overall healthier. The amount of fat and salt in the products in NA is sad to see.
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Just because someone is vegetarian or vegan doesn't mean they don't like the taste of meat.
I'm a strict vegetarian myself and have been for about ten years. But as much as I love plant foods, I absolutely miss meat — I was never a big meat eater, but I would enjoy burgers, salami, pepperoni, bacon, Italian meatballs, prosciutto, things like that.
I dislike Beyond products, which taste a bit weird and metallic to me. The only imitation meat product I've remotely enjoyed is Impossible Burger. Nobody has managed to make anything else — if someone would nail plant-based pepperoni or bacon I would be all over it.
I like them and buy them.
I’ma regular guy who likes burgers but is very worried about the effects cattle farming has on the planet. I don’t love killing animals so I can have a tastier meal either.
"Ethical vegans" are just as capable of wanting a salty, oily piece of junk food to slither down their gullet. I'd wager practically every vegan that exists in the US spent at least a decade of their formative years eating burgers at least a few times a year.
Thats the thing... Really really good vegetarian and vegan food tastes amazing and is filling. And unless you're intentionally picking around for meat or meat products, you're not going to notice.
A lot of Indian/Brahmin food is exactly that. Its insanely delicious.
And we have Beyond Meat and Impossible Meat(is that the name?). Both instead of going "vegetarian done well is superb" went to "sorry its a sad reminder of a hamburger". And thats a problem. Nobody wants to be reminded that this is $10/lb and real hamburger is $5/lb.
Ive also had problems with other 'meat substitues'. They're almost always plasticy or fake tasting, or chemically off.
Whereas my tofu saag is delicious. And no meet or cheese needed... Although my favorite is saag paneer (cheese). I stay away from the fake-almost-but-not-quite foods.
I feel like fast food is a pretty big market for stuff like this. Burger King in New Zealand has had plant based alternatives to the whopper and chicken burger on the menu for > 1 year now so it must be doing ok. I'm not even vegetarian and I get them sometimes, they're pretty good (especially the chicken one - they changed the recipe a while ago and it's now practically indistinguishable from the real chicken option, although that probably says more about their standard chicken than it does about the meat free option).
There's no premium for the plant based versions I don't think (or if there is it's small enough that I never noticed), and I think you're underestimating how many vegans/vegetarians still want junk food.
There’s plenty of vegetarians due to ethical or cultural reasons that never acquired the taste for traditional plant based foods and are looking for a more substantial, protein heavy alternative.
Is it niche? Yes, but vegetarians were always niche.
While the late 2010s fixated on “protein” and “macros” - allowing products like Beyond or Soylent to shine.
Much of the health discourse around the 2020s has focused on quality of the ingredients and “processed foods”. So naturally Beyond is caught on the crossfire.
Is there a future where this stuff is proven to be better for you in the short and long term? I sure hope so. But there’s way too many unknowns right now and it’s expensive to boot.
I'm not a vegan but I eat Beyond. The stuff is perfectly good on its own merits. The steak tips have great protein numbers, take hot sauce well, and therefore makes a great breakfast.
I agree with this. As a veggie, the texture, taste, smell, color of meat grosses me out. I don't want not-meat that appears to be meat.
I want not-meat that is definitely not meat.
I bought them because I like meat but want to reduce my carbon footprint a bit and am not that impressed with animal husbandry standards
> The core early adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually like the taste of plants are never going to make a lab made ultra processed salt bomb their daily driver (never mind issues surrounding industrial agriculture).
I don't see why this follows. There are a lot of ethical vegans and vegetarians who like junk food. And these patties have higher protein than less processed plant based alternatives, which is important to a lot of people. It's just that vegetarians and vegans are a small portion of the overall "burger" market.
I suspect the "meat" branding helped early on, because it got some people to give it a try who otherwise never would have. There were other plant-based burgers on the market already but Beyond really exploded quickly.
It's just that it didn't really live up to the hype enough for meat eaters to go back for a second helping after the novelty wore off. So at this point the "meat" in the brand name isn't doing anything.
I’m their market. I don’t eat processed food all the time, but I’m looking for ways to reduce my animal consumption. I’ll pick it over animal usually, though I’ll pick good quality animal or less processed plant based.
I think the part that’s accurate is that it’s hard to get past the highly processed hurdle for the kind of people that think critically about food.
But vegans aren’t the target market.
Ethical vegetarians are exactly the people who might like meat but refuse to eat it because of the impacts. Maybe you mean "natural" vegetarians - people who just don't like meat any way so don't eat it
I actually like Beyond Meat patties, but I eat maybe a half-dozen "fake meat" burgers per year - that's not going to sustain a competitor when Americans eat an average of 3 beef burgers per week.
I'm the demographic. I became vegan a several years ago when I was in my late 40s for health reasons -- all males in my family my age or older have had multiple heart attacks except for me. I didn't become vegan because I like eating salads. I miss the taste of meat, and beyond does a decent job of it (Impossible is far better).
If animal agriculture was not subsidized, I expect plant based "meats" would be on par or cheaper than real meat.
The demographic includes my spouse who likes the taste and texture of both Beyond and Impossible burgers much more than ground beef burgers.
Beyond sausage links are damn good.
How about these two niches:
1. non-vegans eating with vegans at a vegan restaurant, where eating there wasn't their choice (they were craving a burger), and so, being forced to order off this menu, will choose the most burger-like thing on the menu.
2. non-vegans eating with vegans at a non-vegan restaurant, where for whatever reason they feel the need to impress / not-offend the vegan by eating vegan food as well. (Think "first date" or "client meeting.")
In both the situations, I'd order the best vegan thing on the menu instead of nasty imitation meat.
>I always wondered who their demographic was.
Wealthy hippies, vegans, and yuppies.
There is a huge thread basically refuting the parent's "nobody wants this" claim.
The fact that the Beyond Burger sells in mainstream grocery stores tells you all that you need to know: it's popular (enough). There are muliple products in this niche in my not-very-large grocery store.
Grocery stores don't stock products that don't sell. No matter how you personally think it doesn't have a niche.
I've had to switch to a less-meat-protein diet because of my kidney issues. This is one way to do it. It is pretty tasty!
The pitch always seemed aimed at meat eaters who might replace one or two meals a week if the substitute was close enough
Right, so because no one in this thread has the ability to remember past their own personal preferences:
The demographic that Beyond and Impossible claimed to be chasing was the like 85% of Americans that answered polls about wanting to eat less meat (back in the early 201Xs). "Meatless Monday", weeknight vegetarian... Whatever. Thats who they pitched investors on.
It's also a market that never materialized, whether because it was always a mirage of push polling or because an ascendant fascist GOP has made meat eating a cornerstone of their identity or COVID or whatever.
As an ex-vegetarian, I never understood the premise of the Impossible/Beyond stuff because when they launched there already was a really good soy burger in the supermarket frozen aisle that had excellent macros, priced reasonably, and tasted great.
I never thought the notion of "let's make the veggie burger taste like meat" made any sense.
well I used to buy them because my daughter decided to become a vegetarian and we needed something that we all agreed on.
Yes it was generally more expensive, for the worst quality meat but otherwise I think it was at a reasonable medium price point.
The target from any position in the pyramid is always the next level down.
Veganism is a fake health conscious diet. You can eat whatever you like while simultaneously feeling superior about it. Oreos, chips, pizza, fries, candy, soda, etc. why not also highly processed burgers? I say this after having lived with vegans who literally ate vegan pizza every day.
My wife often quips that on our first stay-at-home date during Covid she made me a fruit bowl for my desert whilst she had ice cream. The fruit was amazing but I (much to my wife’s surprise) also immediately Uber Eats’d a full tub of Vegan Ben & Jerry's.
I’ve personally never met another vegan who chose this lifestyle for “diet” reasons. They’ll be out there for sure, but for the folks I know It’s always been about the animals.
Just because I choose not to eat animals doesn’t mean I’m choosing to be healthy :) I should focus more on the food that I eat but alas, it’s just not how I roll at the moment.
You do get some unintentional health benefits here and there (lower cholesterol in my case) but other trade-offs too for those like me that aren’t as diligent as they should be (lower b-12, iron etc).
This is completely unrelated to the question of “can you be healthy as a vegan”. To that I would say absolutely. Is it the reason most people choose to be vegan - my gut would say no (but I’m not claiming this as fact).
Goddamn I love me some Oreos.
Plus, it’s easier to sit atop a high horse when you’re not eating it ;)
You can be vegan as part of a health conscious diet, but strict veganism is usually motivated by ethics, not health. (That being said obviously there's more market share if you're in the intersection of the venn diagram.)
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Veganism is not "a fake health conscious diet". It could be for the people around you but doesn't deserve to be universally qualified as such.
so in order for vegans to be legit for you, they not only have to find alternatives for everything, constantly be on the lookout not to accidentally buy or consume products related to animals, no - they also all have to be eating healthy and organic constantly in order not to be phony fakes.
what a weird form of gatekeeping. at least they're using some form of ethics and trying to change the world in a way they're able to.
coming from a non-vegan, btw, even though this shouldn't even be a requirement.
their demo is vegans who want a burger, which is not a rare thing at all.
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The demographic is people who have tricked themselves into thinking there are "healthy options" at a hamburger restaurant and who are willing to pay $2 extra for that validation.
That's too bad. I don't expect fake-meats to be healthy, or cheap, but I like that they can be made without killing animals and without raising them in inhumane conditions.
I had really hoped that people would say, "Well, if it tastes close enough, then how about I go for the cruelty-free version." And it is close-enough -- it's at least as good as a fast-food hamburger.
Perhaps the cognitive dissonance is just too much. The world would be a better place if we ate less meat, even if we don't eliminate it entirely. But to acknowledge the cruelty by avoiding it sometimes means facing it when you do choose animal protein.
Maybe it's just me, but beyond has never tasted close to the original. Impossible does.
The fact that it doesn't taste close to the original and that it commands a price premium is why I ultimately gave up on it. Where I might use beyond, I can usually get a healthier option using ground turkey instead with a much more agreeable flavor and price.
But really, I've just focused on making more meatless dishes in general. Highlighting the flavor of legumes and mushrooms beats trying to fake the flavor of beef.
Impossible definitely has more of a "dead cow funk" taste to it. Which is why I actually prefer Beyond Meat, because it tastes better without "that taste".
I think it actually is "Beyond" meat, in that sense.
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Not just you. To me Beyond tastes barely better than the classic fake meat products. Whereas I find impossible actually tastes good.
Beyond is not a convincing substitute. I think it’s delicious for processed food and I prefer it to beef by a lot, but it is definitely beany tasting.
I never found it close enough, and it's expensive, and it's bad for you. So no thanks.
> as good as a fast-food hamburger
But at a much higher price? The value is not really there IMO.
From their performance it seems like the intersection of (cares about animals | methane emissions) & doesn't mind health effects & less price sensitive & must eat hamburger-likes is too small.
Interesting point on cognitive dissonance though. I think it's possible to draw a rational tradeoff between acceptable amount of (externalised) cruelty and personal benefits of eating meat - no cognitive dissonance needed.
I’m completely against factory farming, confinement barns, etc and always avoid meat produced this way.
But I do wonder what you mean when you say “cruelty” in the context of cattle.
Having lived in/around rural livestock production most of my life, I can tell you that most cattle operations I am familiar with take excellent care of the their animals. Minimizing stress is absolutely a top goal for them.
Pork, on the other hand, is almost always produced in a horrifying, cruel way. Confinement barns are terrible in every sense of the word. Pigs are treated without respect from cradle to grave.
It depends on the laws of your country, but here in Canada, you can't slaughter cows on your farm. They have to be transported, often long distances, to a slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouses, and the metal box that brings them there, aren't very nice places for a cow.
Personally, when I want to eat less meat, I just eat something else, because they are enough vegetarian/vegan alternatives out there that I don't really see the point of a poor imitation that's even more expensive than the real thing.
>And it is close-enough -- it's at least as good as a fast-food hamburger.
It's not, though. Vegans that I know always proselytize about how "you can't even tell the difference" but I can tell the difference.
I don't understand the weird vegan obsession with eating fake food. Edible oil product "vegan cheese" and other junk.
If you want to eat meat, eat it. If you don't, don't. You do you, but don't try to sell me on disgusting fake food.
It’s petty straightforward. They want to taste meat but don’t want to eat animals.
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lol Way to jump to a conclusion and then use it as your basis for your entire comment. Most people don't want some expensive fake ass meat that is so packed with chemicals and additives that they would rather just buy meat instead and eat it, even if it isnt as healthy as it could be if it were raised more sustainably and naturally than most of it is nowadays.
It was close enough for me and I do acknowledge the cruelty and abstain from many kinds of meat. I was super excited when I tried it first. But after about a year of being part of my regular diet it started being disgusting unfortunately. Now I can only eat it once a in a while.
> how about I go for the cruelty-free version.
They should just use that as a label: https://xkcd.com/641/
Would you like the cruel or cruelty-free patty?
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Are you saying that opting for a beyond burger patty instead of a beef patty is going to "poison and destroy" your health? That's a bit of a stretch no? Are they really any worse for you than a regular burger from a fast food joint or something?
There are no studies I’m aware of where focusing on a plant-based diet makes you “very ill” and gives you “chronic diseases”. On the contrary, it’s not that hard to be healthier.
Meat, on the other hand, is linked to diseases. Especially red meat and cancer.
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-canc...
So your scenario is more like “imagine telling a parent ‘Give meat to your kid. They will get sick, unnecessarily kill animals (as we all know, kids hate animals, right?), and accelerate destroying the environment (who needs to live in a good environment, anyway, as long as there are burgers?)’”.
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How can you grow plants without killing animals?
I think it's a question of degree. For instance, if you grow an acre of corn you kill a few animals right? And you have an acre of corn which would feed a few people for a year.
A cow takes about 10x as much corn per serving of meat, so that's 10x as many critters killed, and then you have to kill the cow.
The creatures that are killed in the field, or on the road or whatever, they are living their little lives eating and screwing and doing all the fun stuff creatures do until they get brained by a tilling disk or whatever.
A cow on the other hand, in a U.S. cafo? I mean if you like wading through your own shit, nose to asshole with all your compatriots, eating food that your GI tract doesn't even like that much so that you can get overweight? No stimulus, no sex, no variance in diet, then you'd love to be a cow.
For me, I just don't want to eat that.
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I think beyond nailed the texture of their burger patties. When you fry one up it has the same texture as a cheap frozen hamburger patty. Their sausage links also have a similar texture to a cheap frozen bratwurst. I think beyond nailed the taste a bit better than impossible. Also beyond seems to use better ingredients than impossible. All these products are high in sodium like all processed food and you definitely shouldn't live off them, just like you shouldn't live off cheap frozen burgers and sausages. Price-wise they cost more per pound than good quality beef in my area. For any meat eater you should definitely amuse yourself and fry up some of this "Internet Meat" and try it out.
I think nature nailed the texture of their burger patties. When you fry one up it has the same texture as a beyond patty. Nature's sausage links also have a similar texture to beyond sausage. I think nature nailed the taste a bit better than beyond. Also nature seems to use better ingredients than beyond. All these products are high in sodium like all processed food and you definitely shouldn't live off them, just like you shouldn't live off beyond burgers and sausages. Price-wise they cost less per pound than beyond. For any vegetarian or vegan you should definitely amuse yourself and fry up some of this natural meat and try it out.
A+ Sir!
Vegetarian here. I like Beyond products, such as their chorizo, and eat them all the time. I don’t eat animals not because I’m trying to “eat healthy”, but because I’m trying to opt out participating in a system that is brutally cruel to sentient beings.
I'm in a similar boat and have to give up cheese since it's part of the chain. It's a bummer, I'm pretty addicted to it, and plant-based cheese is just nothing compared to a good young cheese
I tell myself that in the long-term the pros outweigh the con, if you value being on the right side of morality
My wife developed lactose and gluten intolerance both right around the same time. Dealing with gluten free alternatives has been annoying, but manageable. Milks and butters I can easily sub in recipes to good results. I no longer use dairy butter or milk in any of my cooking. The vegan cheese stuff has been so gross that she's basically dropped it altogether. The texture and taste are so wrong and they basically don't melt. I'm sure it'll be "solved" eventually but a cheeseless pizza is better than a pizza with vegan cheese at this point in time.
I want to do what you're doing, but if I can't do it well, why bother? If had the whole "cooking at home for yourself" thing down, maybe I could buy only beyond (not-meat?), but when i cook for myself, I don't even like cooking meat. I use eggs but that's about it.
A lot of the meat i consume is from restaurants and fast food, it isn't easy to get a meat alternative, that isn't part of a "veggie" item that has different ingredients (if available at all). For example, a "beyond cheeseburger" that uses the same sauce,buns,prep as a regular cheeseburger would be nice, but usually it's under a "veggie burger" with vegetable centric things with it.
Tangentially, indian food is awesome for avoiding meat, but restaurant ordered indian food isn't healthy if you eat all the time (a couple of times a month is ok, if you're fit).
Unfortunately by still eating dairy and eggs, you are participating in that system.
I'm not sure what motivates you to write a comment like this, but maybe you should reflect on it.
The person you are replying to is consciously trying to make the world a better place, and probably succeeding in a small way. Are they perfect? No. But they are literally sacrificing something for the good of someone (or something) else. This is the definition of altruism.
For some reason, you felt the need to criticize them for not being more altruistic?
Finally, if you really want to live cruelty free and 100% sustainably, the only option is to throw yourself off of a bridge because any time you interact with modern society you are producing CO2 indirectly and potentially harming animals, no matter how careful you are.
Who says they eat dairy and eggs? “Vegetarian” isn’t such a simplistic label like that. It doesn’t mean “I eat exactly these things”. For all we know, they eat only eggs and from a local farm (or have their own chickens).
Furthermore, it’s a bad argument to imply vastly reduced complicity with a system is the same as full complicity.
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But less. Total money from them going into system is lower than it otherwise would be, which must have an effect
I disagree with the idea that it's "not the moment for plant-based meat". Beyond Meat has a fantastic product that does very well in lots of markets. The problem is that Beyond Meat the company was valued as some sort of once in a generation radical reimagining of the way we eat. Beyond Meat's product is not going to change the world, it's just a good product.
If Beyond Meat had grown organically, instead of raising hundreds of millions of dollars, it would be a great company doing great things today. Instead, it has failed to live up to the unrealistic expectations that were set for it. Beyond Meat is no different than any of the other zirpicorns.
Yup, the product is fine, but there's a reason all the other brands in the freezer aisle aren't raising hundreds of millions of dollars at 100x multiples. Burgers don't scale like smartphone apps.
Here's a comparison - Tyson Foods, best known for their frozen meat, had a revenue of $54.44 billion last year. Their current market cap is $21.77 billion.
Beyond Meat reported an annual revenue of $87.9 million in their 2018 S-1, and post-IPO reached a peak market cap of $14.1 billion.
See the issue with these numbers?
I was having trouble understanding the issue then I realized 87.9 MILLion with an M. Ok I see lol.
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I think that 'real product' (as opposed to software) companies would actually benefit more from raising capital from equity instead of 'bootstrapping', because of the taxes on retained earnings, which have a disproportionate impact on capital-intensive business. That said, I agree that the P/E multiple on Impossible and Beyond were best described by the descriptors in their respective names...
The way the market has moved away from valuing "just a good product" (and, by extension, "just a good service", "just a good business", and "just a good employee") is one of the factors destroying life as the developed world has known it for 80 years.
the market didn't. The investors did
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I have the opposite reaction. Beyond Meat is not a good product. It tastes gross.
It's not as good as the meat it's comparing itself against, and it's not as good as the vegetarian options also available in the store, and it's more expensive than either.
Anytime can "be the moment" for plant-based meat if the product technology was there, but it's not.
> it's not as good as the vegetarian options also available in the store
I've tried the beyond burgers, they were alright taste wise, but yeah there's many other options for a protein source.
Beyond Meat was never going to convince people to eat less meat by substituting it for fake burgers and steaks. For people that already eat vegetarian there already tastier sources of protein. Lentils, beans, quinoa, chickpeas, mushrooms, nuts & seeds, etc. All of those have much more flexibility with how you can incorporate them into dishes than a fake slab of "meat."
> more expensive than either.
This is a political problem. In the US animal agriculture receives far more funding than plant-based protein. Without government subsidies, a pound of ground beef would cost closer to $30-$40. We've historically defined food security int he US as "meat and dairy," two of the things we really need to consume less of because of environmental impacts.
But yeah, Beyond Meat wasn't going to get us there. We need real political changes, not fake meat.
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I know that there's a lot of reasons for this, but at least in my area, the Beyond Meat products are considerably more expensive than actual animal meat.
I'm sure that's due to depressing subsidies or economies of scale, but regardless of the reason it's kind of hard for me to justify buying something that will taste like a "not-quite-as-good-as-the-thing-half-the-price" burger.
They are pretty good, don't get me wrong, it's just something that I have trouble purchasing.
> I'm sure that's due to depressing subsidies
Based on what data do you make such unsubstantiatable statements?
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100%, a product can't be just good and succeed now. Market's expect something to be "the next thing" or become a failure.
Also, price is always going to be an issue. The US spends billions and billions of dollars supporting the meat industry. The fact meat is cheap is a political choice, which makes direct plant based substitutes a tough financial proposition.
As a vegetarian that regularly uses plant-based substitutes: I'm super reluctant to believe a market for a product like Beyond ever existed. Between Beyond and Impossible they've got this weird chimera market, especially the latter, with their too-realistic product. If meaters cared they'd switch, there wasn't really a whole lot of fence sitting I don't think—not in reality. I think people were pretty well committed. I also think the sympathetic market of vegetarians and vegans didn't find the premise of these too-realistic products especially thrilling. And I don't think that's a huge market in the first place, at least not in a large portion of the US.
Then you factor in the costs and it's Beyond insanity.
And frankly I don't know if Beyond was doing anything legitimately novel. Impossible was over-engineering their burger to the extent that I wouldn't eat one from any restaurant because I couldn't tell whether it was be'f or beef. Beyond just seemed to be nu-gardein which I'll grant you—it's a Monsanto subsidiary—but the product is palettable, consistent, and available almost universally and has been as long as I've been on the diet, 12 years.
I think there was a fallacy that suddenly the whole of the general public would rush to stop eating meat and would accept a meat-like substitute; and that vegetarians craved something that tasted like meat.
This of course was completely false, but far too many people let themselves get caught up in hype instead of reason.
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I remember having an excellent veggie burger at a bar, and then when I went back a year later, it was replaced by Beyond or Impossible, and the bar tender was pretty open about how it was gross but their distributor pushed it on them. That of course pissed off the vegetarians who didn't like meat and had no desire for a meat-like substitute.
I can think of reasons they would need to diversify or collapse that relate to regulatory capture of the FDA by the current U.S. administration. Better some business that maintains continuity through hostile times than to collapse and see their future evaporate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZgfTarNxdY
It feels like a classic case of a product category being forced into a venture-scale narrative
Yeah exactly that. It's just pretty damn good. It's just not universe changing.
Hope this doesn't kill them.
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Maybe it wasn't cooked properly? I think they're delicious too. And they taste pretty genuine to me (I do eat meat too).
The first time I ordered one I honestly thought they got the order wrong and gave me a real burger.
Even the texture inside, a little but redder and more rough really felt like a fresh ground beef burger.
Impossible are really good too, I've had both and to be honest I have trouble remembering which was which but I enjoyed them both. I wish they were easier to get here.
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Haven't these guys been to a Taiwanese restaurant, they have great mock meats, and of course vegetarians have great mock meats too, love a good black bean pattie. The hubris this company shows is amazing.
They are focusing on an American palette, which is averse to things like tofu, seitan, or tempeh as they are considered not masculine enough by a significant portion of the population. This is reinforced by both genders.
Tofu is so ridiculously OP in terms of nutrition, production costs, and culinary versatility. It's a shame society here in the US is so strongly stymied by the manipulative meat lobby.
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There's no hope trying to sell "plant-based hamburger" with any name to toxic masculinity advocates who think soy feminizes you (even though seitan isn't soy). These guys are getting hospitalized from eating all-beef diets because chicken is "too feminine".
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Back in Europe I had many good meat alternatives in grocery stores that were quite budget friendly as well. Like vegetarian 'Schnitzel', 'chicken', 'fish'. Here in NA, most of the meat alternatives are breaded, or high in fat and salt. It's disappointing.
Great news, thanks to some fantastic "journalism" about estrogen contents, artificial meat is now viewed as being feminizing in a very literal way.
>Beyond Meat CEO Says ‘It’s Just Not The Moment For Plant-Based Meat’ After Rebrand
It absolutely is the time for plant-based meat. It has never been more crucial. It's just that their business model was easily replicable.
Also (at least in germany) their burger patties are nearly twice as expensive as groundbeef. I really like them but since I am neither vegan or vegetarian I either opted to groundbeef or to haloumi or something as a replacement. I think the substitutes could work well when they are reasonably priced or actually cheaper than what they want to replace so people are more likely to try it. Same goes with soy milk. Alpro costs like 2.80€/L while common dairy milk is less than a euro per liter.
> Alpro costs like 2.80€/L while common dairy milk is less than a euro per liter
Sure if we are cherry picking the "premium" brand this comparison works. Store brand soy or oat milk are 0,95€[0] and 0,90€[1] per liter respectively, so about what cow milk costs. For milk and milk alternatives there hasn't been a financial differentiator between them for about 5 years now.
With meat replacement patties there is still a significant price difference, though there Beyond Meat is also one of the more expensive ones (which is bold, as they've also been lapped by the competition in taste and variety of products).
[0]: https://www.rewe.de/shop/p/rewe-bio-vegan-soja-drink-1l/5852... - Links may not work depending on what postcode you enter. Should work with 10115
[1]: https://www.rewe.de/shop/p/rewe-bio-vegan-hafer-drink-ohne-z...
€1.59 per litre for 70% protein per litre, where I am.
It's because the meat industry is a welfare queen. In my local supermarket last year I could buy pork for ~8 EUR by kg, but champignons costed 10 (Nordic country).
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Beyond Moat, or something. Not like I know the words, I just play with computers
Are you Billy Nonates? Or a fan
Judging by other comments I guess I'm in the minority here: I'm a meat-eater that just enjoys the flavor of the Beyond Meat products. They taste absolutely delicious to me. I don't view it as a meat alternative, so I couldn't care less about that side of the debate. I enjoy it like I enjoy a good falafel.
> high-protein fizzy drink line
That is the plan?
High-protein everything is riding the wave of GLP-1 popularity right now. Doctors are begging people on that class of drugs to chase protein targets more similar to what might have previously been reserved for heavy weightlifters just to prevent muscle wasting.
As a result, the entire packaged food industry is pumping up protein numbers and marketing it as the primary attribute of the food (where they might have previously marketed low fat or low sugar or whatever else in the past).
So, saturated market... but certainly one people are investing in now.
Can verify. Am on a GLP-1 drug and I eat seek much more protein and fiber than before.
Don't forget the US administration jumping on the train and throwing the full weight of the diet culture, sorry "Healthy eating" clique at "Ending the war on protein" as an absurd part of the culture war.
Very fun. The only war on protein I have been a part of is personally removing hundreds of pounds of protein from circulation. By eating it. I think I'm winning.
I hear the most ironic stuff on glp from the people I know on it. So doctor is obviously a reasonable person with an interest in making people healthy, not trying to set up glp addicts, and are encouraging better diet and increased exercise while eventually tapering and getting them off the glp entirely as the final end goal.
The whole time they are telling me this I can't help but wonder what the hell is the point of the glp1 here? You still have to improve diet and regularly exercise anyhow. So its like there is no point. Might as well just rip the bandaid off, diet and exercise, get there 6 months slower, while not taking the glp. Like wouldn't you want to actually increase muscle mass while burning fat?
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The fitness market has been moving in that direction for years
I badly wanted no other market to develop but synthesised meat, to produce something at par with natural one.
The industry has successfully marketed and packaged meat as "that thing you buy", hiding the immense and unconscionable cruelty which sentient beings are subjected to.
you can easily opt out of meat eating and try learning not to desire control over every other person
Can elaborate on how wishing for the growth of this market is “the desire to control every other person”?
You don’t often hear from the pro-seal-clubbing lobby.
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Which part did you read as 'desire to control'?
Maybe I've missed it but I see a much more palatable market in "light" meats. It has great flavor and texture but it needs to be part of a composition even if it is just salt and pepper. I've seen really great tasting meatballs in the wild that had less than 4% meat in them, say 5% for lazy calculations. You can feed it to 20 people and get the same results as 19 vegetarians + one meat eater.
Some are so much into meat the vegetarian evangelism has about as much chance as trying to convince them cannibalism is the solution to all world problems.
If you sell them something cheap that tastes great and tell them it has meat in it there is no need for all that tiresome talking about saving the world on an empty stomach. They become easy to catch and kill.
In the UK there's a meme that Richmond's plant-based sausages taste better than their "meat" sausages because they already had years of experience making sausages with no meat in them. "Meme" in the sense of "funny because it's true", even many meat-eaters agree. In processed food so much of the "meat" product is already pork eyeballs and chicken anuses that there's zero difference in substituting it with something that doesn't count as "meat" but with a similar texture.
This is the moment, but they refuse to market the product in a way that is acceptable, (and adds affordability) to consumers.
If they would do a 55/45 beef/plant-based meat blend and burgers, I think adoption rate would pick up significantly. Anybody who questions the taste is going to see that beef is the main ingredient. If the product comes in significantly cheaper than beef alone, more consumers will try it and look to it as an affordable way of eating beef.
For the bigger picture, 65 cows will stretch as far as 100 cows previously did, lowering suffering, environmental damage, inputs, etc.
For the people who like the 55/45 blend, it would open the door to an 80/20 blend plant vs. beef, and a 100% plant-based product.
I'm not sure how well it would integrate into a cohesive unit. Veggie meat is pretty weird stuff in terms of cooking with it. It doesn't really want to form cohesive paddies. It is almost like feta cheese where there is a tendency for it to break down into smaller and smaller pieces the more you work it.
Also really hard to cook with imo compared to meat. Meat is nice to cook with from all the fat in there. It just renders out perfectly and also separates it from the pan. You get some nice carmelization, maillard reactions, all the nice stuff going on.
The fake meat is like a sponge for grease on the other hand. Nothing renders out. Stuff gets sucked in. It is like being on the opposite side of the osmosis reaction going on here. And boy do you need grease to cook with this stuff. Otherwise it just fuses to the pan like nothing, and again crumbles apart getting it off. It pretty much needs to be pan fried and soaks up a ton of grease after. You therefore can't trust nutrition guidelines because of the grease requirement to get anything out of this stuff. I bet if you air fried it, it would be absurdly dry.
I mean if we were really concerned with lowering animal suffering we would be changing farming practices. Factory farming is only saving a small amount of the cost of beef over more traditional style cattle farming.
Nothing against mixing beef with plants and the like, but there are far easier ways to improve the welfare of cattle that only costs pennies.
My first thought for this name change would be the European meat lobby prohibiting meat related names for non-animal products.
A protein soda pop, as they're pivoting to, sounds like a gross version of Coca Cola.
The protein bar could work. I personally don't like them, because most of them are just candy bars with added protein.
Meat substitutes (e.g. fake turkey made of tofu) are generally an inferior good, in both the economic sense and the sense of taste. It's not surprising to me that they don't work. Maybe if they're made much cheaper.
For the whole industry is trying to solve a problem that never really existed.
Folks can not like meat for ethical issues but it is a good source of protein and our bodies are designed to eat it. If you don’t want to eat meat there are other good sources of nutrients from a carefully designed vegetarian diet. The whole “fake meat” thing was always just a silly gimmick.
More broadly, as others have highlighted, the result is mostly over-processed lab goo that most health conscious people would avoid. There are plenty of good sources of protein without the need for magic shakes either.
Net here is a business trying to solve problems that aren’t really problems. The stock being down 98.9% is a reflection of that cold reality.
“our bodies are designed to eat it”
Even if that were true, our bodies were designed in a different era. Long before factory farming and antibiotics, long before curing and flavorings. Yes, high quality meat can be healthy but how many people are eating high quality meat?
If you want to criticize Beyond Meat for being processed goop, you must compare it to the meat regular people are eating every day… which is also processed goop but with added antibiotics and disease. The average American consumer would be much healthier if they immediately swapped all of their meat consumption with plant-based alternatives.
You can like the taste of meat but think it's unethical to kill animals for food. It's not necessarily a "problem", but it is something a reasonable person might want, and so there can be a market for it.
There is nothing that says we are "designed" to consume animal protein.
Beyond, Impossible, and the like have suffered from misinformation and an industry-funded, influencer-laden social media smear campaign to paint these alternative products as highly-processed franken-foods.
They are a good alternative for health and environmentally-conscious folks, solve real sustainability challenges, and aren't terrible for you in moderation.
Somehow I liked the goal of Beyond meat, but could never get past the fact that it is too "processed". My rule of thumb regarding food is that the less the processing, the better. I think I was the ideal demographic - meat eater, who doesnt want to kill animals. Id rather have vegetarian alternatives rather than beyond meat.
I think this is an example of an idea which looks great in the hype phase, but doesnt translate to real world traction.
It’s a company that turns plants into meat like substance. There is no plant that grows like this, of course it has to be processed to get from its original form to the new form.
Likewise, not all processing is bad. Cooking food is a form of processing and just makes the nutrients much more easy to digest.
$BYND is also filing their 10-K Annual Report late[1]:
the Company requires additional time to complete a review and analysis related to its inventory balances, including amounts recorded for the provision of excess and obsolete inventory
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1655210/000165521026...
The problem with the value prop for beyond meat is that good vegan food exists. There's no reason why you need to pretend to eat meat, and every meat product they made was clearly inferior to real meat.
Or, in other words, why would you eat mediocre fake meat when good vegan food that doesn't pretend to be meat exists, if your goal is to eat vegan.
I bought shares after the IPO but sold them all after trying their patty and then forgetting the rest in the freezer for 6 months.
I love investing based on feels, rather than DD
I never understood these engineered ultra processed meat imitation products, they are not healthy - period. There's already healthy and delicious cuisines that have developed over thousands of years (Indian, Nepalese, I'm sure many others). This desire to just recreate the SAD (standard American diet) with goo is beyond strange...
> I never understood these engineered ultra processed meat imitation products, they are not healthy - period.
People don't eat burgers for health reasons.
> There's already healthy and delicious cuisines that have developed over thousands of years (Indian, Nepalese, I'm sure many others).
Why eat ice cream when chicken is healthier?
You're comparing apples and oranges. Yes, there are plenty of delicious vegetarian foods, but you can't just substitute one for the other. If you're craving eggplants, replacing it with lentils will not satisfy you.
Then eat a burger if you want a burger, they are healthy if you skip the buns and sugar ketchup and use quality beef. Throw it on a veg salad for a balanced meal.
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They are for vegetarians who want something that tastes similar to a burger.
I wouldn't go as far as saying that. I think for them they want something that has the "utility" of a burger, as in here is some easy protein plus some sundry stuff packaged into a hand holdable unit that is pretty filling on its own and cost like $12 at a restaurant.
The reason is for a lot of them is that they become repulsed by the smell of meat after not eating it for a long time. So they would very much not want something that tastes like meat. They just want the function of the burger really. And to be fair there isn't a lot of good options otherwise for vegetarians that are truly comperable to a burger in terms of it as a product. Veggie lunch meat is even sadder state of affairs than the burger meat so sandwiches are out. Then you have bean burritos I guess, falafel wrap. All stuff that tends to be found solely in ethnic specific restaurants than democratized across the entire globe like the burger is, which you can probably find anywhere you find reliable electricity in 2026.
I'm a vegetarian who likes burgers, but all the flavour in a burger comes from vegetables anyway: the sauces, garnishes, etc, plus cheese, of course. So I just go one step further and replace the patty with something made from veggies too. More delicious, and cruelty free.
You can make thousands of absolutely delicious vegetable dishes. You can adapt another few thousands by replacing the meat with veggies. Why the obsession about ultraprocessed "meat substitutes"?
But thats much different than these gross goos.
Low-protein Indian diets are not healthy. The food certainly tastes good, but let's be real, there's a reason heart disease and diabetes in the subcontinent are stratospheric.
You’re getting downvoted but they do seem to have some of these issues, including the skinny fat problem. But their cuisine sure is tastier than the fake meat and other goop that is pushed, which is even worse for health.
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I really like a good burger, but am somewhat sympathetic to the arguments put forwards about the meat industry and it's impacts.
What's to not understand?
Is animal meat healthy? In small amounts (10% less caloric intake) disease correlation does not increase, but higher then 10%, disease rates see a direct correlatory increase.
The plant meats are healthier than the animal meats.
There’s so such thing as “plant meats”, and yes, animal meat is healthy when balanced with a good diet. What’s killing everyone is the white carbs and sugar, not the meats and fats. Anyone telling you otherwise is ideologically motivated vs science-based.
Make me a low calorie, high protein product that is tasty and I'll buy you. They need to focus on the health nerds
In a world without animal rights, this is sadly inevitable. It would be like doing work without slaves in a world without human rights. Like, yeah, well done, mate, but I'll still be using my slaves, thanks, it's much cheaper.
> In a world without animal rights
And also one where animal agriculture is heavily subsidized.
> not the moment for plant-based meat
It will never be the right moment for plant-based meat. It is ultra processed unhealthy garbage.
The length of the ingredient list tells you everything you need to know. The longer it is, the more processed and unhealthy the "food" is.
Beyond (Meat) already generated bad reps already. The tainted brand won't do well no matter how much they pivot.
If I were vegan, I'd cook my own meals because then I'd really know what's in the food I eat.
Obviously Americans have no qualms about artificial foods or "inferior" substitutes, but it has to be cheaper. Paying a premium price for something that's even a decent facsimile guarantees that the product will remain niche.
I also am disappointed there was no iteration or improvement of the product over time. There was clearly room to innovate or make it taste better - it feels like the product hit, there was some excitement about the novelty... and then they didn't capitalize on it by pushing new variations and updates.
Lets be real: unless fake-meat products become at least the same price as equivalent meat options whats the point?
How big is the market for non-ideological vegans/vegetarians that are shopping for meat alternatives?
Most people are not ideological with their food. Most people will only stop eating meat when it becomes too expensive to afford. Simple as that.
What is the status you gain for being seen eating a beyond burger in 2026?
As a rare non-ideological vegetarian (I just really don't like the taste) you've got the market for this completely backwards. Beyond meat is for ideological vegetarians and vegans who like the taste. Non-ideological ones who would really prefer not to have a meat substitute.
At something like 6% of the world the market the population of ideological vegetarians and vegans is huge. With another handful of percent who are ideologically opposed to eating meat on certain days but not entirely vegetarian.
PS. Your claim that "most people are not ideologic with their food"... Not all food ideology is related to vegetarianism so it's not terribly relevant but I think this claim is just wrong. Islam + Hinduisim + Buddhism make up nearly half the world and all have pretty strong religious ideological beliefs about food, and a non-trivial fraction of the quarter of the world that is christian has at least a few scruples like avoiding meat during lent. And that's just people preaching religious beliefs not less documented ideologies like believing real men eat their steak raw or whatever.
> Beyond meat is for ideological vegetarians and vegans who like the taste.
I must be in bubble or have a very different definition of "idiological": of the dozens of vegans/vegetarians I know none would actively seek the "taste" of industrialized "ready-made" "meat replacement". They may put up with it if must be, but seek it? Desire it?
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> Lets be real: unless fake-meat products become at least the same price as equivalent meat options what's the point?
If you were to make fake plant-based products that were (a) noticeably healthier than meat, and (b) indistinguishable from meat taste-wise (or better-tasting), I'm quite confident a lot of people would pay a premium for that.
The problem is the current products just don't deliver that. All they deliver is eco-friendliness at a premium, at which point they're basically offering something more akin to the optional climate fee on flight tickets.
To me your basically describing a climate fee in your paragraph.
You can already eat healthy, better and more sustainably but doing what humans have done for millions of years. You dont need an industrialized, packaged, convenient and standardized flavour.
Honestly, i have come to see beyond and impossible as a variation of soylent. Its for a very specific and narrow market of people that I'd rather not describe
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I don't think it was ever the moment, even though there has always been a market for plant-based foods, the company assumed that market was far larger than it ever was or will be.
100% of all people alive right now eat plant based food every day.
So true. All protein on the planet, was made from sunlight and photosynthesis. You can eat the animal that ate the plants, but then you lose out on tons of micronutrients and fiber.
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The market is clearly differentiated by animal tissue, specific ones in fact.
It would seem the company, and the market disagrees with you
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The irony is that a lot of people who were interested in plant-based eating didn't actually want hyper-engineered meat replacements in the first place
The beyond patties at Costco are a decent price. Standard retail prices are not so great.
I like em but I think the idea of them being somehow premium doesn’t translate.
They only seem expensive, since the meaty alternatives are higly subsidized.
Costco and similar do have them at a decent price, currently see them 20$ for 10. I think most people just look at the 2 packs, which are more expensive.
It seems like a marketing play to seize on the protein movement. What will they do when fiber becomes the next craze?
100% a better move for the company. expansion into more sectors isn't always a good idea but totally works in this case
One of the underrated ways of reducing meat consumption, imo, would be to mix a certain percentage of plant-based meat to regular meat products. Imagine a world in which McDonald's would just mix 20% plant-based meet to their patties. I can see some risk for them, but honestly, long-term, I don't think people would actually mind much.
The did that in Tesco (uk supermarket) for a couple of years - sold fresh mince that contained 30% carrot and other veg. I used it quite a lot and it was good. But they stopped. I guess it wasn’t popular
oh, what a shame! Also interesting that they stopped that after a couple of years... You'd think that it would either flop from the beginning or just work
On this subject, my university rolled out mushroom-blended beef burgers in the 2010s. They were poorly received for replacing beef burgers entirely.
I wasn't vegan or vegetarian at the time and I thought they were just a complete improvement over beef burgers. But I think that thick congealing beef fat is gross and that it's just better mixed with mushroom juice, and I also already liked mushrooms.
Isn't that already being done to a certain extent with things like chili? They add TVP to supplement the meat, and people see it as a very negative thing.
You can already do that to great effect by mixing in mushrooms, the end result tastes great and doesn't require a billion dollar company providing fake meat.
We bought and tried their products several times only to find they were no different than a basic veggie burger or whatever. We couldn’t figure out what the hype was even about. And then I started reading about how their ingredient list wasn’t the healthiest.
Just seemed like just another weird Silicon Valley money bubble built on hype and vc cash instead of any kind of meaningful product differentiation.
Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s our genuine experience.
Beyond, "I can't believe it's not meat" ... it's not. I'm sure all their 5 vegan customers will keep them afloat.
It was never going to work.
Proprietary food, that you can only buy from one company?
Of course it was doomed to fail. It’s not even about veganism, it’s a cancerous idea.
Proprietary food.. that you can only buy from a single company are all doomed? Might I offer an example that, under some definitions, has not failed despite that strategy. The McRib.
I was going to offer the twinkie but I guess hostess declared bankruptcy, so maybe you're right.
It's not an unreasonable statement though that for the concept to work it has to "jellybean" though: many manufacturers, many variations, same basic product, ubiquitous availability.
Where it sits as a "premium" good doesn't really work as a value proposition.
If that was a good argument, neither Quorn nor Linda McCartney Foods would have been successes.
They're both doing fine.
And Huel.
Likewise beyond just substitutes, all specific sodas, sweets, biscuits*, most breakfast cereals, etc.
* I'm British by birth, I don't mean those scones Americans have with "gravy".
> Proprietary food, that you can only buy from one company
Huh? Isn't that most of it, except for basic grocery ingredients?
> Isn't that most of it, except for basic grocery ingredients?
Only if you live in the us.
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Well that's just beyond.
They could have differentiated on quality instead of serving lower grade proteins and lipids
High-protein fizzy drinks. Barf-o-Rama.
Curious if this has anything to do with Silicon Valley types getting into carnivore diets (though it's been happening for years so maybe not)
I always though Beyond Meat was pretty meh. I've enjoyed Impossible Burgers. I've never enjoyed a Beyond Meat burger.
What a bs. It still grows. Beyond meet was just not unique enough to justify the valuation
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Junk food for vegans.
Highly processed food should be avoided at all costs.
beyond meat was a super cynical bet that ordinary non-vegetarian consumers would no longer be able to afford meat, so they would turn to meat substitutes even if they were more costly than meat had been in the psat
now they are publicly listed, and their cynical premise has not born fruit
time to pivot!
I’m curious about how much money was taken out by insiders who must have known what their costs were internally and how little advancement was made on making the same product at a lower cost.
I remember going to a grocery store for the first time during the pandemic: the meat aisle was completely bare, but there was plenty of Beyond products left on the shelf.
probably the same nowadays most places
Nowhere near real meat, full of ultra-processed junk and more expensive than the real thing. The solution some people here propose: "let's make real meat just as expensive". Yeah sorry, you're not getting my sympathy.