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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

alternative meat

Prime Roots Raises $30M Series B for Deli Meat Made With Koji Mycelium

The average supermarket deli is a sad carnival of sulfites, nitrates, and preservatives that go bump in your belly. There have been a handful of upstarts in the plant-based food space attempting to create a healthy alternative to sliced cotto salami or chunks of smoked roast beef. One Berkeley-based company believes it has a healthy, tasty solution.

Prime Roots, producer of deli-style meat made from koji mycelium, announced $30 million in Series B funding this month from True Ventures, Pangaea Ventures, Prosus Ventures, Top Tier Capital, Diamond Edge Ventures, bringing their total funding to $50 million. The fresh funding will enable Prime Roots to scale and expand to deli counters and restaurants. The company’s alternative deli product currently is available primarily in the San Francisco Bay area.

Growing up with family in the food industry, Prime Roots founder and CEO Kimberlie Le knew that the focus had to be a multi-barreled approach: taste was a must; nutrition was also a consideration, and sustainability also was vital.

“Because I come from a food background, I really wanted to emphasize taste,” Le told The Spoon in a recent interview. “We wanted to make sure the products taste good first and foremost. When we started six years ago, we were also thinking about really the nutrition and the cleanliness of the products. At the time, legacy brands had long ingredient lists and a lot of unpronounceable ingredients. I really wanted to fix that because it wasn’t anything that my mom, who’s a chef, would want to serve in her restaurants or at home. And so really took it upon myself to find a solution that really met the consumer where they are and really solved a personal problem for conscience eaters.”

Prime Roots approaches the deli case with the identical microscopic texture of meat, along with its umami taste made from plants. Experienced chefs helped develop the most popular deli products-including cracked pepper turkey, black forest ham, hickory bacon, salami, and pepperoni to emulate the savory, meaty taste, and texture that consumers demand for meat substitutes. According to the company, Prime Roots’ turkey and ham have no nitrates, preservatives, cholesterol, soy, wheat and are lower in sodium than the leading brands.

Koji is a strain of a fungus used for various culinary purposes, including the production of alcoholic beverages like sake or invaluable condiments like miso and mirin. In the case of creating deli meats, koji ignites the fermentation process when added to other base ingredients. Other companies such as Meati and Aqua Culture Foods use koji in their production of alternative proteins.

Le said that as part of her due diligence, she toured a number of delis across the country including New York, the center for all things corned beef and pastrami. The goal was to see how receptive these landmark eateries would be to a new product.

“When we were working on the concept, the deli concept,” Le recalled, “The first thing we did when we had initial prototypes was go to New York, which is really deli mecca and had prototypes which we would take into some of the most iconic delis and say, ‘Hey, try this’ to see how open and receptive these deli folks were and how the deli culture would be receptive to a plant-based product.”

 “Surprisingly, we didn’t get kicked out of a single place, and everyone was super excited to put the meats on their slicer. They were wowed by the texture, the slicing capabilities, and were just very open and excited.”

The Right’s War on Alt-Meat is Intensifying. Here’s What the Food-Tech Industry Should Do About It

In a new video posted online, far-right firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene claims that the government wants to surveil every aspect of our lives, including what we eat.

“They want to know if you’re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish,” Greene said. “So you’ll probably get a little zap inside your body and that’s saying ‘no, don’t eat a real cheeseburger. You need to eat the fake burger, the fake meat from Bill Gates.'”

Greene’s video is the latest example of the right’s effort to politicize meat alternatives as a way to agitate its base into voting for them and against those who allegedly are scheming to take away their Big Macs. Since the vast majority of these claims are easily disprovable and make us all a little dumber for just hearing them (peach tree dish?), we should ignore them, right?

Wrong. The problem is, as dumb as these statements are, the more they’re repeated, the more likely they take hold in the collective consciousness of consumers and risk becoming widely accepted folk wisdom.

So what should the food tech industry do about it? The most important thing is not to be complacent and be clear in its messaging about its industry and its product, so misinformation doesn’t fill the void.

What exactly should be the message? Here are a few ideas:

No one is taking anyone’s animal meat away. Let’s face it: There’s really nothing more ‘American’ than eating a big slab of red meat, and if Americans think they will be forced to do anything (or have something they like taken away from them), many will reflexively react negatively. The alternative meat industry needs to be clear that its goal is to make plant-based and cultivated meat good enough that consumers choose it over the alternatives. And those who want to continue to pay ever-higher prices for traditional factory-farmed meat will always have that option. Speaking of higher prices…

Real meat has lots of problems, including a rising price tag. One of the reasons red-meat Americans might actually consider an alternative is that real meat has lots of issues, including being a vector for viruses, it’s cruel and often unhealthy. But perhaps the most significant negative for everyday Americans when it comes to meat is it’s getting a lot more expensive. Alternatives to industrialized meat might not only taste just as good and be healthier but there’s a good chance they will also be more affordable in the future.

There are a lot of options when it comes to meat alternatives. Not every meat alternative is built the same. There are plant-based alternatives that rely heavily on science to taste like the real thing, there’s real meat grown in bioreactors instead of animals, and there are meat alternatives that don’t pretend to be meat at all. There are many options for different preferences, and the industry should try to be clear if one doesn’t fit your needs, another might.

Stop using terms like ‘synthetic meat’. I’m looking at you, Bill Gates. Gates used the term in an interview with MIT Technology Review, despite the fact the type of meat he’s invested in with Upside Foods (formerly Memphis Meats) isn’t synthetic at all. It’s real meat, only instead of being grown on an animal, it’s grown in a bioreactor. While this might seem like nitpicking, terms like ‘synthetic’ and ‘lab-grown’ – while often wrongly applied – really turn consumers off and are easily weaponized by culture warrior-minded politicians looking for their next grievance to make hay with on social media.

The reality is the politicization of meat is only going to intensify, and if the alt-protein industry wants to avoid becoming a casualty of the political culture wars, they need to get their messaging straight and do it soon.

Meati Adds Steak Filets to Its Roster of Mycelium Alt-Meats

Meati co-founder Tyler Huggins radiates the right blend of entrepreneurial enthusiasm and practical knowledge to catapult common mushroom threads into a popular staple for healthy consumers. Huggins walks the walk as a visionary in the future of food space with a diverse background that includes a stint as a field biologist for the U.S. Forest Service, a research engineer, a consultant in the wastewater industry, and a co-founder of a healthy snack company.

“I really dedicate my life to harnessing nature’s power and beauty and then guiding it to help produce sustainable food,” Huggins told The Spoon in a recent interview.

With initial success from the launch of Meati’s mycelium-based alt-chicken and alt-beef cutlets, the company has announced a new product, Meati Steak Filet, which will be available on May 23 directly to consumers through the company’s website. Four steak filets, which should be prepared much as one would cook a steak, will sell for $35.

Like other Meati offerings, the steak fillets are a whole food rich in nutrition. A single serving has only 0.5g of fat and zero cholesterol. It is 120 calories along with 14g of protein, 9g of dietary fiber, and a host of micronutrients such as Riboflavin, Niacin, Folate, Vitamin B12, Zinc, and Copper.

The fermentation process from mushroom roots to the finished product has evolved to become a smooth, sustainable effort, but years of hard work are behind Meati’s success.

“There was a lot of trial and error. We spent over two years and millions of dollars of government grant money to figure out the cultivation and the fermentation part of this process,” Huggins explained.  
And then it was, how do you take all these mushrooms and actually make meat out of it? That was a whole other couple of years because what we do is we make sure we ensure wholesome nutrition. The mushroom roots are actually alive during the entire process. We gently form and orientate the root structure in different ways to mimic different muscles and give you different textures.”

Huggins said that Meati is in the midst of a significant physical expansion, but in doing so, the company looked at other industries for ways to scale without reinventing the wheel. “We looked into other industries and found several analogs. Our existing processes are already scaling, and we said, okay, we’ll take one from here and another from food processing. And we’ve created this unique sort of hybrid of industrial processes where we don’t need some sort of technological breakthrough to be successful.”

The future for Meati includes testing retail distribution in the second half of 2022 and a continued effort to create a brand sanction between itself and the countless other alt-meat products. Beneath it all, Huggins’ passion for delivering a clean, healthy, nutritious product is his and Meati’s north star.

“I look at nature as sort of a toolbox, you know,” Huggins said. “Three billion years of evolution have designed all sorts of different tools. And I believe that most of our problems can be solved by looking into nature because nature’s problem is already solved.”

Melt&Marble Raises €5 Million For Fermentation-Derived Fat That Tastes and Melts Like the Real Thing

In the first wave of plant-based “meat,” the marketing challenge was about convincing customers that giving up meat needn’t create a hole in their regular diet. For the Impossibles, Beyonds, and others, developing a reasonable, tasty facsimile to the beef or chicken experience got them into millions of homes and in demand on grocer’s shelves. For plant-based meat products to become a savory choice rather than a substitute requires innovators to “kick it up a notch.”

 While the horse race to alt-burger dominance is on, off to the side, innovators have been working on plant-based beef fat that would offer the mouthfeel and umami taste to a host of faux meat products. Included in the alt-beef fat space is Swedish company Melt&Marble which secured a €5 million Series Seed financing round to scale-up production and expand its team.

 Melt&Marble uses precision fermentation to create its plant-based beef fat. Like others in the alternative protein, dairy, meat, and seafood world know, precision fermentation is a robust process but requires a lot of capital to build a proper scalable infrastructure. CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Anastasia Krivoruchko told The Spoon that her company is currently at a lab-scale but will start scaling up in the coming months. It will still be a couple of years until it is fully industrial scale.

Dr. Kriviruchko believes the opportunity for Mouth&Marble is now and in the future based on conversations with plant-based meat providers. “We have talked with many companies about the challenges they are facing with their existing fats,” she said. “When designing our yeast strains, we have been looking into the structure of beef fats and asking ourselves what elements are important for overcoming these challenges. Our prototype has a similar mouthfeel and melting profile to beef fat, which is extremely important for replicating the taste of beef.”

This begs the obvious question about the health-related issues, such as high cholesterol and heart disease, that come with consuming “real” beef fat. Dr. Kriviruchko says such concerns are not present with plant-based beef fat.

“Generally, our fats don’t contain cholesterol, trans-fats, and contaminants. With our technology, we could also potentially integrate healthy bioactive fatty acids into our fats, and this is something that we are keen to explore,” Melt&Marble’s CEO explained.

Melt&Marble’s technology platform was spun out from research work conducted over the past decade by co-founders Dr.  Krivoruchko,  Dr.  Florian  David, and  Professor  Jens  Nielsen at the Chalmers  University of  Technology in  Sweden.  Lever VC led the latest round; an early-stage venture capital firm focused on technologies and brands in the alternative protein space. Lever has previously invested in Good Plant, The Good Spoon, A Dozen Cousins, and others.

If it appears that plant-based beef fat (and other related healthy fats) is a niche market, the number of trailblazers in this emerging sector speaks otherwise. Among Melt&Marble’s competition are Meat-Tech, Mission Barnes, Nourish Ingredients, Hoxton Farms, and Cubiq Foods.

According to Grand View Research, Inc., the global plant-based meat market size will reach $24.8 billion by 2030. A likely scenario, familiar to most emerging tech markets, will be when a few of the best alt-beef fat companies survive by being purchased by either a mega food processor such as Tyson or Cargill or merge with a plant-based market leader like Impossible Foods or Beyond Meat.

What The Heck is Causing The Plant-Based Meat Slowdown?

No two ways about it: Plant-based meat has hit a sales slump.

According to recent data from market watcher SPINS, sales in the overall plant-based meat market dropped 1.8% year over year for the four-week period ending October 3rd. This follows an even bigger drop in the category earlier in 2021 starting around April, when the plant-based category dropped over 15% year over year.

The drop in overall plant-based meat sales jibes with what some industry bellwethers are seeing. According to Michael McCain, the CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, his plant-based meat sales dropped in every channel the company sells into in the third quarter of this year. McCain was perplexed as to the reason and said the company is reevaluating their “investment thesis”.

Maple Leaf wasn’t the only one. Beyond, where company CEO Ethan Brown came out and said the plant-based meat company had seen its sales drop 13.9% year over year and forecast a potentially bumpy road ahead.

So what’s going on here? Fast-growing nascent markets are supposed to go up, not down and down some more.

While there’s no way to know for certain without more data. it’s worth taking a stab at potential causes for the drop in plant-based meat. Here are a few ideas:

Consumers Satiated Their First-Taste Curiosity.

Let’s face it, most of us were curious to sink our teeth into our first Impossible or Beyond burger to see what all the fuss about. Yet, a year or two later, that early curiosity has been satiated, and only some of us are regular plant-based meat-eaters.

Which brings us to…

Not Enough Consumers Have Switched to Plant-Based

While many of us have tried our first plant-based meat, most of us aren’t buying it on a regular basis. According to a recent survey by the Food Information Council, two-thirds of Americans surveyed have tried plant-based meat over the past year, while only 40% of Americans are eating plant-based meat with any regularity. Of those that consume plant-based meat on a regular basis, only about half eat it once a week or so.

Meat Industry Counter-Messaging May Be Working.

I recently suggested that Beyond’s troubles might be a sign that the animal-based meat industry’s negative counter-messaging might be taking hold, and this latest news could be an additional confirmation of that.

While it may be true that while products like Beyond and Impossible are plant-based, the reality is they are also highly processed food with pretty science-forward ingredients. This reliance on a future-forward ingredient list provides an opening for criticism from the legacy meat business, which uses negative messaging to suggest their animal products are the natural and healthier alternative compared to the high-tech competitors.

Looking at survey data, the incumbents are smart to beat this drum as there are concerns among consumers about what is in these new alternatives. According to a recent study by Menu Matters of 1,025 US households, about half (47.9%) of consumers suggest they want more information about plant-based meat before trying them, and 43.1% want complete transparency of ingredients before they try them.

At this point, it’s hard to tell how much of the concerns about plant-based meat’s ingredient list is driven by top-down talking points or if the message-crafters of the legacy meat business are only echoing what they hear among the meat-eating hoi polloi. It could be a little of both, but no matter where it’s coming from, the plant-based meat industry is seeing the rise of a more skeptical consumer.

Less of Us Ate at Home In The Second Half of 2021

As many Americans got their vaccinations in the first half of this year and governments lifted rules against convening indoors in the spring and summer, people started to eat out more. Early data suggests many people eat most of their plant-based alternatives at home, meaning that more meal occasions outside the house could translate to less plant-based meat consumed overall.

Some Are Down, While Others May Be Up

Last week, Impossible raised a $500 million round while claiming “record growth.” While the release itself focused more on expanding Impossible into new markets, if Impossible’s growth also came on the top line, it would provide a counter-narrative to what we have heard from Beyond, Maple Foods, and SPINS.

As I wrote in early November, the reality is unlike animal-based meat, plant-based meat is not a commoditized product category where one can be easily interchanged with another. Instead, plant-based meat products are more akin to something like cola, where some may prefer Coke while others prefer Pepsi.

In other words, some companies may be seeing sales growth, while others are seeing market share decline.

At this point, we don’t have enough data to say with certainty which factor or factors are contributing to the plant-based meat slump. What we do know is some companies are beginning to at least reevaluate their original assumptions about the market. I have to wonder if this reevaluation of the plant-based market might result, at least in the near term, a slow down seemingly unrelenting flow of venture investment into this category.

Redefine Meat Announces Distribution of 3D-Printed Meat Through Israeli Meat Distributor

Redefine Meat, producers of 3D-printed meat made from plant ingredients, announced this week its new partnership with Israeli meat distributor, Best Meister. This new partnership will enable Redefine Meats to distribute its 3D-printed meat products throughout Israel. Additionally, the two companies hosted a tasting through a food truck in a small town outside of Tel-Aviv, Israel to introduce the public to its products.

According to the press release, the strategic partnership with Best Meister will enable Redefine Meat to brings its 3D printed meat to market in Israel sometime in the first quarter of 2021. The company plans on first distributing its products to high-end restaurants and butchers.

The pilot tasting gave Redefine Meat an opportunity to receive feedback from consumers on its alternative meat product. The food truck tasting offered customers, who were unaware that the products were not animal meat, a variety of traditional Mediterranean dishes that showcased the 3D-printed plant-based meat. The dishes were served with minimal condiments and toppings so the flavor and texture of the 3D-printed meat could come through on its own. Around 600 customers came to the tasting and over 1,000 dishes were served, causing the tasting to sell out in five hours.

Redefine Meat creates its 3D meat from three different components, including what the company calls Alt-Muscle, Alt-Fat, and Alt-Blood. The company’s patented 3D printer layers these three ingredients to create the realistic texture of muscle and tissue. Through this process, the company can develop different cuts of beef, lamb, pork, and other species.

In Israel, Redefine Meat is not the only 3D-printed Meat company; SavorEats is another Israeli 3D meat startup that went public last year on Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. In Spain, NovaMeat produces 3D printed meat made from plant ingredients, with products ranging from steak and pork. Last summer, KFC Russia made the announcement that it would begin developing methods to produce 3D-printed chicken nuggets.

Although 3D-printed meat is currently not a permanent menu item in restaurants or a grocery store staple, Redefine Meat’s successful tasting and new partnership may bring this alternative meat closer to these channels.

Air Protein Raises $32M to Make Meat From Air

Air Protein, a company using technology to make meat from elements in the air, announced today it has completed a $32 million Series A round of fundraising. The round was led by ADM Ventures, Barclays, and GV (formerly Google Ventures), according to a press announcement sent to The Spoon.

Air Protein’s approach to alternative meat is fairly unique at this point in the evolution of alt-protein. The company feeds elements found in the air, such as carbon dioxide, to microbes in a fermentation tank. The microbes ingest the air elements and output a healthy protein that then gets texturized and turned into various alt meat products. Though the company has not yet named specific types of meat it is developing, it does plan to create products it will sell directly to consumers (as opposed to selling to other food producers). 

Speaking on the phone this week, Air Protein’s CEO and cofounder Dr. Lisa Dyson told me the company’s technology is “very flexible” in terms of the types of meat it can produce. And since air protein, the concept, requires very few resources (e.g., land, water) to produce, it can be produced virtually anywhere in the world.  

To that end, San Francisco Bay Area-based Air Protein plans to use its new funds in part to launch an R&D lab that will help develop different types of alt-meats as well as scale production. On the phone, Dr. Dyson said the lab will allow her company to “produce and expand” its product line, and that the forthcoming R&D innovation lab will be key to that process. 

Air Protein will also use the new funds to recruit and build up its team of employees.

For now, at least, the company is focused on producing only meat alternatives. As Dr. Dyson explained, the traditional meat industry is one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet, as well as an industry that uses unsustainable amounts of resources like land and water. But demand for meat continues to rise, and with a global population moving steadily towards 10 billion people by 2050, the need for alternatives gets more urgent each year. “We need solutions and Air Protein is excited to be one of those solutions,” Dr. Dyson said. 

She was quick to applaud the efforts of other types of alternative meat production, including plant-based meat, and suggested that due to the sheer amount of demand globally for meat, opportunity exists now and will continue to for many different methods and companies. Air Protein’s high-tech, resource-light method for meat is one way to satiate the planet’s appetite for meat without incurring so heavy an environmental burden. 

The Food Tech Show: Lab-Grown Meat vs. The Internet

Happy Friday!

Heading out early for the final weekend before election day? Listen to The Food Tech Show podcast on your way!

In this week’s editor roundtable episode of The Food Tech Show, we talk about whether lab-grown meat can scale like the Internet, Ordermark’s massive new funding round earmarked to help them build out their ghost kitchen and virtual restaurant strategy, Coca Cola’s acquisition of a coffee robot startup, and whether or not the term “veggie burger” has a future in Europe.

As always, you can find The Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just play directly below.

Very Good Butchers Will Soon Bring its Vegan Meats to the U.S.

Very Good Butchers, a Canadian-based vegan meat shop, announced this week that it will be expanding to the U.S. The company began trading in the Canadian Stock Market in June, and since then, has raised $8.5 million from its public offerings. It will use this money to increase production in its Victoria, B.C. facility, and support its expansion into U.S. retail.

Very Good Butchers offers a myriad of plant-based meat alternatives; steaks, ribs, bangers, and roast beef to name a few, using ingredients such as vital wheat gluten, jackfruit, a variety of beans, and a combination of vegetables and spices. These different cuts of vegan meat are available for individual purchase through its website a la carte, or the company offers a monthly meat club membership, which ships six of its best sellers to your door every month.

Beyond Meat was the first plant-based meat company to go public with its stock in May 2019, and became the best performing stock of the year. Very Good Butchers is now the second plant-based meat company to go public, and saw a 790 percent increase in shares. Another Canadian meat alternative company, Modern Meat, quickly followed suit and went public with its stock in July 2020. And with the market growing, plant-based meat IPOs won’t end there.

This is the second consecutive year where plant-based food retail sales have grown five times faster than total food sales. The plant-based food market is now worth $5 billion, with the category of plant-based meats approaching a value of $1 billion alone. COVID-19 disruptions in meat packaging plants and the fear of the virus spreading through animals have contributed to consumers reaching for plant-based meat alternatives.

Very Good Butchers didn’t say when it will begin its expansion down south to U.S. retailers. In the meantime, the company has brought on three new logistics partners that will allow three-day shipping of its products anywhere in the U.S. and Canada.

VeggieVictory, Nigeria’s First Plant-Based Meat Company, Receives Angel Investment

VeggieVictory announced last week that it has raised its first round of angel investment. This first round of funding was led by Ryan Bethencourt, founder and CEO of Wild Foods based in California, and Anant Joshi, the U.K.-based founder of PLANT CEO. The investment sum was not disclosed.

VeggieVictory says it is Nigeria’s first plant-based meat company. Starting out of their restaurant located in Lagos, the company created a variety of soy-based meat alternatives to incorporate into Nigerian cuisine dishes, as well as vegan hot dogs, burger patties, and shawarma. Additionally, they released VegMeat, which is a shelf-stable, plant-based alternative that mimics chunks of beef and does not need to be refrigerated.

We aren’t aware of much competition for VeggieVictory in Nigeria (if you’re a plant-based protein startup there, drop us a line!). Elsewhere in Africa, Infinite Foods is becoming a well-known name for alt-protein. The company, a subsidiary of Botswana-based Accite Holdings, partners with some well-known plant-based brands, including Beyond and Oatly, selling those companies products to grocery stores, restaurants, and e-commerce platforms. 

VeggieVictory plans on offering additional plant-based meat products in the future and announced that vegan beef jerky will be one of them. Their products are currently available in 12 states within Nigeria, and they plan on expanding to neighboring West African countries.

I Tried Meati Foods Mycelium-Based Steak, it was Definitely Meaty

Usually, you serve steak with mushrooms. But on my recent visit to SALT Bistro in Boulder, CO, I ordered a steak made out of mushrooms. Well, fermented fungi to be exact.  

Emergy Foods, also based in Colorado, is the company behind the Meati Foods brand of mycelium-based steak. The promise of mycelium is that it can better mimic the look and mouthfeel of whole cuts of meat. Getting those textures and flavors right isn’t easy, which is why companies like Impossible and Beyond started with ground products like burgers. 

So when SALT added the “Bahn Meati Sandwich,” I had to make the trip to try it out. Coming in at a whopping $16, it was quite a stretch for my millennial budget. It is served on a house-made ciabatta bun, with a pile of pickled veggies and sriracha aioli. (I recommend ordering it with a side of the polenta fries.) 

When it arrived, I immediately noticed how juicy the thick slices of “steak” in the sandwich were. If I didn’t know it was plant-based, I easily would have confused it for real meat. As I took my first bite the word “succulent” popped into mind. It had a vague savory/umami flavor, and a flesh-like texture. This might be a turnoff for vegans who shun meat in the first place. But as a vegan myself, I was actually hoping for a little more of the fattiness and char of steaks I ate in my pre-vegan days. 

Mycelium-based meat alternative products are newer in the plant-based space but there are several companies offering up fungi as a meat alternative. Prime Roots uses koji, the same fungus used to make miso, to create a realistic plant-based bacon. AtLast is also creating an alternative bacon product by growing sheets of mycelium. 

Meati Foods initially plans to offer their steaks in upscale restaurants to build their brand and manage a young supply chain. On its Instagram account, Meati announced that they are working to get Meati in different cities by Fall 2020. I look forward to ordering it again, though my budget would much prefer to see strips of Meati on a $3 plant-based carne asada taco in the future.

Wendy’s is Semi-Secretly Testing a Plant-Based Burger in Canada

Wendy’s seems to be following in McDonald’s footsteps and launching a plant-based burger in Canada. In September McDonald’s began testing a meat-free burger in select Canadian locations. Earlier today, vegan advocacy sites LiveKindly and VegNews reported that social media picked up an outdoor Wendy’s advertisement in Toronto showing a burger called “The Plentiful” along with the words: “Where’s the beef? Not here.”

The fast-food chain hasn’t publicly announced the new burger yet, nor is it listed on its website. According to LiveKindly, The Plentiful is made from pea protein and is served with non-vegan cheese and mayonnaise.

And… that’s about all we know for sure. It’s unclear how much The Plentiful will cost, how many Wendy’s locations will offer it, or how long it will be available. Perhaps most importantly, we don’t know which brand of plant-based burger is on The Plentiful or whether it’s made from a patty developed internally by Wendy’s. Since we know the burger is pea protein-based, that rules out Impossible, which is made from soy and potato protein — but not Beyond.

If indeed The Plentiful is made with a Beyond Burger, Wendy’s would really be taking a page from McDonald’s book. The latter began testing a plant-based burger made with a Beyond patty called the P.L.T. (Plants, Lettuce, Tomato) in select locations in Canada this September. If this is the case, both Wendy’s and McDonald’s chose to omit the Beyond brand name from their new menu items — a move that I think is a missed opportunity to draw in new consumers familiar with the Beyond media buzz.

Regardless, it’s not a huge surprise that Wendy’s is hopping on the plant-based meat trend. During this year’s second-quarter review call Wendy’s CEO Todd Penegor acknowledged the popularity of meat alternatives and said it was something that the fast-food chain would “look into.” Right after that Wendy’s fans gathered around 30,000 signatures on a petition calling the restaurant to add a plant-based burger to its menu.

Canada seems to be prime territory for fast food restaurants to test out new plant-based products. In addition to McDonald’s, 7-Eleven began selling a Beyond Meat pizza in the Great White North. Canadian chains Tim Horton’s and A&W were some of the first major fast-food chains to add Beyond Meat to their menus — though Tim Horton’s has since stopped serving the meat alternative in all but two regions.

We’ve reached out to Wendy’s and will update the post when we hear back. Until then, if you’re a Spoon reader in Toronto, give The Plentiful a try and tell us what you think!