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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

beef

Beyond Meat Goes Beyond Burgers with New Ground Beef-Like Product

Today Beyond Meat, the El Segundo, CA-based startup behind popular plant-based burgers, chicken strips, and sausages, announced a new product: Beyond Beef. The new product is meant to have the taste and texture of real beef, but, will have 25 percent less saturated fat and also, you know, be made of plants.

Both Beyond Beef and the Beyond Burger are made of a blend of pea, rice, and mung bean proteins. However, according to the Beyond Meat website, Beyond Beef will have a more “neutral flavor and aroma” than the Beyond Burger patties, making it a culinary blank canvas. It also has “a unique binding system” that will let it better hold shapes — like meatballs — better. Unlike Beyond’s Beef Crumbles, the new product will be raw and served in the fresh meat section of the supermarket.

The main difference is that Beyond Beef seems more versatile than the burger. Sure, you could break up a Beyond Meat burger patty and turn it into meatballs, or bolognese, or taco filling (which Beyond has clearly been doing with their Del Taco partnership). But the less creative cook might not think of that, bypassing the Beyond burgers for other meaty or plant-based alternatives.

Photo: Beyond Beef

By repackaging their burger “meat,” Beyond is opening the door to a whole slew of new preparations, as well as consumers that are looking for plant-based meat but don’t necessarily want a sausage, burger, or chicken strip for dinner.

Beyond Beef will launch in retail later this year, though the exact timing and price is still TBD. I wonder if they’ll beat Impossible Foods to the grocery shelves. Impossible is rolling out in retail at some point this year, though the company hasn’t yet announced if they’ll be selling their plant-based meat in pre-formed patties or in blocks, à la the new Beyond Beef.

Seeing as how Impossible has been placing lots of emphasis on the versatility of its product — they served it as empanadas, tartare, and tacos when they unveiled the new version of their “meat” at CES — I’m guessing it’s the latter. Which will make it all the more interesting to see if Impossible or Beyond ends up dominating as the alterna-meat ruler of the grocery aisle.

However, with the fast-growing popularity of plant-based meat, there will likely be plenty of opportunities for both companies to make their way into your meatloaf, hoagies, and dumplings.

This post has been updated with more information about Beyond Beef’s flavor profile from the Beyond Meat website. 

Seattle Shake Shack Goes Super Local with Crowd Cow Beef

Seattle has been salivating over our forthcoming Shake Shack for months. The Emerald City may have the iconic Dick’s Burgers, mountains of local produce, and more oysters than you can shake a stick at, but something about the Danny Meyer-led chain’s cheeseburgers, crinkle fries, and ice cream concretes has created a rabid fan base for the soon-to-be restaurant.

The new Shake Shack will open in Seattle’s Westlake neighborhood, smack dab in the middle of the sprawling Amazon campus, and will come with a few locally-inspired menu items. Chief among them is the Montlake Double Cut, which Seattle Met revealed today would be a double cheeseburger made with local beef sourced from Crowd Cow, topped with Just Jack cheese from Seattle institution Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, caramelized onions, and a mustard-mayo sauce on a locally made Macrina bakery bun.

Shake Shack has a history of teaming up with local institutions to add regional-specific dishes to the menus of its new outposts. For example, for its Austin, Texas location, the company created a burger topped with jalapeno-cheese sausage from Texas barbecue spot Kreuz Market. However, this Seattle creation marks the first time the chain has ever made a change to its custom-blended beef patties.

Honestly, we can’t wait to try the Crowd Cow burgers. (I’m a vegetarian, and I’m still excited about the partnership.) Crowd Cow is an online service that lets consumers buy craft beef (and chicken, and pork, and fish) from local farmers, then delivers it directly to their door. The Seattle-based startup recently raised $8 million to expand their network of farmers and improve their supply chain.

This partnership was a savvy move on Shake Shake’s part. By partnering with a marketplace like Crowd Cow, they can feature locally raised beef from small farms without ever worrying about hiccups in their supply. If a certain farm can’t provide meat one week, Crowd Cow can always search its marketplace to source some more.

By developing a burger that’s not only regionally-inspired but also made of regionally-sourced beef, the New York-based chain can attract customers who might typically avoid chain restaurants. “Shake Shack was looking to do something very particular to Seattle,” Crowd Cow co-founder Ethan Lowrey told me over the phone.

Not only is their beef local, it’s also much higher quality than you’ll see in a store or restaurant — even the fancy ones. The cows in Crowd Cow’s marketplace are raised for steak, which means their meat is a superior grade. “Our secret weapon is our ground beef,” Lowrey said. “Even if you compare it with the nicest ground beef you buy in a store, it’s just night and day.”

By sourcing beef from Crowd Cow, Shake Shack can capitalize on recent demands for transparent meat sourcing. As my colleague Chris Albrecht wrote a few months ago:

According to The Power of Meat report, conventional meat sales were flat in 2017, while meat with special production (natural, organic, etc.) and claims about ethical animal treatment saw “dollar gains of 4.8 percent and volume growth of 5.1 percent.” 

As far as we can tell, this partnership is the first time that Crowd Cow has sold their meat to a high-volume restaurant. Let’s hope the growing startup can keep up with the demand of Shake Shack-crazed Seattleites.

Beyond beef, Shake Shack will also add a few local creations to its menu of concretes (basically, extra-thick milkshakes): one with seasonal pie from A La Mode Pies, one with Theo’s dark chocolate, and another with brittle made from Sea Wolf croissants.

There’s no official word on the opening day for the Westlake Shack Shack, though it’s rumored to be sometime in the next few weeks. If you get to stop in and order the Montlake Double Cut, be sure to tweet us @TheSpoonTech and tell us how you liked it.

Crowd Cow Beefs Up with $8M, Adds Ashton Kutcher as Investor

Crowd Cow, the online service that allows consumers to buy craft meat direct from independent farms, announced today that it has raised $8 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Madrona Venture Group and had participation from Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures as well as existing investors Joe Montana (yes, that Joe Montana) of Liquid 2 Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Crowd Cow to $10 million.

According to a press announcement, the new funding will help the company add ranches and farms to its platform, improve its supply chain and go “all-in on the search for new and unique flavors in categories like Craft Beef, Pastured Chicken, Heritage Pork, and beyond.”

Crowd Cow works by having “steakholders” purchase various cuts of a specific cow. Once the entire cow is purchased, the cow is “tipped” and then goes on to be processed, and its meat is packaged, frozen, and shipped directly to buyers.

I spoke with Crowd Cow founders Joe Heitzeberg and Ethan Lowry who said that they are creating this new type of communication loop. Crowd Cow is telling consumers exactly where their meat is coming from, and in turn, customer are providing feedback about the product directly back to the ranchers. Something the ranchers have never experienced before.

It’s transparency like this that consumers are looking for in their meat purchases. According to The Power of Meat report, conventional meat sales were flat in 2017, while meat with special production (natural, organic, etc.) and claims about ethical animal treatment saw “dollar gains of 4.8 percent and volume growth of 5.1 percent.” Millennials in particular like this type of special production, ensuring a market for Crowd Cow in years to come.

In addition to sourcing, Crowd Cow is doing work on the technology side with the supply chain, creating a logistics network that is able to process the meat near where the cow is raised, yet deliver it around the country. They even monitor weather at their customers’ various locations so that their algorithms can determine the proper amount of ice needed to keep the meat from spoiling on any doorstep.

Crowd Cow’s combination of small connection with farms and large scale distribution is partly what attracted investors. Heitzeberg and Lowry actually got a cold investment inquiry email from Kutcher, who grew up in Iowa and had worked as a butcher at one point. Interestingly, this also isn’t the only food-related investment for Kutcher, who is also an investor in the June Oven.

This type of conscientious meat capitalism is catching on. Just north of Seattle-based Crowd Cow is Vancouver, Canada’s Meatme, which also connects meat buyers with local ranchers.

Crowd Cow has also been expanding beyond beef in recent months, adding chicken, pork and seafood (though the seafood page appears to be down as of this writing). And on Memorial Day, the company is offering Wagyu beef from Japan in a special event.

Speaking of events, Lowry will be at The Spoon’s Future of Meat event tonight in Seattle. Look for a wrap up of what he and all our panelists have to say in a post here later this week.