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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Beyond Beef

Impossible, Brave Robot, Magic Spoon. Are We Near a Tipping Point for New Foods?

To borrow from Phil Collins, there is definitely something in the air when it comes to the food in our kitchens. While I don’t think we are fully there yet, it feels like we are the cusp of major changes to what we eat at home.

I got to thinking about this last week when I noticed my day started eating a bowl of Magic Spoon‘s “healthy” sugary cereal and ended with a few bites of Brave Robot’s non-animal flora-based ice cream.

Neither of these products existed little more than a year ago. Both sell direct to consumer. And both are new formulations of old standbys angling to replace existing products we currently stock in our cupboards.

Oh, and both are delicious.

They are also expensive. It’s $40 for four boxes of Magic Spoon and $58 for four pints of Brave Robot. That’s WAY too expensive to be mainstream right now. So even though my kitchen carries these items, I recognize that I am a very off to the side as an edge case.

It would be cliché to say that we’re in the first inning of this food tech game and that prices will come down as those companies scale up. Of course they will. The point of this post is that we aren’t in first inning any more.

In addition to new cereals and ice cream, my freezer is full of Impossible and Beyond plant-based meat, I drink oatmilk, I enjoy JUST egg products, I’ve become addicted to Pig Out plant-based pork rinds, and I’m anxiously awaiting the day Loca will sell its plant-based cheese online.

All of these products feel mature. They aren’t almost there, they’re here, and they have arrived at just the right time and they are at scale. Sales of plant-based foods were already growing before the pandemic, which added some rocket fuel to the mix. And now, these new foods don’t have to rely on traditional retail infrastructure to reach consumers. Brands can market on social media and sell directly through their own websites. Like Magic Spoon and Brave Robot, Impossible has its own sales channel, as does Pig Out and Beyond will soon be following suit.

This is good because consumers are getting used to buying their food online. The pandemic pushed people into record amounts of grocery e-commerce. And now that we’ve been doing it for months and formed new habits, the idea of buying food — especially non-produce items — online is almost second nature.

There is still a ways to go, I’d call this the end of the first quarter, and dominance perpetuates itself, so existing big CPG players will remain big (think: Oreos and Doritos and such). But looking at where we are now, the next generation of food products becoming our new normal is no longer against all odds (the superior Phil Collins song).

A Vegetarian’s Review of Beyond Beef — It Might Be Too Meaty

When I first heard Beyond Meat was releasing a ground beef-like product, I immediately started anticipating what I would do with it once I got my hands on a pack. Burgers, sure. But also meatballs, bolognese, even tacos?

Last week I finally got the chance to put those plans into action when I was shopping at my local Whole Foods and my eyes landed on a fresh new lineup of Beyond Beef. I decided to put the Beyond Beef to the test in the simplest way possible: burgers. Coincidentally I also had a pack of Lightlife’s meatless burgers in my fridge, so I opted to cook up both plant-based offerings for comparison’s sake.

Left, Lightlife. Right, Beyond Beef. (Photo: Catherine Lamb)

Beyond Beef looks like ground beef. It has the same reddish hue, texture, and is even speckled with white bits of fat (made from coconut oil). It was easy to shape into a patty shape — perhaps even easier than real beef, which you have to handle very delicately to avoid toughening.

As I cooked the Beyond Beef the fat rendered out and sizzled and the burger changed from red to brown. But it was as soon as I bit into the Beyond Beef burger that I knew something was really different. The texture was exactly like beef (at least the way I remember it): loose and tender, speckled with pockets of juicy fat. By comparison, the Lightlife burger had a tougher texture and their flavor, while meaty, had the off-putting aftertaste that many pea protein products struggle with.

Left: Beyond Beef. Right: Lightlife. (Photo: Catherine Lamb)

In truth, the Beyond Beef was almost too realistic for me. I haven’t eaten meat in five years, and eating a Beyond Beef burger was almost too close to the real thing for comfort. Even when I made the remainder into bolognese later in the week (you guessed it — it cooks up just like ground beef) I had trouble finishing it; the beefy flavor permeated the whole sauce in a way that was a little too strong for my liking.

But the real reason I likely won’t buy Beyond Beef again is why so many others will. Beyond isn’t targeting vegetarians or vegans to buy its products (though many certainly do and will). Instead, they’re hoping to attract flexitarians: people trying to cut down their meat consumption, for health or environmental reasons, but don’t want to give up burgers, meatballs, or tacos. With the new Beyond Beef I think they’ve nailed it.

That said, there’s one big reason Beyond Meat might have trouble capturing a mainstream audience: it’s expensive. A pack of Beyond Beef, which is 16 ounces, cost $9.99 at my local Whole Foods. It has four servings, which means it’s actually a better deal than the Beyond burgers (which cost $5.99 for a pack of two). But it’s still almost triple the price of your average ground beef. Organic, grass-fed beef is roughly the same price as Beyond Beef, but Beyond will have to get its cost down before it can hope to tear the average consumer away from beef.

Photo: Beyond Meat

Separately, I’m curious to see whether Beyond Beef is helped or hurt by the entrance of Impossible Foods into the retail space later this year. Impossible hasn’t yet announced if they’ll be selling their “beef” as burger patties or ground meat. However, seeing how much emphasis the company has been putting on the versatility of its product, I’m guessing it’ll be the latter.

That means we could soon have the two main plant-based meat companies duking it out for ground “beef” supremacy of the grocery aisle. However, I don’t think it’s a winner-take-all situation; when it comes to meatless ground meat, there are so few good-tasting options that there’s likely room for both players to flourish.

And room for more to enter the scene. Startups like U.K.-based Meatless Meat, which is heading onto Whole Foods, are offering new plant-based options in retail. Big Food companies like Tyson and Perdue are also dipping their toes into the alt-protein space with their blended products, which combine meat and plants. Just this week Gardein, which is owned by Conagra, announced it’s developing its own line of meat-like meat alternatives, including a burger that looks a heckuva lot like Beyond Meat’s.

Despite the competition ahead, with its versatility, Beyond Beef is a great step by the company to bring plant-based meat to consumers’ plates in a variety of different dishes. Just not mine.

Beyond Meat Debuts New ‘Ground Beef’ Product at Boulder, CO Whole Foods

Beyond Meat announced today via social media that they’re beginning to sell their Beyond Beef product in select Whole Foods.

In posts on Instagram and Twitter, the El Segundo, Calif.-based company wrote that the Whole Foods Market on Pearl Street in Boulder, CO “will be the first grocery store to offer #BeyondBeef.” According to the post, the Pearl Street Whole Foods was also the first grocery store to put the Beyond Burger in its meat section three years ago.

Beyond first released news about the Beyond Beef product in March. The ground beef-like product will be made of the same mixture of pea, rice, and mung bean proteins as the Beyond Burgers, but will have a more neutral flavor profile and also better binding properties (so it can form meatballs, dumplings, etc). Beyond Beef will have 25 percent less saturated fat than traditional beef and no cholesterol.

The social posts don’t release any pricing data. Beyond teased that a nationwide expansion is coming, though the company has yet to give a timeline.

Lately, Beyond Meat is on fire. The El Segundo, Calif.-based company went public in May, after which their IPO popped 400 percent in its first month. Last week it released its first-quarter earnings report, in which Beyond predicted that it would have a net revenue of over $210 million by the end of 2019.

But competition is a-coming. Beyond’s plant-based meat competitor Impossible Foods is also planning to head into retail by the end of this year. However, Impossible has been struggling with supply issues lately, so we’ll have to wait and see if they can stick to their timeline.

Regardless of when Impossible gets there, Beyond is certainly facing more plant-based competition in the grocery aisle. By diversifying into more versatile products, like Beyond Beef, they’re better positioned to attract more customers and better build brand recognition in the (fake) meat aisle.

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Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio Makes a Titanic Investment in Pea-Protein Burgers

Finding “fake” meat isn’t a problem these days. Grocery stores are packed with the stuff. The bodega around the block sells it. Hell, even Ikea introduced a vegan Swedish meatball in response to customer feedback about healthier café food.

Trouble is, most of these options are poor substitutes for the real deal, and they’re not doing much to persuade the everyman to go vegetarian or vegan.

Which brings us to Leonardo DiCaprio.

This week, the Hollywood star and active environmentalist announced his involvement as an investor in Beyond Meat, a startup that’s using pea protein to create burger patties. Bill Gates is also an investor, and the move makes sense for Leo, whose list of environmentally focused causes and companies keeps growing. He’s already an investor in LoveTheWild, a sustainable seafood company, as well as plant-based snack maker Hippeas. And there’s his own foundation, too. “Shifting from animal meat to the plant-based meats developed by Beyond Meat is one of the most powerful measures someone can take to reduce their impact on our climate,” he said in a statement.

He’s actually been giving Beyond Meat feedback on their products since the company’s earliest days. But the financial backing should help Beyond as it moves to get its products into more locations and convince the general populace that alternative-meat can maintain taste as well as your reputation at the tailgate party.

To that end, company website claims their burger, “looks, cooks, and satisfies so much like beef that it’s in the meat section of grocery stores.” One reporter went as far as to document her experience cooking and eating a Beyond burger, and had mostly pleasing results.

Where a lot of meat alternatives use grain, soy, or seitan for their products, Beyond, along with a few other companies, looks to provide an option that’s still rich in things like iron and protein, and, most important, mimics the taste and texture of real beef.

That latter fact could prove to be a really big differentiator as the food industry continues to search for ways of making the most iconic American dish more sustainable. There’s overwhelming evidence that beef production is irrevocably hurting the environment. The EWG estimates that beef (along with lamb) puts out 10 to 40 times as many greenhouse gas emissions as grains and vegetables. Meanwhile, methane from cattle generates 20 percent of all U.S. methane emissions.

Despite all that, beef remains in high-demand. And that’s what makes companies like Beyond Meat potentially so exciting. They’re not just producing another version of the veggie patty; they’re trying to stay sustainable and satisfy public tastes at the same time. Their products are an actual alternative, rather than a mediocre substitute. Even TGI Fridays thinks so.

Impossible Foods is another company experimenting with plant-based beef substitutes. Their mission is similar to Beyond’s: provide a more sustainable way for people to enjoy meat. They also announced $75 million in funding earlier this year.

Impossible is currently focused on getting into more restaurants, which leaves the retail sector mostly to Beyond. The Beyond Meat burger is the first of the company’s products to sit alongside actual meat at the grocery store, which is another big step towards convincing skeptical consumers that meatless, er, meat is an enticing alternative.

And that’s probably going to be the biggest challenge for companies building a business model on alternative-meat. Until consumers can be motivated to change their outlook and behavior, meat substitutes, whether plant-based or made in a lab, will get bypassed by more consumers than not.

Of course, history is full of technologies and innovations that were initially met with skepticism and are now all the rage. (Hi, Tesla.) The same may prove true for startups like Beyond Meat. And getting high-profile celebrities like Leo involved is definitely a start when it comes to influencing consumer choices.