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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Beyond Meat

New School Foods Swims Against the Current In Its Approach to Alternative Proteins

In business, the daring entrepreneurs zig when others zag. In the world of plant-based alternative proteins, Chris Bryson, CEO and founder of New School Foods, decided to zig his way into a new approach, introducing a new patented freezing process to create whole cuts of salmon.

New School Foods, based in Toronto, comes out of stealth mode with a strong ambition fueled by research, investment capital, and a mission. As Bryson told The Spoon in a recent interview, companies in the plant-based protein space have primarily focused on small cuts such as nuggets and burgers using a process that uses heat in the extrusion, which precooks the food.

Bryson described how New School differs on both counts.

“We always intended to be a company that focuses on what we call whole cuts, he said. “We see that as sort of the next frontier of alternative protein. “Burgers and nuggets are great, but there’s a much bigger opportunity, and I wanted to work on that. With alternative proteins, if you can create the equivalent of a Tesla for food, it becomes exciting for people to switch and feel like there’s no compromise, and we can create real impact.”

Bryson said that before diving into the company’s approach to alternative proteins, he funded a lot of research, much of which yielded inconclusive results. One, however, hit the jackpot. “One of those projects came up with this complete alternative to extrusion. And it doesn’t use heat to create texture, and it uses cold or freezing to create texture.” And it is with freezing that New School can more easily produce whole cuts and offer healthy fats.

High moisture extrusion, Bryson said, is used in products such as Beyond Burger. As such, the food is precooked and often “uses color tricks” to make the transition more closely resemble an aminal product such as a hamburger.

Another differentiator for New School is its scaffolding.

“We create a mold with empty slots– thousands of these small vertical channels that we fill up, and we turn those vertical channels into protein fibers because it’s a mold. It gives us the flexibility to work with different proteins. And based on the animal that we’re trying to emulate, we can pick proteins that transition or cook at the same temperature that the animal protein does”.

Bryson goes on to say that the company’s focus is to create a salmon that looks and tastes like the fish that swims against the current and provides the “right mouth feel.”

“We spent countless months, if not years, focusing on how we recreate that no feel. And that comes down to recreating muscle fibers. So, our technology allows us to tune the width of the muscle fiber, the length of the muscle fiber, and the resistance of the muscle fiber,” he said. It also provides a platform that can be used for other types of fish, seafood, and alternative proteins in general.

New School aims to have a product commercially ready in 2024, first for restaurants and then for consumers. Armed with $13 million in funding from Lever VC, Hatch, Good Startup, Blue Horizon Ventures, Clear Current Capital, Alwyn Capital, Basecamp Ventures, and Climate Capital, Bryson said the funds would be used to build out a pilot facility in the Toronto area.

Beyond Meat Enters Japan Through Exclusive Agreement With USMH

Beyond Meat is entering Japan through a new partnership with one of the country’s largest grocery store holding companies in United Super Market Holdings (USMH).

The new agreement, announced on Friday in Tokyo at the SKS Japan conference, is a distribution and product development deal through which USMH will have exclusive distribution rights of Beyond Meat branded products in Japan as well as the ability to use Beyond’s meat in new products developed for the Japanese market.

Products co-developed under the partnership will be sold under USMH’s Green Growers brand, a brand initially launched by the grocery chain to sell lettuce grown via the company’s vertical farm “plant factory” called TERRABASE. These products, the first of which will include Beyond’s minced plant-based ground beef, will also include Beyond’s branding on the products in something akin to a “powered by Beyond” style branding approach. Products developed under the Green Grower brand will be tailored to specific formats and tastes of the Japanese consumer.

The co-development partnership between USMH and Beyond will be done through a new open innovation initiative from USMH called “AKIBA-Runway”. USMH launched AKIBA-Runway in March of this year as a way to work with other companies to utilize their technologies to create new products for their customers.

For Beyond, the deal with USMH is the company’s second attempt to enter the Japanese market. The company’s first attempt was going to be through a partnership with investor Mitsui, which had invested in Beyond back in 2016. However, the two companies announced in 2018 that the plan to enter Japan had been shelved.

But now with USMH, the plant-based meat company will enter the market in partnership with a powerful grocery chain with deep knowledge of Japanese consumer preferences and tastes. USMH, which has over 500 retail outlets in Japan through its MaxValu, Maruetsu and Kasumi chains of stores, has a wide reach across Japan.

For USMH President and CEO Motohiro Fujita, the new deal delivers in part on a vision he discussed the last time he spoke at Smart Kitchen Summit Japan in 2019. At that event (SKS Japan is put on in partnership with The Spoon and SigmaXYZ), Fujita talked about how he wanted to disrupt the Japanese grocery store market through innovation. Fujita told The Spoon that this deal and innovations delivered through AKIBA-Runway are the results of that vision he outlined on stage in the summer of 2019.

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.

Beyond Meat Expands Its Chicken Tenders Footprint to Get a Leg Up

California-based Beyond Meat continues its drive to satisfy plant-based consumers by expanding the presence of its chicken tenders in high-profile retailers. Beginning April 12, Beyond will add Albertsons, CVS, Sprouts, and Whole Foods Market stores nationwide to its roster. Krogers and its brands (Fry’s, Food 4 Less, QFC, Ralph’s) will add the product throughout April. Beyond’s September 2021 announcement of the new product revealed an initial slate of retail partners led by Walmart.

The plant-based chicken market is highly competitive, given the riches at stake. SPINS, a data technology company, reported that the plant-based chicken market grew from $230.7 million in May 2020 to $271.8 million one year later. Others in this crowded space include Singapore’s TiNDL; Impossible Foods; Rebellyous Foods; Nowadays; Gardein; among others.

Beyond the supermarket shelf, food service in fast-food joints and restaurants has become a crucial channel to market for plant-based chicken. Beyond Meat’s poultry is in regional players such as Flyrite, Next Level Clucker; Plow Burger; Panda Express; and KFC (fried chicken). Globally, Beyond Meat products, including the Beyond Burger, Beyond Beef, and Beyond Sausage, are available at approximately 130,000 retail and foodservice outlets in more than 90 countries.

“Building on the positive momentum of our recent chicken launches, we’re excited to significantly expand the availability of our Beyond Chicken Tenders by showing up in more places for our consumers – from their favorite supermarket or drugstore to large warehouse clubs – making delicious, nutritious and sustainable plant-based meat more accessible than ever before,” said Deanna Jurgens, Chief Growth Officer, Beyond Meat in a company release.

Beyond Meat’s chicken nuggets are made primarily from faba (fava) beans with breading comprised of wheat and rice flour. They also contain pea protein, wheat gluten, spices, oil, and a mix of natural flavors. They are soy-free (although the label says they may contain soy from shared manufacturing facilities).

The plant-based chicken market has the potential to be a giant, ticking time bomb. While all matters of faux poultry hit grocery store shelves and eateries, not far off in the distance are a host of cultured products that will rival—and possibly outperform—their plant-based predecessors (provided the newer alternatives can scale). With governmental approval possible by the end of the year, companies such as Eat Just’s GOOD Meats division will be able to sell their cultivated chicken products in the U.S. The San Francisco-based company received approval from Singapore to sell its new product in Singapore, one of two countries where cultured or lab-grown meat is legal. The Netherlands recently allowed samples of this futuristic form of meat to be distributed.

As far as Beyond’s entry into the lab-grown or cultivated meat and poultry market, the company says its current commitment is to plant-based food. “We remain focused on our mission to create products that address the four growing global issues of climate change, human health, the constraint on natural resources, and animal welfare,” a company spokesperson told The Spoon. “We are incredibly proud of our approach to building meat from plants as an accessible and delicious way for consumers to make a positive impact on these areas.”

Are Beyond Meat’s Flagging Sales a Sign Big Cattle’s Negative Messaging is Working?

This week, Beyond Meat had some lousy news for Wall Street: US sales were down 13.9% year over year.

According to the company, the culprit for the sales drop was a softening in their grocery and foodservice markets.

For some, a sales drop for a high-flying alt-meat pioneer like Beyond might come as a shock. Like Impossible Foods and others in the fast-growing plant-based meat industry, Beyond has had mostly good news over the past few years as revenue went up and to the right on the back of new sales channels, geography expansion, and growing consumer demand.

So what’s going on here? Why is an alt-meat bellwether like Beyond suddenly seeing its sales drop?

The company cites a number of issues, including supply chain constraints, restaurant labor challenges, and ordering uncertainty in the face of never-ending pandemic. They also say new competition is putting downward pressure on market share.

I have no doubt these reasons are true in varying degrees, especially increased competition. More alt-meat alternatives are coming to market all the time, giving grocers and consumers more choice.

Still, from what I can tell, Beyond Meat products are ubiquitous on the shelves of every grocery store or warehouse club I walk into. So if the product is still widely available, I have to wonder: is this a Beyond Meat-specific problem? Or, more specifically, are consumers buying more plant-based meat in general and just less Beyond?

Maybe. Market watchers have estimated that plant-based market grew 12.1% year over year for the month ending July 31st 2021, which shows the industry doesn’t necessarily have a sales problem, at least yet. Personally, I’d love to know what Impossible’s sales have done over the same period. The two companies are the Coke and Pepsi of alt-meats, and if Beyond’s sales drop while Impossible’s continue to go up, that would be a bad sign.

At this point, it’s worth emphasizing I have no idea if this is the case, only that it’s a possibility. Remember, unlike factory-farmed cow or chicken meat, plant-based meats are unique. They are essentially designer products, different in taste, mouth feel and other flavor attributes. I know some people who like Impossible but won’t eat Beyond, and vice versa. Maybe there’s just more of the former than the latter.

I also suspect there might be another non-Beyond meat factor at play here, which is this: a growing negative perception of some plant-based meat products.

Like many who follow the plant-based meat industry closely and are overly aware of the techology-powered ingredient list and carbon footprint of the products, I’ve had friends who don’t spend nearly as much time thinking about plant-based tell me they’ve heard these products are highly processed, unhealthy (or outright bad for you) and less natural compared to the “real thing”.

All of which sounds a lot like the messaging I’ve watched come from the Cattleman’s Association over the last few years. The large meat-growers trade group and other lobbying organizations have continued to push out thought pieces and commentary putting plant-based (and cell-based) meat in a negative light. The messaging is all focus-group tested and aimed to directly appeal to a variety of consumer values and it appears it may be working.

So: Is this a Beyond problem, or is it a canary in the coal mine indicating a growing perception problem for alt-meat? I suspect it may be a little of both. Either way, I am sure the plant-based meat – as well as the factory farming industry – are all watching what happens very closely.

Trademark Filing Indicates Beyond Meat Could Add Milk to its Lineup

Plant-based meat giant Beyond Meat has filed for a trademark on the name Beyond Milk, indicating that the company could be prepping for a move into alternative milk category. Food Dive was first to report the news, writing that Beyond’s application with the US Patent and Trademark Office would cover “making milk shakes; coffee or tea beverages with milk or milk substitutes.”

That Beyond would add a plant-based milk to its lineup is not that much of a surprise. According to the most recent data from the Good Food Institute, the plant-based milk category is worth $2.5 billion and accounts for 35 percent of the total plant-based food market. So there is money to be made milking plants.

Of course, where there is money to be made, there is also competition. The alternative milk space is already crowded with a number of incumbent and up-and-coming players. Big companies like Danone, which owns the Silk soy milk brand, already line supermarket coolers. Oatly recently went public, bulking up its warchest to solidify and expand its market share. But potentially the most interesting competitor is Ripple, which makes a pea-based milk. While we don’t know anything about how Beyond would make a plant-based milk at this point, pea protein is one of the main ingredients in its popular burger. So Beyond leveraging what it knows about pea protein to formulate a new type of milk makes some sense.

Another competitor on the horizon could be Beyond’s plant-based burger rival, Impossible Foods, which revealed last October that it was developing its own plant-based milk. The two companies have to this point been lock step in announcing similar plant-based products including burgers, sausage and chicken. It looks like in the not-too-distant future we’ll be able to wash those foods down with a glass of Impossible or Beyond milk.

Beyond Meat Launches Plant-Based Chicken Tenders at Restaurants Nationwide

Beyond Meat announced today that it is launching its new Beyond Chicken Tenders at select restaurants across the country. The plant-based chicken tenders are made from faba beans and peas and have 14g of protein per serving.

That Beyond Meat is expanding the availability of its chicken products is no surprise, since poultry is the most consumed meat in the U.S. It certainly wasn’t going to be a category that Beyond ignored. The company had an earlier chicken strip product that it pulled back in 2012 to focus on its alternative beef and pork. In 2019, Beyond piloted a Beyond fried chicken product with KFC in Atlanta before expanding that program to more states including North Carolina, Tennessee and California. In April of this year, Bloomberg reported that Beyond was telling its customers to expect a chicken product this summer.

Beyond is launching at a time when demand for chicken is soaring, thanks in part to the chicken sandwich wars that restaurants are duking out with one another. As a result, The Wall Street Journal wrote in May that chicken supply is limited and prices are steep. Introducing a plant-based chicken could help restaurants fill in any supply gaps for certain demographics — kids, for instance, probably wouldn’t know if they were eating plant-based tenders vs. animal-based ones.

On the flip side, however, Beyond is entering into an increasingly crowded plant-based chicken tender/nugget space that already includes products from startups such as Daring, Rebellyous, Nowadays, and SIMULATE, as well as giant retailers like Target, which launched its own line of plant-based foods. However, given Beyond’s size, market cap, and extensive retail and restaurant relationships, it towers above its competition and could wind up squeezing out some of these smaller startups before they have the chance to fully mature.

Beyond Chicken Tenders will be available at roughly 400 restaurants across the country starting today. To see if and where they are being offered close to you, visit this restaurant locator.

Food Tech Show Live: Beyond Launches 3.0

It’s another weekly news round up with the Spoon team and this week’s special guest, Ron Shigeta.

The stories/topics we discuss this week include:

As always, you can find to the Food Tech Show at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also just click play below or download the episode direct to your device.

Food Tech News: Eco-Friendly Restaurant App, Beyond Meat Chicken, and Microdrink Cubes

Before you head outside and bask in glorious sunshine and cherry blossoms, we invite you to catch up on some Food Tech News. This week, we have stories on an app that rates restaurants based on sustainability, Kalera’s first harvest, micro drink cubes, and Beyond Meat’s alternative chicken launch. Enjoy!

Eco-friendly restaurant app Jybe to soon launch in New York

JYBE is an app that helps users connect to eco-friendly restaurants, and this week it shared in an email with The Spoon that it will be launching in New York City in mid-May. Many restaurants provide single-use plastic cutlery and styrofoam packaging for take-out food, but JYBE highlights the restaurants using more environmentally friendly options, like paper, bamboo, glass, and reusable materials. JYBE also offers free resources for restaurants looking to make the transition to more environmentally friendly packaging. The app is currently available in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Denver, Boulder, Seattle, and Austin.

Kalera celebrates first harvest at Atlanta, Georgia location

Kalera is a vertical farm company, and this week announced its first harvest at its location in Atlanta, Georgia. The 77 thousand square feet facility is its largest facility and the largest vertical farm operation in the Southeastern U.S. The vertical farm grows lettuce and microgreens, with the capacity to produce over 10 million heads of lettuce per year. In addition to the location in Georgia, Kalera operates two locations in Orlando and is building new facilities in Hawaii, Minnesota, Seattle, Columbus, Denver, and Houston.

Microdrink cubes launch in the U.S.

UK-based waterdrop crafts small flavored beverage cubes that can be dropped into water, and the product will now be sold in the U.S. The tiny sugar-free cubes consist of unique fruit- and plant-based extracts like elderflower, cactus fruit, artichoke, starfruit, and thyme. The company aims to encourage people to drink more water while simultaneously reducing single-use plastic bottles typically used for cold beverages and water. Due to the fact that the cubes are small and compact, this reduces both plastic bottles and the energy it takes to ship liquid-filled bottles throughout the world.

Beyond Meat to refocus on chicken products

Beyond Meat is known for its alternative beef and pork products like burger patties, breakfast patties, and sausages, but now it will be focusing on the development of alternative chicken products. The company produced plant-based chicken strips in 2012, but pulled the product after its alternative beef and pork products gained more popularity. The plant-based chicken product will likely be available this summer. In 2019, Beyond Meat partnered with KFC to pilot plant-based fried chicken in an Atlanta, Georgia location, and the product sold out in five hours.

Beyond Meat to Launch Newest Version of its Burgers in U.S. Stores Next Week

Beyond Meat announced today the newest iteration of its plant-based burger, which will hit store shelves starting next week. The company said this latest version is its “meatiest, juiciest” burger to date.

While Beyond didn’t go into too many specifics around what changes it made to its burger, a Beyond rep emailed us to say that the newest iteration “removed mung bean protein and added vitamins and minerals to deliver a micronutrient profile comparable to beef.” According to the press announcement, in addition to a new taste and texture, the nutrition profile of the new Beyond Burger includes:

  • 35% less total fat than 80/20 ground beef
  • 35% less saturated fat than 80/20 ground beef
  • Fewer calories and no cholesterol compared to 80/20 ground beef
  • B vitamins and minerals comparable to the micronutrient profile of beef

The press release didn’t mention anything about the sodium count in Beyond Meat. The current version has 350 mg of sodium, or 15 percent of your daily value.

As we’ve written before, by re-creating traditional meat with plant-based ingredients, companies like Beyond Meat and its rival, Impossible Foods, can make burgers more like software. Each company has released successive iterations of its products, tweaking the ingredients to achieve different nutritonal, flavor and textural outcomes.

If the new Beyond burger proves to be an improvement on its predecessors, it’s arriving at the right time. The Good Food Institute’s (GFI) most recent survey data show that 56.8 percent of U.S. consumers purchased plant-based foods in 2020. In particular, sales of plant-based meats doubled over the course of 2020 to reach $1.4 billion.

We’re just four months into 2021, and it has already been a busy year for Beyond Meat. The company announced global distribution deals with both McDonald’s and Yum Brands, opened its first manufacturing facility outside the U.S., in China, and bolstered its European retail presence.

For those who can’t wait until May 3, Beyond Meat is hosting a number of pop-ups across the country on May 1 and 2 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., where people can try the new burger for free.

  • Atlanta (Piedmont Park (Greystone), 400 Park Dr NE, Atlanta, GA 30309)
  • Chicago (Pioneer Court, 401 Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611)
  • Dallas (Klyde Warren Park, 2012 Woodall Rodgers Fwy, Dallas, TX 75201)
  • Los Angeles (The Brig, 1525 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice, CA 90291)
  • Miami (LAB Miami, 400 NW 26th St, Miami, FL 33127)
  • New York City (Barclay’s Center, 620 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217)

For the rest of us, the new Beyond Burger will be sold in grocery stores nationwide beginning May 3 as a two-pack, as well as a new four-pack (MSRP: $9.99) and a 1lb Beyond Beef ground pack will become available later in May. The new burger will be available on Beyond’s direct to consumer site “soon.” Foodservice operators will get access to the new Beyond Burger in June, and the company says it will introduce a second Beyond Burger patty option with half the saturated fat of 80/20 beef later this year.

Beyond Meat Boosts European Retail Presence

Plant-based meat giant Beyond Meat announced today that it is bolstering its presence at retail stores across Europe this spring.

In its press announcement, Beyond said that its products are already available at roughly 122,000 retail and foodservice outlets in more than 80 countries around the world. The new European distribution includes:

United Kingdom – Beyond Meat products recently launched in Sainbury’s and Waitrose, and will be available in 445 new retail stores throughout the UK.

Germany – Beyond Meat will be expanding its product offerings in more than 1,000 new retail stores via Kaufland, Tegut, Famila, and Real.

Austria – Beyond Mince will be available in nearly 1,500 new retail stores including SPAR, BILLA and BILLA PLUS.

Switzerland – Beyond Meat will be distributed to 155 Migros stores.

The Netherlands – Last month, Beyond Mince started selling through nearly 1,000 Albert Heijn and Jumbo stores.

Today’s announcement comes on the heels of a report last week Beyond’s chief rival, Impossible Foods, is preparing to go public this year. Impossible has yet to enter the European market, as regulators there raised flags over its use of soy leghemoglobin (heme). Beyond Meat is already publicly traded and its European expnsion will help solidify its first-mover position over there before Impossible potentially ramps up its own global ambitions after any IPO.

Beyond Meat has been making some big moves all around this year. In addition to its retail expansion in Europe, the company recently opened up a manufacturing facility in China, the company’s first outside of the U.S. Beyond also signed a big global distribution deals with McDonald’s and Yum Brands.

Podcast: Talking the Future of Food With Seth Goldman

For most, founding one of the original better-for-you brands in Honest Tea and eventually selling it to Coca-Cola would be enough of a lifetime achievement.

For Seth Goldman, he was just getting started.

Nowadays Goldman is not only Chairman of the biggest publicly traded plant-based meat brands in Beyond Meat, he’s also cofounded a plant-based fast food chain in PLNT Burger and just shipped the first product, a mushroom based jerky, for his plant-based snack brand Eat the Change.

Clearly Goldman thinks a lot about the alternative protein and future food space so I thought it would be great to catch up with him to talk about the future of food.

Seth and I talk about how alt-protein and the future food space has evolved in recent years, the crazy valuations for startups, and where he thinks the market for these new alternatives to animal agriculture are going. It was a fun and thought provoking conversation, so make sure to listen in on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or by clicking play below.

Like many of our podcasts nowadays, we did it live in our Clubhouse room (if you’re on Clubhouse, join the club here to listen in live to our conversations).