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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Beyond Sausage

Beyond Meat Serves Up New Sausage Links

Beyond Meat announced today the launch of its new plant-based Breakfast Sausage Links. The new breakfast food will be available a grocers nationwide starting this month and cost $5.99 for a package of eight links.

Plant-based meat sales have enjoyed a boom during this global pandemic. COVID-19 not only has people eating at home more, it’s also highlighted limitations and ethical problems with traditional animal meat production.

Beyond has certainly kept busy during the pandemic, rolling out a number of new products throughout the past seven months. The company debuted its sausage patties, repackaged its burgers into a bulk offering, launched a direct-to-consumer sales channel, kicked off another plant-based chicken pilot with KFC in southern California, and debuted a line of meatballs.

Not to be outdone, Beyond rival Impossible Foods has been busy as well launching its own sausage, it’s own D2C channel as vastly ramping up its retail presence.

As I’ve written before, I’m a big fan of the Beyond sausage patties (FWIW, the rest of my family scarfs them down as well). However, I’m a little more leery of something like a Beyond sausage link. I prefer Beyond products as part of something more than as a standalone item. So a sausage patty sandwich with egg and cheese is delicious. But Beyond’s bratwurst just on its own is… fine, though not my favorite. I’m curious to see if the links will change my mind.

Regardless, I find that I’m doing exactly what both Beyond and Impossible want: eating less meat. And as both companies continue to roll out a wider variety of products, I don’t think that I will be going back.

The Beyond Meat Sausage Patty is Exactly What I Wanted

OK, look. I know this review of Beyond Meat’s Sausage patty isn’t exactly hot. The product debuted in at retail back in March (which is approximately 17 years ago in pandemic time). But! In my defense, it wasn’t available at my local grocer until recently.

Ironically, now that it is available at my local grocer, I skipped the store altogether and ordered it directly from Beyond Meat, which launched its own e-commerce site last week.

I took a bit of a chance ordering a product I hadn’t yet tried direct because you can only order in bulk from Beyond. So a few clicks and shipping days later, 44 frozen plant-based breakfast patties arrived at my door (complete with a Beyond-branded facemask) earlier this week.

A couple years back, when touring the Beyond HQ and R&D facility, I had actually tasted an early version of the sausage patty. I raved about it at the time and hoped that the final production version would live up to that fond memory.

It most certainly does.

The Beyond patties are smaller than what you’d find in a restaurant or QSR breakfast sandwich but in line with other frozen sausage patties available at the grocery store.

Beyond recommends cooking them on the stove or oven — not the microwave. I cooked mine in the June Oven, which doesn’t have an automated cook program for the Beyond patties yet (it has presets for the Beyond Burgers and Brats). While the patties came out nice and piping hot, next time I’ll use the stove or griddle to get a little more of a crust on the outside.

I threw some cheddar on the cooked patty and slid the whole thing onto an english muffin. Because the patty is on the small side, the muffin sort of engulfs and overwhelms the sausage. But that’s just a nit-pick. The important thing is the taste, and Beyond nails it.

The Beyond sausage patty has a rich, peppery, greasy (in the best way) taste, with the right texture and mouthfeel. I don’t think it would fool a meat eater, but I’m not sure it needs to. In addition to the straight patty, I can easily see grinding these up and using them to spice up other plant-based meat dishes.

While I may have been late to Beyond Sausage, I’m glad it’s finally in my freezer. The pandemic has highlighted and reinforced the ethical and labor issues around animal-based meat production, which makes me feel more at ease eating plant-based meats. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that they are also delicious.

Future Food: I Tried the Dunkin’ Beyond Sausage Breakfast Sandwich

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Subscribe to get the most important news about alternate and plant-based foods directly in your inbox!

I’m visiting New York this week, and as I was walking through the Financial District yesterday trying to get my bearings without head butting people walking upstream, I saw it. A sign from Dunkin Donuts for The Beyond Breakfast Sandwich. Great taste, plant-based and made with 10 grams of protein.

I had just had lunch mere minutes ago, but I had to try it. So I ducked in and ordered.

The first thing I noticed was how hard Dunkin’ is pushing the sandwich. It’s one of the most prominently featured menu items, and all of the employees were sporting t-shirts featuring the sandwich.

I paid my $4.78 (including tax) and unwrapped the sandwich. It looked kind of unremarkable — but no more so than a typical fast food sausage-egg-and-cheese breakfast muffin. However, the sausage patty was noticeably thicker than a typical meat one. The texture was spongy, similar to the Beyond burger, with a bit more chew. It was a grey color that resembled sausage more than the bright pink interior of a cooked Beyond burger resembles that of a medium-rare beef burger.

As far as taste goes, however, it was spot on. The patty was lightly spiced, salty, and fatty. True, this is coming from a vegetarian. So in the pursuit of journalistic excellence, I shared the sandwich with a carnivorous friend who said that if she didn’t know, she probably wouldn’t be able to tell that it wasn’t made of meat. “I think it’s better than the burger,” she said. “More similar to the product it’s imitating.”

Despite how hard Dunkin’ was pushing the sandwich, I didn’t see anyone else order it while I was there. Fair — it was 12 PM, and the sandwich is definitely more breakfast fare. I asked my cashier if people liked the Beyond Sausage Sandwich, and she said it was slowly getting more popular and that orders had really picked up over the past few weeks.

Dunkin’ is clearly counting on its popularity to keep rising. This week the chain announced it was rolling out the sandwich to all of its locations across the country starting next month. Though that’s no guarantee that they won’t pull them off menus at any time, like Tim Horton’s did in Canada.

Selfishly, I hope that doesn’t happen. I really enjoyed the Beyond Sausage sandwich and think it’s an important step for Beyond — and plant-based meat in general — to break into the fast-food breakfast space. Next up, maybe they’ll swap out the egg for a JUST Egg patty. Now that would definitely make it impossible for me to walk by a Dunkin’ without stopping in for a snack.

Gene editing our way to more protein

In this newsletter we talk a lot about alternative proteins meant to imitate (or replicate) meat, dairy, or eggs. It can be easy to forget about all of the other protein sources that might be sitting right under our noses.

Literally — look down at your shirt. This month the FDA approved a new gene-edited cotton plant whose seeds, which are protein-rich but typically contain a dangerous toxin, are safe to eat.

I know, lots of folks out there are GMO haters. But let’s put that can of worms aside for a moment and just think about the potential of gene-editing technologies — like the oft-mentioned CRISPR — to open up brand new protein sources. Or perhaps just make ones we already love more plentiful and better for the planet.

What other overlooked proteins are right under our noses?

Photo: Pizza Hut

Protein ’round the web

    • One Pizza Hut location in Arizona will be testing out a new pizza topped with plant-based meat from Morningstar Farms’ Incogmeato line.
    • Hawaiian gas station and convenience chain Minit Stop will swap in Impossible Foods’ “beef” for all of its traditional beef products (h/t VegNews).
    • Swiss startup Planted, which makes plant-based chicken, has raised 7 million Swiss francs (~$7 million USD), according to Crunchbase.
    • The Good Food Institute has awarded $4.5 million to accelerate research in plant-based and cultured meat in 2019.

That’s it from me this week! I’m off to get another Beyond Sausage Sandwich because… research?

Eat well,
Catherine

Dunkin’ Accelerates Timeline for Nationwide Release of Beyond Meat Breakfast Sandwich

Dunkin’ is speeding up the nationwide rollout of its plant-based Beyond Sausage sandwich, which was developed especially for the breakfast chain by Beyond Meat.

Dunkin’ first launched the Beyond Breakfast sandwich in 164 Manhattan locations back in July. According to CNBC, the chain was planning to roll out the new offering throughout the U.S. sometime in January. However, today news broke that the nationwide release will happen a lot sooner — November 6, to be exact.

It may only be three months earlier than expected, but moving up the release timeline indicates that Dunkin’s Beyond Breakfast sandwich is selling well — or at least better than expected. In fact, Dunkin’ told CNBC that the plant-based sausage offering was their number two selling sandwich in the test Manhattan locations and that sales were more than double Dunkin’s original forecast.

We don’t know what the initial forecast was for the Beyond Breakfast sandwich, but its popularity is no surprise. Plant-based meat sales are booming across the country, especially in quick-service restaurants, where new faux meat items are leading to upticks in sales, media attention and long, long lines. It’s no wonder that Dunkin’ wants to capitalize on this trend and establish itself as a purveyor of Beyond breakfast sausage before other QSR’s roll out their own breakfasty plant-based offerings.

However, just because the Beyond Breakfast sandwich is heading out across the country doesn’t mean it’ll stay there. Last month Canadian fast-food chain Tim Horton’s abruptly stopped serving Beyond Meat items in all but two provinces, just a few months after it rolled out the plant-based meat in roughly 4,000 of its 4,800 locations. The chain did not disclose why it decided to dramatically cut back on its alt-meat offerings.

Dunkin’s nationwide effort with Beyond Meat might have brighter prospects. At present, it’s the only QSR with Beyond breakfast sausage on the menu, which could help it differentiate itself from other fast-food companies peddling alt-meat offerings — especially in the morning.

Maybe next we’ll see Dunkin’ lean into the plant-based trend even more with a JUST Egg patty.

Cooking Plant-Based Meat Gets Smart as June Oven Adds Beyond Meat Programs

As I’ve confessed before, there are two food tech-related things I absolutely adore: Beyond Burgers and my June oven. Now, thanks to a software update earlier this week, those two things are the peanut butter and chocolate in my connected kitchen world, as the June sports new automated cook programs for Beyond Meat burgers and sausages.

While the news isn’t earth-shattering, it’s a reflection of both how plant-based meats are becoming more mainstream, and how smart cooking appliances will need to get specific when presenting users with a touchscreen full of pre-programmed cooking options.

I haven’t had a chance to test out the new plant-based cooking June features yet, so I have some questions. For instance, regular beef burgers on the June are cooked on a grill that raises the burgers above the pan. Why are Beyond burgers cooked directly on the pan? FWIW, I’ve cooked Beyond patties in the June following the beef instructions, and they turn out just fine (though I’m excited to try out this new feature!).

Also, will the camera automatically tell the difference between a Beyond burger and a meat one? And as June rolls out more “meat” cooking options, will Beyond get its own button a la the Whole Foods option?

One has to wonder how far down the rabbit hole June will go. Beef is beef is beef, so you can pretty easily create universal cook programs for the different cuts of it. But Impossible’s plant-based burgers are coming to grocery stores this year, and June already told us that they will get their own cook program. What about Nestle’s Incredible burgers? Not to mention all the plant-based chicken and fish coming to market. And what will all these choices mean for June’s limited UI space? How many decision trees will a user have to cook what they want?

Phew! That’s a lot of questions. Thankfully, we reached out to June and will update this piece when we hear back.

But it’s not just June that will need to grapple with these issues. Any smart oven manufacturer, like Brava, Markov, or Whirlpool, will also have to figure out its strategy for dealing with the variety of new foods that are being created. Our choices, as it were, are just getting warmed up.