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Beyond

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

Hormel Joins the Meatless Meat Movement With New Portfolio of Plant-based Products

Add one more to the list of major CPGs looking to capitalize on the public’s insatiable appetite for plant-based meat. This week, Hormel Foods, who owns brands like Skippy and Applegate, announced the launch of its Happy Little Plants product line. This is Hormel’s first project under what the company’s new plant-based foods division called Cultivated Foods.

The new portfolio’s flagship product is a ground protein offering the Happy Little Plants’ website says you can cook “just like you would with ground beef or ground turkey.” The product contains 20 grams of non-GMO soy protein and is gluten-free.

Right now, Happy Little Plants products are available at select Hy-Vee stores in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wisconson. Further expansion is in the works, though Hormel didn’t name specific cities or timeframes.

Like most big CPGs bringing plant-based meat alternatives to market right now, Hormel is emphasizing the meat-like qualities of its meatless product. In a bid to appeal to more flexitarians — those wanting to curb meat consumption without going full vegan or vegetarian — food companies are currently creating alternatives to meat that cook, look, taste, and feel like the real thing. In other words, they’re trying to live up to the industry standard set by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.

Hormel is one of a growing list of CPGs launching such products. Tyson announced its Raised & Rooted brand of plant-based meat alternatives this past June. Nestle is selling meatless meat patties to QSR chains in Europe and Israel. And just yesterday, Kelloggs-owned MorningStar Farms announced its own new line of more meat-like, plant-based products called Incogmeato.

These companies have long histories in the food industry, but as The Spoon’s Catherine Lamb pointed out when reporting on the MorningStar news, that could be more hindrance than help. As evidenced by events like Beyond selling out of its meatless chicken wings in less than five hours, consumers are flocking to trendy upstart brands in the alt-meat space who can tout health and environmental benefits and don’t have a history of selling SPAM in grocery store aisles. Like Kellogg, Tyson, and others, Hormel is one more company that will have to find a way to leap the divide between its legacy products and consumer demand for new and different ways to do meatless meat.