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Blended

Applegate to Launch New Blended Meat and Vegetable Burgers in Retail This Month

Hormel-owned Applegate will begin selling Well Carved, its frozen line of blended meat and vegetable products, in grocery stores this month, according to IngredientsNetwork. Well Carved includes hybrid beef and turkey burgers mixed with beans and vegetables, as well as blended meatballs. The new offerings feature a garden-full of plants lentils, cauliflower, spinach, parsley, and kale.

The Well Carved line was meant to debut at the Natural Products Expo West in March, but like every other event, it was postponed in response to COVID-19. Applegate decided to push the launch back to April and do it with retailers — though it hasn’t yet specified which ones, how many, or in which areas.

Applegate was actually the first Big Meat brand to venture into blended products. It launched The Great Organic Blend Burger, made from a mixture of beef and mushrooms, a year ago. That puts it well ahead of Tyson, which debuted its Raised & Rooted line of blended beef burgers and plant-based chicken nuggets in June. Soon after, chicken giant Perdue also released a line of hybrid chicken nuggets, made with plant-based protein from Better Meat Co.

Pricing may be a hurdle for Applegate. A four-pack of Well Carved burgers goes for $9.99, which is almost twice the price of a four-pack of organic beef burgers at some supermarkets. In fact, it’s almost on par with the price of Beyond Beef burgers. I’m wondering if people looking to cut their meat consumption will actually purchase a blended burger when, for roughly the same cost, they can just buy a delicious plant-based substitute?

Two things could work in Hormel’s favor, though. One, the Well Carved burgers are frozen. And in a time when people are stocking up on frozen food like nobody’s business to avoid grocery runs, that’s a good thing. Well Carved burgers also position themselves as clean label and wholesome — that is, they contain only vegetables and meat. Some critics don’t like that plant-based meat like Beyond and Impossible contains a litany of ingredients and is processed. That could spur flexitarian consumers looking to cut their meat consumption to give Well Carved a try.

It’s a prime time to drop a new alt-meat product in retail. With COVID-19 spurring sharp increases in grocery sales for both meat and plant-based meat, this is a prime time to experiment and see if blended burgers can actually make it in the market.

Tyson Expands Raised & Rooted Footprint, But Will Anyone Actually Care about Blended Burgers?

On its earnings call this week, Tyson Foods gave some updates on its Raised & Rooted alternative protein brand which it announced in June. According to the call, the brand’s plant-based “chicken” nuggets, made with plants and egg whites, are now available in 7,000 stores. Tyson also stated it would begin shipping its blended burgers — made with a mixture of beef and plant protein — later this month.

Since there are already plenty of faux chicken nuggets in the frozen grocery aisle, it’s the blended burger bit that’s more intriguing to us at The Spoon. Especially since Whole Foods just named “blended, less beefy burgers” one of its top 10 food trends of 2020.

In theory, blended burgers seem like a good idea. Replacing part of the beef with plant protein is an easy way to cut down on animal products without being too radically “anti-meat” or alienating hardcore carnivores. And in settings like cafeterias, where people might not even know that they’re eating meat cut with plants, that approach might work out.

Blended meat is still pretty new so it’s too soon to say for sure how these blended offerings will resonate (or not resonate) with consumers. But I’m not optimistic. My guess is that in trying to appeal to so many people, companies making blended burgers might actually end up appealing to very few. Carnivores will continue to choose meat, health nuts will go with lower-fat turkey, and those with strong environmental or ethical motivations will likely opt for plant-based options.

All of which is to say, despite the stamp of approval from folks like Whole Foods, I’m not sure that blended meat is actually a juicy enough offering to draw in consumers. When we already have plant-based offerings like Impossible and Beyond that taste pretty darn close to the real thing, what’s the point of getting something that’s not quite meat but not quite plants? It seems like flexitarians would be more keen to choose one path or the other.

There is one edge that Raised & Rooted’s burgers have over Beyond and Impossible though, and that’s health. Tyson’s blended patties contain 40 percent fewer calories and 60 percent less saturated fat than typical beef burgers. Plant-based options from Beyond and Impossible, however, are comparable to beef in terms of calorie content and fat — something they’ve attracted a lot of flack about lately. Then again, if consumers want a meaty burger option with fewer calories than beef or plant-based beef, they could always opt for turkey or bison burgers.

Tyson isn’t the only Big Meat company betting on blended meat. Rival Hormel sells Blend Burgers, in both turkey and beef, under its Applegate brand. Chicken behemoth Perdue announced a line of blended chicken products — half white meat chicken, half plant protein — shortly before Tyson unveiled Raised & Rooted. Our Head Editor Chris Albrecht tried the nuggets (as did his eight-year-old) and liked them just fine, but said there wasn’t enough of a value add to entice him to purchase them again. Instead, he’d rather just feed his kid nicer chicken and vegetables, separately.

I think that ambivalence will hold true for the blended meat space overall. Blended burgers are just fine — but when so many companies are vying to be your protein pick in the grocery aisle, fine just isn’t good enough.

Here’s The Spoon’s 2019 Food Robotics Market Map

Today we head to San Francisco for The Spoon’s first-ever food-robotics event. ArticulAte kicks off at 9:05 a.m. sharp at the General Assembly venue in SF, and throughout the daylong event talk will be about all things robots, from the technology itself to business and regulatory issues surrounding it.

When you stop and look around the food industry, whether it’s new restaurants embracing automation or companies changing the way we get our groceries, it’s easy to see why the food robotics market is projected to be a $3.1 billion market by 2025.

But there’s no one way to make a robot, and so to give you a sense of who’s who in this space, and to celebrate the start of ArticulAte, The Spoon’s editors put together this market map of the food robotics landscape.

This is the first edition of this map, which we’ll improve and build upon as the market changes and grows. If you have any suggestions for other companies or see ones we missed you think should be in there, let us know by leaving a comment below or emailing us at tips@thespoon.tech.

Click on the map below to enlarge it.

The Food Robotics Market 2019: