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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Carl's JR

Subway Partners With Beyond Meat for Plant-Based Meatball Sub

Subway joined the growing number of QSRs offering plant-based meat options this week, announcing a new partnership with Beyond Meat.

The two companies will start testing the Beyond Meatball Marinara sandwich, a plant-based take on one of Subway’s classics, in September, according to a press release. The sandwich will be available in 685 Subway restaurants for a limited time in the U.S. and Canada. Subway didn’t specify how limited that time would be or what happens afterwards. Presumably, the Beyond Meatball Marinara will be available as long as supplies last, and its expansion will depend on how popular the sandwich proves during this testing phase.

Subway is the latest fast-food outlet to start offering a plant-based option on its menu. At the end of last month, Beyond added a partnership with Dunkin’ to sell plant-based breakfast sandwiches in NYC. Beyond also has menu items at chains like Del Taco and Carl’s Jr., as well as a strong retail presence in grocery stores. The company even launched a new ground-beef-like product at Whole Foods earlier this summer.

Impossible, meanwhile, is set to do a nationwide rollout of its Impossible Whopper at Burger King this week. The company, who is Beyond’s chief rival, already works with White Castle as well as some non-burger chains like Qdoba and Little Caesar’s. Impossible is also (finally) heading to retail stores this September.

Given the surging popularity of both Impossible and Beyond, we can expect the list of QSRs testing out plant-based options like these to keep growing throughout the rest of the year.

Carl’s Jr. Will Test a CBD-Infused Cheeseburger on 4/20

Yesterday Carl’s Jr. got the internet all giddy when it announced it will sell a CBD-infused burger for one day, in one location.

The Rocky Mountain High: CheeseBurger Delight burger will be available on April 20 (duh), at one location in Denver, CO. The burger will come with pickled jalepeños, pepper jack cheese, and Carl’s Jr.’s famous Santa Fe sauce infused with CBD. Naturally, the burger will sell for $4.20, and according to the press release, will be available from 6 a.m. until supplies run out, which I suspect will happen long before closing time.

CBD — that is, cannabidiol, the non-hallucinogenic element in cannabis — is making its way into everything from beauty products to cold-brew coffee to jelly beans.

Advocates tout so-called “wellness,” like relaxation, as one of the benefits of CBD. As yet, however, there is limited research supporting any of these claims. Meanwhile, regulatory framework surrounding production and sale of CBD is still somewhat murky, though the FDA did release a statement at the beginning of April that said the agency was taking steps to regulating foods and drinks infused with CBD.

The burger will contain 5 milligrams of CBD, which some say is well below the 500 milligram amount that makes CBD “effective.”

In any case, I doubt many people will be buying Rocky Mountain High cheeseburgers for their wellness benefits, and Carl’s Jr. is not trying to promote any of them. But a CBD-infused sauce could be intriguing from a taste perspective, and if we take that view of things, Carl’s Jr.’s 4/20 plans make a lot of sense. Of late, the chain has shown great willingness to embrace new trends and ingredients in the food world. The company recently partnered with Beyond Meat to bring a plant-based “flexitarian burger” to its menu, and not long ago came up with a truffle-infused cheddar sauce that you’d typically expect to find in a fancy sit-down restaurant, not a quick-service chain.

“The new Rocky Mountain High: CheeseBurger Delight ties back to our core strategy of being the first to bring bold and unexpected flavors that are at the forefront of hot restaurant trends to a quick service menu,” Patty Trevino, Senior Vice President of Brand Marketing, said in the press release.

If the burger is a hit when it drops this weekend, and if regulators can craft a more solid framework around the buying and selling of CBD, Carl’s Jr. will be well positioned as a leader in using CBD as another ingredient with which to intrigue our palettes.

I Went to Carl’s Jr. to Taste the Beyond Burger 2.0

It’s been quite the month for plant-based burgers. Last week at CES we watched (and tasted) as Impossible Foods unveiled their new ground “beef” recipe, and in the New Year Beyond Meat rolled out a new burger formula of their own right before they launched a partnership with Carl’s Jr.

In the spirit of journalism, I stopped by the Carl’s Jr. in downtown San Francisco today to sample Beyond Meat’s new “Burger 2.0.” The burger arrived in a fluffy sesame bun and was topped with cheese, mayo, ketchup, pickles, tomatoes, and a hefty slice of iceberg lettuce.

Photo: Catherine Lamb

So how did it taste? Pretty good. The burger itself was nicely pink and had the trademark tepid char evocative of fast food burgers everywhere (that’s actually a good thing). The “meat” was lightly packed and almost spongy, with the fatty juiciness that we expect from beef. However, there were some chewy ribbons throughout that almost reminded me of yuba, or tofu skin; a texture I like, but which doesn’t especially make me think I’m eating beef.

Sadly, most of the nuance of the burger got lost under the loud flavors of the pickles, condiments, and the bun, which dwarfed the patty. This isn’t necessarily bad; fast-food burgers aren’t just about the taste of the beef, they’re about the umami-bomb that comes from putting a bunch of savory, fatty ingredients — ketchup, pickles, cheese — together. In this way the Beyond Famous Star reminded me of a stereotypical fast-food burger more than any other plant-based option I’ve tried so far. And for a lot of consumers, that’s pretty appealing.

So how was the new recipe? Coincidentally, I’d eaten a Beyond burger three nights before while out at a local craft burger joint, who was still serving the original Beyond recipe. During the taste test I tried hard to compare the two, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t discern any noticeable difference. According to the Beyond website, the Burger 2.0 has less saturated fat than the original (a good thing), and apparently a “more meat-like texture.” I’d say the texture was maybe slightly chewier, which doesn’t exactly scream “meat-like” to me.

Photo: Catherine Lamb.

While I was chewing at the Beyond burger I couldn’t help but compare it to the Impossible Burger 2.0 I’d tried the previous week at CES in Vegas. Admittedly, the Impossible burgers at the unveiling event were prepared by a prestigious chef, not a fast-food line cook; they were also cooked into carefully curated dishes instead of slapped on a bun with some condiments and tasteless tomatoes. But the new Impossible burger’s texture just reminded me more of beef: its texture was looser and more natural, and it had the rich bloodiness of a medium-raw patty.

Though the Beyond burger at Carl’s Jr. might not taste 100 percent like beef, it can’t exactly call itself vegan, either, since the burger is prepared and charbroiled in the same spaces as beef patties. That eliminates quite a few potential customers (read: strict vegetarians and vegans), but according to the manager at the Carl’s Jr., the Beyond burger has been a popular addition to the menu. What’s more, she told me that once customers they try the Beyond Famous Star once they’ll often come back and order it again. “Even people who work here eat it,” she told me.

The Beyond Famous Star burger cost $9.49 at the downtown SF location I went to, $12.99 with fries and a drink. That’s more than the $6.29 that the Beyond Famous Star burger costs at my local Seattle location, but since Carl’s Jr. is a franchise pricing varies depending on location.

Plant-based meat options are becoming more and more accessible, popping up on fast food menus, online, and grocery aisles alongside beef and pork sausage. In addition to Carl’s Jr., Beyond also has partnerships with Del Taco and Canada’s A&W chain. Said accessibility is key as Beyond Meat marches towards an IPO in 2019, making it the first meat-like alterna-meat company to go public. We’ll no doubt see many more iterations of Beyond’s burger (and its kin) down the road, as plant-based meat companies continue to try and create a product so good, it disrupts the meat industry completely.

Beyond Meat Cooks Up Fast Food Partnership with Carl’s Jr.

If one of your New Year’s resolutions included eating less meat, you won’t have to cross Carl’s Jr. off your list. The fast-food chain announced today that it has partnered with plant-based meat company Beyond Meat to make a “flexitarian” version of their Famous Star burger.

The Beyond Famous Star burger will contain a quarter pound of Beyond’s “beef,” cooked in Carl’s Jr.’s signature charbroil style. It will presumably also have lettuce, tomatoes, onions, dill pickles, special sauce (ketchup + sweet relish), and mayo (though whether or not the mayo will be vegan isn’t clear).

A regular Famous Star burger will set you back $4.09, without cheese. The Beyond Famous Star burger will be available in 1,000+ Carl’s Jr. locations in 2019 and will cost $6.29.

$6.29?? That’s pretty pricey for a fast food burger, even one that clocks in at a sizeable quarter pound. For comparison, the Impossible Foods’ plant-based slider at White Castle will only set you back $1.99. To be fair, it only contains half as much “meat” as the Beyond Famous Star burger and doesn’t have the LTO, but it costs less than a third of the price.

Fast-food diners at White Castle were apparently open to ponying up an extra dollar to go plant-based, and the Impossible slider has now rolled out at locations across the U.S. But there’s no guarantee that Carl’s Jr. patrons will shell out over two bucks more to make their Famous Star burger vegan.

Regardless, the move shows that Beyond is prepped for some serious expansion. This news comes a few months after the company inked its first U.S. fast-food chain partnership with Del Taco. (Their plant-based burgers are already available in Canada’s A&W chain). However, Beyond is currently available in just over twenty Del Taco locations — its partnership with Carl’s Jr. would massively ramp up its fast-food presence, allowing it to better compete with plant-based frenemy Impossible Foods, who is planning to launch in retail next year.

These new partnerships will equate to much higher product demand, so hopefully Beyond Meat has moved on from its past supply chain issues. If it can pull off this partnership, no doubt we’ll be seeing Beyond burgers on more and more fast-food menus — and maybe even someday the Golden Arches?