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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

good food institute

GFI: Plant-Based Retail Sales Reach $7B in the U.S.

Retail sales of plant-based foods in the U.S. reached $7 billion in 2020, according to new data released this week by the Good Food Institute and the Plant-Based Foods Association (PBFA). Sales grew 27 percent in total, which is nearly twice as fast as total U.S. food retail sales. The $7 billion figure includes plant-based meats, eggs, and dairy products.

Plant-based milk is still the largest category of the bunch, and grew at 20 percent over the last year to reach $2.5 billion in sales. Almond milk remains the top seller, though oat milk is catching up, according tot he report. 

Plant-based meat analogues nabbed second place in terms of retail sales, which grew to $1.4 billion in 2020. GFI called plant-based grounds — or plant-based versions of ground beef — the “breakout” product format. “Plant-based ground sales more than doubled in size over the course of 2020, in part due to the introduction and increased distribution of those products in retail.”

Findings for other plant-based categories in the report include:

  • Eggs, once a tiny category, grew 168 percent — a 706 percent increase over the past two years.
  • Ice cream grew 20 percent, to $435 million.
  • Yogurt grew 20 percent, to $343 million.
  • Butter and cheese grew 36 percent and 42 percent, respectively.

Obviously the reason for the increase in sales is that consumers are more interested than ever in eating these products, particularly as traditional meat comes under fire for both environmental and ethical reasons. GFI’s report noted a 3.4 percent jump in U.S. households purchasing plant-based foods in 2020, reaching 56.8 percent of consumers.

The new data comes on the heels of a March report from GFI that found $2.1 billion had been invested in plant-based foods in 2020, including the $700 million raised by Impossible, LIVEKINDLY’s $335 million, and Oatly’s $200 million in private equity financing.

As far as who is actually buying these products, GFI found, in this week’s report, that the demographic tends to be “from higher income brackets.” However, we can expect that to change, according to the Institute: “As plant-based food prices drop over time and begin to reach price parity with animal-based products, we can expect consumers from lower income brackets to increase their purchasing of plant-based products as well.” 

GFI: $3.1 Billion Invested in Alternative Proteins in 2020, Tripling the Money Raised in 2019

While 2020 was a tumultuous year we’d all rather forget, it was actually a banner year for investment in alternative protein. According to new data released today by The Good Food Institute (GFI), there was $3.1 billion in disclosed investments in the alternative protein space in 2020. That figure is more than three times the amount raised by the sector in 2019.

GFI used PitchBook‘s data, and includes investments in startups working on plant-based meat, egg and dairy; cell-cultured meat; and fermented protein. Alternative protein is relatively new in the food-tech world, and investment in the space is definitely a steep hockey stick shape. The $3.1 billion raised in 2020 is more than half of the $6 billion alt protein companies raised between 2010 and 2020.

GFI broke down the data further, finding:

  • Plant-based meat, egg and dairy companies received $2.1 billion in investments in 2020, up from $667 million raised in 2019. The $2.1 billion in 2020 included the $700 million figure Impossible Foods raised, as well as LIVEKINDLY‘s $335 million in VC financing and Oatly‘s $200 million private equity financing.
  • Cultivated (a.k.a. cell-based) protein companies raised more than $360 million in 2020. This included the sector’s first two Series B rounds: Memphis Meat‘s $186 million raise and Mosa Meat‘s $75 million. GFI also included cell-based dairy companies such as Turtle Tree Labs and BIOMILQ.
  • Fermentation, the third pillar of alternative protein, pulled in $590 million in funding in 2020. This included Perfect Day‘s $300 million raise and Nature’s Fynd‘s $45 million debt round.

That the alt protein space was able to raise so much money in 2020 isn’t that surprising. First, there are just a ton of startups working in the space, so there is more opportunity for investment. And in areas like cultivated and fermented protein in particular, that technology is maturing, achieving more yield at lower costs.

GFI also noted that larger, existential factors helped drive investment in alternative protein. The pandemic highlighted issues with zoonotic disease transmission as well as ethical complications surrounding the production of animal-based meat. These pandemic-related issues along with problems with the animal meat supply chain helped drive a surge in plant-based food sales in 2020.

While 2020’s investment figures were impressive, I’m actually curious how this year will turn out. As we noted in our Future Food newsletter this week, there has been a raft of investment just in the cultured meat space since January. Will 2021 be another record breaking year for the alt protein space? Check back in next March to find out.

Good Food Institute: Plant-Based Food Consumers Spend 61% More in Food Retail

We’ve known for a while now that the current spikes and surges in demand for plant-based protein are in large part because of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on our food system. Now there are some new numbers that back those claims up and give insights into just how big plant-based products have gotten in the food retail sector, thanks to the Good Food Institute (GFI). 

GFI’s new report, “Plant-Based Strategies for Retail: An overview of leading plant-based assortment, merchandising, and marketing tactics at top U.S. retailers,” lays out some of the growth statistics of the plant-based meat sector, and examines the forces driving such a rapid adoption in the retail space. 

For context, the report notes that U.S. retail sales of plant-based food were worth $5 billion in 2019. While we don’t yet have the full sales numbers for 2020, GFI notes in its report that “plant-based sales are growing 14 times faster than total food sales” and that consumers who buy plant-based food products tend to spend more: 61 percent of plant-based food shoppers are considered “valuable,” and spend 61 percent more than the average shopper. 

All of those numbers are pre-pandemic, which means this time next year, figures will likely be even higher. It’s an understatement to say the pandemic has had a major impact on plant-based meats. According to GFI’s report, nearly one quarter of consumers surveyed report eating more plant-based meals because of COVID-19, with Millennials and Gen Z being the largest age group in this percentage. Both groups (41 percent for Gen Z and 37 percent for Millennials) reported they “will be less likely to buy [traditional] meat” because of COVID-19 fears, compared to 25 percent for all age groups. The report cites health concerns (physical and mental), an intent to buy more health-related items, and general fears around the spread of COVID-19 as plausible reasons for this uptick.

Meat alternatives, in particular, saw positive increases. GFI’s report outlines some figures from some of the major plant-based meat companies: 

  • Beyond’s retail sales increased 194.4 percent over the second quarter of 2020; the company currently has products in roughly 25,000 retail stores across the U.S.
  • Impossible saw a 500 percent increase in grocery stores selling the Impossible Burger during the pandemic months, and the company’s products are available in 9,200 stores nationwide.
  • Morning Star farms saw a 66 percent increase in March sales.
  • Gardein sales increased by 65 percent from March 13 to April 19, 2020.
  • Tofurky sales increased 40 percent from February through April of 2020. 

It’s likely the plant-based foods sector would have seen these high numbers even without the pandemic — only over a much longer timeframe. For example, Impossible would probably have reached that 500 percent increase in grocery retailers eventually, but it likely would not have happened in a matter of a few short months had there been no pandemic.

Exactly how long it would have taken sans pandemic we’ll never know, but regardless, sales of plant-based foods aren’t going to subside once COVID-19 does. As GFI’s report notes, this demand for plant-based foods “is a consumer shift, not a fad.”

That in turn means we’ll see more food retailers (and restaurants) selling these products, more alt-protein companies setting up direct-to-consumer e-commerce stores like those of Beyond and Impossible, more food tech accelerators dedicated to alt-protein, and, of course, far more investment in the coming months.

Good Food Institute Awards $4M to Scientists Forging the Future of Alt-Meat

The Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit trying to promote the evolution of alternative protein, announced today that it had awarded $4 million to 21 research projects to advance the study of plant-based and cultured meat. The money came from GFI’s donor-supported Competitive Research Grant Program, which thus far has donated over $7 million since it was founded last year.

The selected projects hail from nine different countries. Eight are tackling cultured (which GFI called ‘cultivated‘) meat and Here’s a quick list of some of the cool projects the 2020 grantees are leading:

  • Faster, cheaper cultured meat production. Dr. Marianne Ellis of the University of Bath, UK is developing a smaller, more cost-efficient production system for cell-based meat. She hopes that this will make cellular agriculture more accessible, including for those in remote locations and developing countries.
  • Turning waste into plant protein. Dr. Marieke Bruins of Wageningen University in the Netherlands is using plant-based proteins upcycled from agricultural waste streams to make super sustainable meat alternatives.
  • 3D printed cultured meat. Dr. Sara Oliveira of INL in Portugal is working on a bioprinted model for cultured meat design. Called M3atD, the model will help her team explore how 3D printing can help accelerate cell-based meat production.

You can see the full list of grantees from 2020 and 2019 here, if you’re interested. But overall, it seems that the most recent crop of grantees are trying to improve four key areas for plant- and cell-based meat: cost, taste, texture, and scaling. As consumers continue to hunger for plant-based meat, and cell-based meat keeps trekking towards the market, these improvements will be necessary to keep flexitarians satisfied, attract new diners, and reduce the environmental footprint of alt-proteins.

Admittedly, alternative meat is probably not the issue at the forefront of everyone’s mind right now. But in a time when your newsfeed is full of articles about pandemics, social distancing and scary outlooks, it’s nice to be reminded that positive progress is still going on to help the planet, and help us eat better too.

Plant-Based Food Market Grew 11.4 Percent Last Year, Now Worth $5 Billion

Plant-based foods are hotter than a sizzling heme burger. According to data commissioned from the Plant Based Food Association (PBFA) and the Good Food Institute (GFI) released yesterday, the market for plant-based foods is now worth $5 billion in the U.S. (h/t Supermarket News)

The data, which was commissioned from wellness-focused data company SPINS, found that sales of plant-based foods grew 11.4 percent in 2019, and have grown 29 percent over the past two years.

Categories leading this sales growth include plant-based milks, which grew 5 percent last year and now make up 14 percent of the entire milk category; and plant-based meat, which grew 18 percent in 2019, accounts for two percent of retail packaged meat sales, and is worth more than $939 million on its own.

We should, of course, take these numbers with a grain of salt. The Plant Based Food Association obviously has a plant-based horse in the race when it comes to the success of the category. But even with that caveat, this type of growth in the plant-based market is entirely believable.

One way we know this is that all the big traditional players are getting into the plant-based game. Cargill and JBS are rolling out their own plant-based burgers, and chicken king Tyson launched its own Raised and Rooted line of plant-based chicken.

Elsewhere, traditional milk sales have plummeted over the past decade, resulting in the bankruptcies of dairy giants like Dean Foods and Borden. To help stem the tide, we’ve seen dairy producers like Live Real Farms launch a blend of traditional and plant-based milks.

The boom in plant-based foods is also coming at a time when plant-based foods are just… better tasting, and also more widely available. Both Beyond and Impossible continue to improve their “meat” recipes and gain distribution in new restaurants and venues. For its part, Impossible just cut the price of its product for distributors as part of its quest to usurp meat entirely.

And it’s not just relegated to meat. Last month JUST launched a plant-based pre-cooked omelette for use in things like breakfast sandwiches. Oat milk, with its creamy texture and sweet flavor, is a hit with the latte set. And there are a bunch of startups like Perfect Day, which is creating damn good ice cream by genetically modifying microflora.

In short, we’re in the salad days for the plant-based biz, and with better products in the pipeline, chances are good it will be worth a lot more than $5 billion in the coming years.

UPDATE: This post has been updated to clarify data sources.

Good Food Institute Announces Winners of $3M Grant to Revolutionize Meat Alternatives

Back in September, GFI called for applicants for a $3 million grant to fund research into plant- and cell-based meat. Yesterday, the company named the 14 winning scientists, each of whom will receive up to $250,000 over the next two years to fund their investigations.

The chosen projects are pretty evenly divided between cell-based meat (six companies) and plant-based meat (eight companies). Some topics were broad, like how to scale up cell-based meat production, how to improve texture in plant-based meats. Others were quite specific, like a project exploring the potential of red seaweed as a meat substitute, or a Norwegian research center building out a “farmyard” of animal tissue for cell-based meat.

The most interesting part of the grant awards, however, is the purpose behind the grant itself. According to an email from GFI to The Spoon, the grant was created in order to establish “a base of scientific inquiry” in the meat alternative space. The email goes on to say that the science of plant-based and cell-based meat “skipped a step,” leaping immediately from idea to product in development by private companies. That means that there’s no scientific basis for the technology, so meat alternative companies end up doing duplicating a lot of scientific legwork.

Which is actually true. Many cell-based and plant-based companies are very protective of their technologies (the exception being Shojinmeat’s open source clean meat initiative), so any new company in the space basically has to start from scratch. That means a lot of trial and error, a lot of wasted money, and a slower route towards the end goal: making a product that tastes as good as — and costs less than — traditional meat.

But if the GFI’s chosen scientists can help establish some base framework for the technology used to create plant-based and cell-based meats, alterna-meat companies new and old could use it as a resource to optimize R&D and eventual product scaling. And with $250,000 in their coffers, hopefully the winning scientists will be able to do just that.

USDA and FDA Will Tag Team Regulation of Cell-Based Meat

Last Friday, we got one step closer to figuring out the regulatory future of cell-based meat.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a statement stating that they would work together with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to oversee production of what they called “cell-cultured food products derived from livestock and poultry.” The statement comes almost a month after the two organizations led a joint meeting to focus on regulation and labeling of the new technology.

We knew from the get-go that the two organizations would work together on the regulation of this new technology, so that part isn’t exactly news. But the statement also outlines exactly which roles each organization will take on. From the USDA (bolding our own):

Agencies are today announcing agreement on a joint regulatory framework wherein FDA oversees cell collection, cell banks, and cell growth and differentiation. A transition from FDA to USDA oversight will occur during the cell harvest stage. USDA will then oversee the production and labeling of food products derived from the cells of livestock and poultry. 

So the FDA will oversee everything from gathering the tissue to cultivating it (growing it into enough muscle fibers to eat). Once the meat is complete, the USDA will take over and oversee the process of labeling. This division “leverage[s] both the FDA’s experience regulating cell-culture technology and living biosystems and the USDA’s expertise in regulating livestock and poultry products for human consumption.”

True enough, the USDA typically oversees meat at the point of slaughter. Since there’s no slaughter when meat is cultured outside the animal, it makes sense that the closest equivalent would be the point of “harvest” in which the cells are done reproducing and ready to be processed and eaten.

Dr. Mark Post with the world’s first burger made of cells grown in a lab.

Sentiment seems to be positive about the new division of power. Initially, cell-based meat companies advocated for the FDA to be the primary regulatory body involved, but they seem to be okay with this arrangement. Jessica Almy, the Director of Policy of the Good Food Institute, a non-profit which supports meat and dairy alternatives, issued a statement writing that “This announcement is an exciting indication that FDA and USDA are clearing the way for a transparent and predictable regulatory path forward.”

Big Beef is also pleased(ish) with the division. In a statement emailed to Food Dive, The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association wrote: “This announcement that USDA would have primary jurisdiction over the most important facets of lab-produced fake meat is a step in the right direction.”

In the end, it seems that the USDA will have the trickier job of the two. Labeling is one of the most contentious issues surrounding cell-based meat: In the last few years alone, it has been called in-vitro, lab-grown, cultured, clean, and, most recently, cell-based meat. Traditional meat companies are pushing back on calling it meat at all (see “fake meat” reference above). The fact that USDA has the power in the labeling department could mean an uphill battle for cell-based companies who want to use the term “meat”.

But the USDA’s timeline to deciding on a name for the stuff is ticking down. JUST, Inc. is still planning to bring a cell-based poultry product to market by the end of 2018, provided it gains regulatory approval. With just over a month remaining, it seems ambitious that they will indeed be able to get the regulatory thumbs-up to meet their goal.

Progress may be slow, but all involved — traditional and cell-based meat companies — seem pleased that the government is taking steps to address this new technology. However, there’s still a lot to work out. It remains to be seen what information the two organizations will share, how and to what extent they’ll collaborate, and, of course, what we’re going to call the stuff.

The public comment period of last month’s meeting has been extended will be open until December 26th. Speak now, or forever hold your peace (of steak).

Good Food Institute Launches $3M Grant for Meat Alternatives

Today the Good Food Institute (GFI) announced a $3 million grant program to support plant- and cell-based meat research.

GFI is a nonprofit working to shift the food system away from industrial animal agriculture and towards both cell- and plant-based meat alternatives. According to their press release, less than 0.3 percent of the world’s universities are currently working on research in the meat alternatives sphere. With this grant, GFI is hoping to change that and jumpstart more projects in the field.

They even called out 24 universities, from Cornell to the University of Tokyo, which they identified as having the greatest potential for advancement due to their “relevant technical expertise, research capabilities, and private-sector partnerships.”

GFI’s strategy of targeting universities is a smart move. There are already quite a few startups popping up in the plant- and cell-based meat fields, and Big Food has been making investments in the space as well. Universities are an under-tapped resource of young, eager scientists looking to make a positive change in the world, and GFI is hoping its $3 million in grants can help tempt them to focus their work on meat alternatives.

This announcement comes on the heels of the inaugural Good Food Conference, a two-day event put on by the GFI meant to unite leaders in the meat alternative space. If you want to apply for a research grant from GFI, submit a proposal by November 21st, 2018.