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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

meat

Shiok Meats is First Cultured Meat Company Accepted into Y Combinator

Famed startup accelerator Y Combinator just announced the 23 companies joining its newest YC Winer 2019 batch. Among them is Shiok Meats, a Singapore-based startup developing cell-based crab and shrimp, and the first cell-based meat company to join Y Combinator.

Though they’ll be in the Bay Area to participate in Y Combinator, co-founder Dr. Sandhya Sriram told The Spoon earlier this year that they’re planning to roll out their products in Southeast Asia, specifically Singapore, Hong Kong, and India. They expect to have their first cell-based product to market in three to five years.

Y Combinator has previously invested in plant-based meat companies like Seattle Food Tech. Last summer the accelerator even included the Good Food Institute, a non-profit promoting the growth of meat alternatives, both plant-based and cell-based.

However, by letting a cultured meat company through its hallowed doors, Y Combinator is now blessing cell-based meat as a viable investment opportunity. And a blessing from the accelerator that backed AirBnB and Dropbox, among other cash cow companies, is likely going to make clean meat even more of an investment magnet than it already is.

It’s interesting that Y Combinator chose Shiok Meats as the first cell-based meat company to join their ranks, since I’m betting they’re not the first to apply. Applications can be a crapshoot and all that, but perhaps the accelerator was convinced to accept the Singaporean startup because they were convinced, as I was, that Shiok Meat’s plan to launch in Southeast Asia means that it could have a greater global impact than cultured meat companies in the U.S. or Europe.

In any case, hopefully Y Combinator’s investment and mentorship will help Shiok Meats get cell-based shrimp dumplings on our plates even sooner. In fact, the startup already has a product ready for taste testing. Shiok Meats will be hosting a tasting of dumplings made with its cell-based shrimp later this month at the Disruption in Food and Sustainability Summit in their home country of Singapore.

Alpro Lets You Have Your Plant-Based Fried Chicken (and Eat the Bucket, Too)

I went vegetarian a few years ago, but one meaty food I still miss is fried chicken. The good news is that starting tomorrow, I’ll have a plant-based option to feed that craving — if I’m willing to take a flight to the UK, that is.

In honor of Plant Power Day — which is apparently a thing and falls on March 7 — British vegan food company Alpro will unveil a Plant Based Bucket (PBB), which is essentially a meatless take on the ubiquitous UK staple of fried chicken and french fries (or as the Brits say, “chips”). The meal will include nuggets made of mushrooms and Alpro’s almond milk, as well as sweet potato fries and a creamy vegan garlic dip (h/t Metro).

But the culinary experience doesn’t stop with what’s inside the packaging. The actual bucket is edible, too, made of a combination of nuts, spices, and seeds. Watch the video below to see how the feast is made, plus some nice footage of a hungry diner digging first into the meal and then the bucket it came in.

Alpro is a CPG company that makes plant-based dairy and doesn’t have any brick-and-mortar stores. Therefore, the PBB will be available only through Deliveroo. Diners in London and Manchester can snag an edible bucket of their own for £5 ($6.59). The company hasn’t specified if the PBB will just be available for Plant Power Day or if it will become a longer-term offering.

They’re not alone when it comes to reinventing traditional meat products using plants. In both the UK and the U.S., a couple other companies are taking advantage of plant-based-mania and making vegan versions of fried chicken. Seattle Food Tech makes plant-based nuggets to sell in institutional dining halls, and the Cap’n himself is hopping on the fried chicken bandwagon: KFC is reportedly developing a vegan fried chicken option which will roll out on U.K. menus as early as this year.

The PBB also highlights another trend in the food world: eco-friendly packaging. A lot of fast-food packaging isn’t recyclable, which means it ends up getting tossed into a landfill. To address a growing outcry over the massive amounts of plastic in said landfills, QSR and major food corporations like McDonald’s and Starbucks are scrambling to develop recyclable or biodegradable packaging. Even KFC has promised to convert to renewable plastic sources by 2025 (though sadly they haven’t made any promises about edible fried chicken buckets). By going beyond just recyclable and making their packaging edible, Alpro is getting itself some sustainability points — as well as a “wow” factor.

I’m not sure how good the bucket will actually taste, or if I’d want to eat something that had been hanging out in a random Deliveroo courier’s bag and seems to have the Alpro logo painted on its exterior. But nonetheless, edible/biodegradable packaging is certainly an interesting concept, especially when it comes to food and meal kit delivery. I wonder if the PBB will start a trend that turns into more bread bowls for soup or lettuce leaf-wrapped sandwiches.

Until then, it might be time to hop on a plane to London to try this PBB out for myself to see if it satisfies my fried chicken cravings. And my bucket cravings.

Beyond Meat Goes Beyond Burgers with New Ground Beef-Like Product

Today Beyond Meat, the El Segundo, CA-based startup behind popular plant-based burgers, chicken strips, and sausages, announced a new product: Beyond Beef. The new product is meant to have the taste and texture of real beef, but, will have 25 percent less saturated fat and also, you know, be made of plants.

Both Beyond Beef and the Beyond Burger are made of a blend of pea, rice, and mung bean proteins. However, according to the Beyond Meat website, Beyond Beef will have a more “neutral flavor and aroma” than the Beyond Burger patties, making it a culinary blank canvas. It also has “a unique binding system” that will let it better hold shapes — like meatballs — better. Unlike Beyond’s Beef Crumbles, the new product will be raw and served in the fresh meat section of the supermarket.

The main difference is that Beyond Beef seems more versatile than the burger. Sure, you could break up a Beyond Meat burger patty and turn it into meatballs, or bolognese, or taco filling (which Beyond has clearly been doing with their Del Taco partnership). But the less creative cook might not think of that, bypassing the Beyond burgers for other meaty or plant-based alternatives.

Photo: Beyond Beef

By repackaging their burger “meat,” Beyond is opening the door to a whole slew of new preparations, as well as consumers that are looking for plant-based meat but don’t necessarily want a sausage, burger, or chicken strip for dinner.

Beyond Beef will launch in retail later this year, though the exact timing and price is still TBD. I wonder if they’ll beat Impossible Foods to the grocery shelves. Impossible is rolling out in retail at some point this year, though the company hasn’t yet announced if they’ll be selling their plant-based meat in pre-formed patties or in blocks, à la the new Beyond Beef.

Seeing as how Impossible has been placing lots of emphasis on the versatility of its product — they served it as empanadas, tartare, and tacos when they unveiled the new version of their “meat” at CES — I’m guessing it’s the latter. Which will make it all the more interesting to see if Impossible or Beyond ends up dominating as the alterna-meat ruler of the grocery aisle.

However, with the fast-growing popularity of plant-based meat, there will likely be plenty of opportunities for both companies to make their way into your meatloaf, hoagies, and dumplings.

This post has been updated with more information about Beyond Beef’s flavor profile from the Beyond Meat website. 

Big Beef Company ABP Launches Vegan Burger in U.K. Supermarkets

The largest beef processor in Ireland and the U.K. just became the latest major food company to make their own version of a meatless burger meant to look, cook, and taste like the real deal.

Ireland-based ABP Group announced this week the launch of its new plant-based food line, Equals. The first product: a two-pack of quarter-pound meat-free burgers. The burgers are made of seasoned pea and soy proteins, plus something to make them look red and meaty (maybe beet juice, like Beyond Meat uses?).

ABP has been making pre-cooked meatless products since 2011, but this is the company’s first foray into fresh plant-based foods. Britons can now purchase Equals’ products in Asda supermarkets. A two-pack will cost £2.50 ($3.30). That’s on par with other meatless burger options like Vivera, and roughly half the price of Beyond’s patties, which cost £4.95 ($6.50) for a two-pack.

There must be something in the water. Recently a wave of Big Food (and more interestingly, Big Meat) companies have been developing plant-based burgers that have an uncanny resemblance to meat. Nestlé launched the Impossible Incredible Burger in December, and earlier this month Tyson, the world’s second-largest producer of beef, chicken, and pork, announced plans to internally develop its own line of plant-based proteins. Meatless food company Lightlife also recently unveiled its own beefy-looking burger.

Big Food might have the advantage of sizeable warchests, manufacturing facilities, and existing sales channels, but Beyond Meat — which is also available in the U.K. — is set to go public this year, which means they could theoretically raise enough money to challenge Big Food.

Then again, as we’ve said time and time again, demand for plant-based protein is growing so quickly that it’s not a zero-sum game. There’s plenty of room out there for more meatless burgers, especially in the U.K. where The Guardian reports that one-third of consumers have are either vegetarian or flexitarian. Good thing: I have a feeling that over the next few months we’ll be seeing other Big Meat companies launching plant-based burgers of their own.

Motif Ingredients Launches, Raises $90M to Democratize Plant-Based Ingredients

Making a burger (or chicken nugget, or egg) out of plants that tastes like the real thing is no easy feat. It takes years of R&D, teams of scientists, and large amounts of funding, and for many small startups, the development process is a slow struggle.

A new company is working to make it easier for plant-based protein companies to develop better products. Today Ginkgo Bioworks, a Boston-based biotech company (and unicorn), unveiled Motif Ingredients, a spinoff company developing ingredients to replace animal protein. The company’s off to a running start: today it also announced it has raised a 90 million Series A funding round from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Fonterra and food processing giant Louis Dreyfus Co., among others.

Motif will use engineered microbes (like yeast) to “brew” food proteins that can mimic the same ones that give animal products their unique taste and texture. The resulting ingredients can be used to make everything from regular ol’ cow milk and chicken meat to more unique offerings, like sturgeon eggs and camel milk.

Established players like Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and JUST have their own dedicated R&D labs, filled with robots sussing out plant properties and teams of scientists with extensive backgrounds in biotechnology and food science. Big Food — along with its extensive resources — is also entering the plant-based protein space. In fact, Tyson recently announced plans to develop its own meatless products internally.

But for smaller startups, developing their own plant-based ingredients can be a prohibitively expensive and time-consuming process. By partnering with Motif, however, these companies could outsource the costly R&D process and accelerate their product development.

If successful — and with $90 million in funding and a unicorn parent company, I don’t see why they wouldn’t be — Motif’s services could help usher in a flood of new plant-based protein companies. Plant-based camel milk, here we come.

Impossible Foods Will Roll Out Its “Bleeding” Plant-Based Meat in Singapore

Earlier this morning plant-based foods startup Impossible Foods put out a juicy teaser, hinting at an impending news drop. We immediately set to speculating: Was it a concrete date for the company’s retail launch? News about new fast-food partnerships? Was the plant-based steak finally on its way?

Turns out, the news was nothing that groundbreaking. Impossible announced via Twitter that it is rolling out its plant-based burgers in Singapore. Which we already kind of knew, since Impossible CEO Pat Brown dropped the news last month after the company unveiled its new recipe at CES.

Impossible’s patties are already available in Hong Kong and Macau, so the expansion to Singapore isn’t a stretch. Especially considering that Singapore company Temasek has invested in Impossible.

The Impossible News isn’t dropping any jaws, but it does highlight how Asia — specifically Hong Kong and Singapore — is becoming a stronghold of plant-based protein innovation. Vegan meat company Omnipork has a presence in all three cities, and JUST’s eggless scramble is also available in Hong Kong. Beyond Meat is also in Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore, and the company has plans to roll out in Taiwan and Korea.

According to the tweet, Impossible will head to Singapore next week. There’s no word yet on which restaurants will serve its plant-based products, but it speaks to the growing global demand for meat alternatives — plant-based and cell-based — in Asia, the world’s largest meat producer. We’ll see if Singapore is as meaty an opportunity as Impossible is making it out to be.

Good Catch’s Plant-Based Tuna Swims into Retail

Good Catch just got one step closer to changing your tune about tuna. Yesterday the company rolled out its plant-based “tuna” products in Whole Foods, as well as through grocery subscription service Thrive Market and online grocer FreshDirect.

Good Catch’s tuna is made of a “6-plant protein blend” which contains lentils, pea protein, soy, and chickpea flour, as well as sea algae oil for flavor. It comes in three flavors, “Naked in Water,” “Mediterranean,” and “Oil and Herbs,” all of which are packaged in pouches (not cans) and cost $4.99.  Each 3.3 ounce serving of tuna has 14 grams of protein.

When it comes to plant-based foods, there are plenty of “fish” in the sea. In addition to Good Catch’s tuna, Sophie’s Kitchen has a “toona” made out of Japanese yam, and Ocean Hugger’s ahimi is a plant-based alternative to raw tuna — both of which are also sold at select Whole Foods. Atlantic Natural Foods also recently launched a new fishless tuna product, called “Tuno.”

There’s no question that more and more people are turning to plant-based protein. But is there enough demand to support multiple brands of vegan tuna?

Maybe not now, but soon consumers might not have a choice. The price of fresh tuna is rising as stocks dwindle due to overfishing. Just last month in Japan a giant tuna sold for a whopping $3.1 million. Canned tuna might not cost anywhere near as much as fresh, but if we continue to deplete the supply eventually it might. Plus there’s the worrying levels of mercury to think about. As consumers turn away from canned tuna for health or price reasons, Good Catch & co. will be there for all their tuna melt needs.

One final note: it’s interesting that Good Catch named its product straight-up “tuna,” instead of using a similar word or a different spelling, like its competitors. As meat and dairy companies battle to keep plant-based options from using words like “meat” and “milk,” this is a pretty bold move from Good Catch. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company gets some backlash from Big Fish.

Good Catch raised $8.7 million last August. We haven’t tried its products yet, but with the number of new plant-based players trying to disrupt canned tuna, it just might be time for a taste test.

Seattle Food Tech Launches Plant-Based Nuggets at Hospital Cafeteria

The food at hospital cafeterias (and cafeterias in general) can get a bad rap. But today in Seattle, limp salads and neon jello were replaced by crispy chicken nuggets that just happened to be made out of plants.

The Swedish Medical Center in Seattle’s Capitol Hill became the first hospital to serve Seattle Food Tech‘s (SFT) signature plant-based nuggets during a one-day pop-up event. The nuggets are made of wheat protein, soy, oil, and (vegan) chicken flavoring, and covered in a crispy breading. Each five-nugget serving contains 19 grams of protein, which is about 50 percent more than a regular chicken nugget. The hospital served a special of eight nuggets plus fries for $4.95; a comparable-sized serving of traditional chicken strips with fries is $7.50.

We got to taste SFT’s nuggets at the Smart Kitchen Summit last October, and they were pretty good. The company has since tweaked the recipe, and the newest version is crispier on the outside and juicier on the inside. There’s a tiny bit of a soy aftertaste, but a swipe of barbecue sauce or ketchup easily masks that. Passers-by at the hospital who stopped for a sample seemed to be fans of the plant-based nuggets, with a few even saying that they wouldn’t have known that they weren’t eating chicken.

Photo: Catherine Lamb

While SFT’s pop-up at the hospital is just a one-day experiment, it’s been the company’s plan all along to sell their nuggets wholesale to large institutional dining establishments like corporate and hospital cafeterias and school lunchrooms. Led by CEO Christie Lagally, who cut her teeth at Boeing and the Good Food Institute, SFT doesn’t want to just make really good-tasting vegan nuggets; they want to revolutionize the plant-based manufacturing process so they can make good-tasting nuggets accessible to big groups of people at low price points.

SFT has raised $2 million in VC funding and last year completed a stint at the prestigious Y Combinator. Lagally told me the company has four institutional customers in place, though she wouldn’t disclose which ones. It also recently doubled its staff and commissary kitchen space to ramp up production to supply the new partners. Next up, Lagally and her team are developing “chicken” patties, “chicken” strips and “fish” sticks.

Judging from the reaction at the Swedish Medical Center, SFT won’t have a problem tempting customers to try its nuggets, or getting instiutional partners to serve them. Now it just remains to be seen if the startup can scale sustainably and keep costs down. A tall order to be sure, but with SFT’s team (specifically Lagally’s engineering background) and its smart go-to-market strategy, I’m betting we’ll soon see a lot more of their plant-based nuggets popping up in cafeterias.

When It Comes to Labeling Food “Meat,” Where Do We Draw The Line?

Things used to be so simple. Meat used to cover products that came from slaughtered animals, and everything else was, uh, not meat. But now the lines are blurred — and the meat industry is pissed about it.

This weekend the New York Times ran a story about pushback from animal agriculture industry groups against use the use of the term “meat” to describe any sausage, chop, or burger made from plants or grown in a petri dish — in short, anything that didn’t come from a slaughtered animal. Just this week, Arizona and Arkansas joined the over a dozen states that have introduced meat labeling bills.

The first law of this sort was passed last May in Missouri. The law prohibited companies from “misrepresenting a product as meat that is not derived from harvested production livestock or poultry.” A few months after it passed, a coalition led by Tofurky, the American Civil Liberties Union and others challenged the new law.

The debate isn’t just limited to the butcher counter. In July of last year FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced that his agency would start tightening regulations over what could and couldn’t be called “milk.”

On the surface, this pushback may seem a little bit petty. After all, the U.S. meat industry was worth $4.2 trillion in 2016 and show no signs of slowing down, while plant-based meat netted a comparatively tiny $670 million in 2018. Why does Big Meat care what vegan burgers call themselves?

In short, they care because they’re threatened. From 2017 to 2018, demand for plant-based meat rose a whopping 24 percent. To meet that demand we’ve seen an explosion of plant-based meat options, many of which do a pretty dang good job imitating meat thanks to new technologies like genetically modified heme or new protein extrusion methods. On top of that, companies like Beyond Meat are pushing to have their products displayed in the meat aisle of grocery stores.

Plant-based meat is no longer a fringe product for hippies — it’s now a legitimate competitor for traditional meat. And animal agriculture groups know it.

Once cell-based meat comes to market, the issue of what defines “meat” will become even more pressing. No matter how bloody or juicy the taste, plant-based burgers are still fundamentally not made of animals. Cell-based (or cultured) meat, however, is actual animal tissue — that just happens to have been made in a bath of serum, not a slaughterhouse. And some cultured meat companies have made the point that cell-based fish and pork must be labeled as “fish” and “pork” for both allergy and transparency reasons.


Finless Foods is creating cultured bluefin tuna [Taylor Grote vis Upsplash]

It’s hard to make the argument that meat made from actual animal muscle and fat cells should be called anything other than “meat.” (The USDA will have the final say on how to label cell-based meat.) However, adding qualifiers seems to make a lot of sense, both for plant-based and cultured meat. Not only to appease the cattlemen, but also for consumers.

Nebraska Democratic state senator Carol Blood, a vegan, was inspired to write a meat-labeling bill after she witnessed two women who were unclear over whether or not Beyond Meat contained animal tissue. “I don’t care that it says burger — I care that it says it’s meat,” Ms. Blood said in the New York Times.

The fact that meat alternatives are, well, alternative to meat is one of their main selling points. It would follow, then, that these companies would want to call out the fact that their products are not made from slaughtered animals. At the same time, plant-based meat companies are trying to draw in flexitarian consumers by making products that taste just as good as meat, without the animal.

Do you see how easy it is to spin yourself up into a tangled mess of meat labeling confusion?

There isn’t a clear-cut answer here, but I for one am team let-alternatives-call-themselves-meat-if-they-want — as long as they add a qualifier like “plant-based” or “cultured” so that the consumer is clear on what they’re buying.

Instead of putting their energy into pushing for labeling crackdowns, meat industry players would do well to take a page from Tyson’s and Cargill’s books and invest in their competition. (In fact, Tyson is reportedly developing its own line of plant-based “meats.”) It won’t solve the meat labeling question, but by having a stake in the meat alternatives game could help ease tensions in a future that’s only going to get more and more complicated.

Are Soy Burgers Enough to Tempt Meat Lovers? Sweden’s Oumph! is Counting on It

There’s a new plant-based burger in town, and its name is Oumph!

And by town, I mean Europe. The latest offering from Swedish company Food for Progress, the new Oumph! burger (pronounced “Oomph!”) is soy-based — like Oumph!’s entire plant-based product lineup — and gets its red, beefy color from beets.

In fact, after speaking with Oumph! marketing director Henrik Åkerman, the burger seems to be made only out of soy and beet juice.

I haven’t tried the Oumph! burger yet and don’t know what sort of technology goes into transforming their products. However, my gut tells me that with an ingredient list like that (read: basically just soy) it’ll be hard to stack up to other meat-like vegan burgers, like Beyond and Impossible. The latter two companies have spent years tweaking their burger recipes in labs, harnessing technology and different ingredient ratios in an attempt to make plants taste better than beef from a cow. Impossible even went so far as to genetically engineer heme to emulate the taste of blood. I’m skeptical that a burger made out of what seems like just soy with some beet juice for color could tempt people away from beef in the same way.

Some of Oumph’s other offerings [Photo: Oumph website.]

The Oumph! burger debuted last week in Stockholm’s Fastfood & Cafe, and will roll out in Scandinavia, the U.K. and Singapore early this spring. According to Åkerman, a two-pack of quarter-pound patties will retail for around €3.5 ($3.95). Compared to Beyond, which costs £5.50 ($7.00) for two patties, that’s a steal.

The company intends to sell the new plant-based burgers both through retail channels and in restaurants, though they have yet to reveal any specific partners. However, they currently sell their other plant-based products in supermarkets throughout Scandinavia, as well as in Tesco and Whole Foods stores in the U.K., so we can safely assume the new Oumph! burger will make an appearance over there during the next few months.

If so, that means that in the U.K. they’ll have to compete with Beyond, which debuted in Tesco at the end of 2018. But there’s plenty of room for more vegan “meat” offerings. Demand for plant-based food is on the rise: according to Mordor Intelligence, between now and 2023 the European plant-based protein market will increase at a CAGR of 7.1 percent.

Grocery stores are taking note of the growing demand for plant-based foods. In fact, Tesco recently increased its vegetarian and vegan offerings after observing that sales of refrigerated and frozen plant-based products rose by 50 percent in 2018.

“Beyond and Impossible have done a great job, but there is definitely room for some competition,” Åkerman told me. I’m just not sure if soy will be giving them much of a run for their money.

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.

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.