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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

plant-based

Ecovative Launches Spinoff Company Atlast Food to Create Myceliuim Scaffolding for Meat Alternatives

At the Good Food Conference today biotech company Ecovative announced it was spinning out Atlast Food Co., a new company entirely dedicated to creating mycelium scaffolding for meat alternatives.

As I wrote about Ecovative/Atlast earlier this year:

The company first developed a mycelium platform 12 years ago to use as sustainable packaging material. Then, a few years ago, they started developing a marshmallow-like mycelium foam, called “Atlast,” which could be used as scaffolding for tissue engineering. Ecovative co-founder and CEO Eben Bayer told me over the phone that they can grow the mycelium into a shape that emulates meat fibers, then infuse it with plant-based fats, flavors, and seasonings. In short: they can use it as a scaffold to grow meat.

It seems that Ecovative has realized that there’s enough potential in growing meat alternative scaffolding to merit a dedicated company. According to Andy Bass, Ecovative’s Director of Marketing, Atlast will partner with companies to help them develop bespoke whole cuts of plant-based and cell-based meat.

So far, Atlast has tested their mycelium into a scaffold for plant-based bacon. I haven’t had a chance to try it myself, but based off of the video below it actually looks pretty tasty.

Ecovative is striking while the plant-based iron is hot — and primed to grow. Most meatless meats available now have a processed texture, such as burgers, chicken nuggets or sausages. In order to take a real chunk out of the meat industry, alternative companies will have to figure out a way to make whole cuts of meat — like steak or chicken breast — out of plants. And one of the biggest challenges standing in their way is texture.

Atlast’s technology could be even more critical to cell-based meat. Thus far, the majority of companies have been able to grow meat with a “ground” texture, though cultured meat companies are experimenting with 3D printing and even spinach leaves as tools to improve texture. Even Aleph Farms, which is making cell-based steak, has only been able to make thin sheets the size of a credit card. There’s a big opportunity for someone to come in and provide a scaffolding solution, especially as cultured meat inches closer to hitting the market.

Bass wouldn’t disclose future partners but said that they would make more public sometime in 2020.

Kroger Launches Own Line of Plant-Based Meat and Dairy

If you’re shopping at Kroger, you have a plethora of plant-based meat and dairy options to choose from. Today the retailer announced that this fall, consumers will have one more — this one coming from Kroger itself.

At the Good Food Conference in San Francisco today Gil Phipps, Kroger’s Vice President for Private Brands, announced that the Cincinnati-based retailer would be rolling out a new plant-based line under its Simple Truth brand. This will make Kroger one of the largest retailers to introduce its own branded line of meatless meats.

Photo: Kroger

The grocery chain’s new product line goes far beyond just burgers and sausages (though it’ll have those, too). The Simple Truth Plant Based line will also include pasta sauces, cookie dough, deli slices and creamy dips, all based around pea protein.

The Simple Truth Plant Based line will debut at 1,800 Kroger stores this fall with new products arriving every month. Pricing details have not been disclosed but presumably the retailer will try to undercut other animal alternative products already on its shelves.

If Kroger’s new line proves popular — and based off of rising consumer demand for plant-based options everywhere and anywhere, I’m guessing it will be — you can bet we’ll see a lot more retailers developing their own alternative protein brands.

MorningStar Farms Launches ‘Incogmeato’ to Capitalize on the Meatless Meat Craze

Alternative meat giant MorningStar Farms seems to be taking a burger — er, page — from Beyond Meat. Today, the Kelloggs-owned company announced Incogmeato, its new line of plant-based meat products which are meant to look, taste, and cook more like the real thing.

The Incogmeato portfolio (are we sold on that name?) includes a refrigerated plant-based “beef” burger as well as meatless Chik’n tenders and nuggets. In grocery stores the burgers will be sold in the refrigerated section, a first for MorningStar Farms, while the Chik’n will live in the freezer section. All products are made with non-GMO soy.

The Incogmeato line will be available both in retail and foodservice in early 2020. Pricing details have not yet been disclosed.

MorningStar Farms has been in the meat alternative biz for over 40 years, which makes it a grandfather in the plant-based meat space. For most of that time, the company has peacefully cruised along with its frozen veggie patties and chicken strips for vegetarians. But now thanks to Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods’ sudden and much-publicized moves into the alt-meat space, consumers’ former notions about what plant-based meat could look like and taste like have changed.

MorningStar Farms isn’t the only alterna-meat veteran seeking to capitalize on the recent craze around plant-based burgers, chicken, and more. Tofurky, Lightlife, Boca Burgers and others, which have traditionally made meat substitutes specifically geared towards vegetarians, are releasing new, more realistic “meat” products to draw in flexitarian diners — with mixed results.

While these companies have the advantage of name recognition, retail relationships and robust manufacturing, their relative seniority could also hinder them. Flexitarian consumers looking to try this popular “bleeding” plant-based that’s getting so much media attention might skip over brands like MorningStar Farms, which they associate with less-than-stellar first-generation meat alternatives, and go straight for newcomers like Beyond and Impossible. Which is probably why the Incogmeato branding looks completely different from traditional MorningStar Farms products.

With its new Incogmeato line, MorningStar Farms is clearly trying to show that it, too, can be part of the new wave of meaty meat alternatives. But when it comes to plant-based meat, can an old dog learn new tricks? Come 2020, we’ll have to taste and find out for ourselves.

If you want to keep up with the fast-paced world of alternative protein, make sure to subscribe to our weekly Future Food newsletter!

I Tried Oatly’s New Oat Milk Ice Cream, Headed to Your Freezer Aisle This Fall

As someone who is lactose intolerant I try to limit my dairy intake, but the absolute hardest thing for me to say “no” to is real ice cream. Especially since most plant-based options out there aren’t great.

But this week I was able to give a new milk-free ‘scream a try when Oatly sent me a shipment of its new plant-based ice cream made from its signature oat milk.

For those who aren’t familiar with Oatly, check your hippest neighborhood coffee shop — odds are they’ll have a pint of the stuff next to the espresso machine. Swedish company Oatly helped to catalyze America’s oat milk obsession when it came stateside in 2016.

Now, oat milk is one of the most popular alternative milks out there, attracting droves of fans with its creamy texture and neutral flavor. In fact, Oatly is so popular in the U.S. that recently it has been hard to keep in stock. To combat production issues the company just opened a new production facility in New Jersey and already has plans for another one to open next year in Utah.

In the U.K. and Europe, Oatly is already capitalizing off its popularity to create new products — such as savory spreads, yogurt, and ice cream — featuring its oat milk. Now it’s slowly releasing those products in the U.S., starting with ice cream.

Oatly gave American consumers a first taste of its dairy-free ‘scream earlier this summer with a roaming ice cream truck in Southern California. According to an email from Oatly, their ice cream is now available at small bodegas, Wegmans stores, and through FreshDirect in NYC. It will start rolling out to Whole Foods nationwide this fall. A pint will put you back $5.99, which isn’t especially cheap but is certainly in line with other non-dairy options from Ben & Jerry’s, Haagen-Dazs, and more (though more expensive than most regular ice cream).

Photo: Catherine Lamb

So how did Oatly ice cream taste? Creamy, smooth and rich — though it wouldn’t fool me into thinking it’s real ice cream. The texture is thick and scoopable, and significantly better than other alternative milk ice creams I’ve tried, even other oat-based ones. But the flavor is a bit off.

First of all, it was a lot less sweet than most ice creams I’m used to, which might be a pro for some people but didn’t quite hit the mark for me (I added chocolate sauce to hit my sugar high). In fact, Oatly ice cream has 18 grams of sugar per 2/3 cup serving, which is significantly below the sugar in an equivalent amount of Haagen Dazs (29 grams) or Ben & Jerry’s (31 grams), my typical ice cream picks. It’s also significantly lower in calories and protein.

Unsurprisingly, Oatly’s ice cream also carries the distinct taste of oat. That’s probably why my favorite flavor of the bunch was the Oat one, which leaned into that oatiness instead of trying to cover it up like the mint or strawberry flavors do, with varied success.

Photo: Catherine Lamb

My other qualm was a slightly off-putting thickness to the ice cream that left my tongue feeling coated after I ate it. That’s likely due to the coconut oil and rapeseed oil added to the oat milk to give the ice cream a creamy texture. Oatly also uses several types of gum to stabilize and thicken the product — which actually make the product scoop and melt very similarly to real ice cream. Bonus: One time I accidentally left a pint of Oatly out on my counter for a few hours and stuck it back in the freezer, after which the texture was largely unaffected.

Photo: Oatly.

It’s an opportune time for Oatly to expand the footprint of its plant-based ice cream. People are screaming for dairy-free ice cream: According to Future Market Insights, the alternative ice cream market is projected to reach more than $620 million by 2027. And while it seems like there are new plant-based pints every time I walk by the freezer aisle, the brand recognition Oatly has built up through milk sales will help it stand out from the competition.

Overall, I would definitely buy Oatly ice cream at the grocery store, especially if I was planning to dress it up with toppings or use it to melt on top of a pie or fruit crisp.

However, once Perfect Day brings its flora-based ice cream (lactose-free!) to market, all bets are off. I know it’s not really fair: Perfect Day’s ice cream is made with real dairy proteins so it tastes exactly like the real thing, whereas Oatly has the heavy lift of transforming oats into a totally new product. Perfect Day’s ‘scream is also significantly more expensive than Oatly right now — almost four times as much — so that could deter curious consumers until it gets its cost down.

But when it comes to ice cream, the heart — er, stomach — wants what it wants. And mine isn’t quite satisfied by Oatly. But that won’t stop me from gladly polishing off the pints in my freezer.

Long Lines, Huge Crowds: KFC’s New Beyond Fried Chicken is Going Viral

Yesterday KFC made headlines when the fast-food chain announced that it would test out plant-based Beyond Meat chicken nuggets in one location in suburban Atlanta.

As the majority of the Spoon team is based in the Pacific Northwest, we couldn’t quite justify a trip to taste the plant-based chicken ourselves. Thankfully I grew up in Atlanta and my parents still live there — so this morning I called up my mother to ask her for a big favor: to drive over to KFC and try the Beyond Fried Chicken.

“This is crazy,” she said thirty minutes later when she called to update me. She described lines around the block 70 people deep with dozens of cars queued up to get into the drive-thru. Traffic was stopped on the entire right-hand side of Cobb Parkway, a major city thoroughfare. It was barely 11 a.m. “I can’t believe this is happening in Atlanta!” 

Indeed, the ATL is a place that dearly loves its fried chicken. A soul food hub, the city is also home of Chick-fil-A, which has expanded across the nation drawing fans with its crispy chicken sandwiches and nuggets.

My mother may be nice, but she’s not nice enough to wait in line for three hours on a rainy Tuesday (I can’t blame her). So instead she found a few lucky folks who had already scored their Beyond Fried Chicken and called me up to interview them.

Justin and Ryan with their Beyond Fried Chicken nuggets and wings.

Justin and Ryan waited in line for an hour right when the KFC opened at 10:30am in order to snag the Beyond Fried Chicken. They got 12-piece nuggets ($8.00) and a 6-piece wings, Nashville Hot flavor ($6.00). “They’re really good — the breading is nice, and they’re juicier than other fake chicken we’ve tried like from Morningstar,” they told me. They also said that the nuggets were relatively bland, but that the barbecue dipping sauce added a lot of flavor.

Both Justin and Ryan are vegetarian so they couldn’t speak to whether they thought the Beyond Fried Chicken would fool a meat-eater. They also didn’t offer to share the hard-won “chicken” with my mom (fair enough), so she, a fried chicken obsessive, couldn’t give me her opinion.

Based off of looks alone, it doesn’t seem like the Beyond Fried Chicken is going to be enticing any hardcore carnivores. “It doesn’t look very appetizing,” my mom told me later after sending me a photo of Justin and Ryan’s hard-earned nuggets and wings.

Indeed, the plant-based chicken isn’t winning any beauty contests. But a good chunk of ATL-liens don’t seem to care — heck, they’ll even drive out of their way and wait for hours in the rain for it.

At least part of this fuss is because Beyond Meat has become such a buzzed-about news topic ever since their successful IPO. Consumers are also always drawn to the next hot trend, and the KFC/Beyond Meat partnership got a lot of media coverage. There’s also a slight ‘Free Stuff!’ incentive: today the select KFC location is giving out complimentary samples of Beyond Fried Chicken from 10:30am to 6:30pm (with the purchase of a full-priced menu item and while supplies last).

However, I don’t think the promise of a free plant-based nugget was enough to draw crowds of this size. Instead, the viral popularity of the Beyond Fried Chicken speaks to just how much consumers want plant-based options, well, everywhere. Even in a city famed for its love of fried bird.

“It’s a sensation,” my mother said as she pulled out of the parking lot to head home. KFC stated that it would consider consumer response to the plant-based chicken before it considered a larger product rollout. If it mirrors what happened with Burger King and Qdoba, both of which tested out Impossible Foods products briefly in a few locations before expanding nationwide, that rollout will happen pretty soon.

Based on today’s response, I’m guessing we’ll soon be able to taste KFC’s Beyond Fried Chicken in a lot more places — maybe even Seattle.

Update: According to a press release sent to The Spoon, KFC sold out of Beyond Fried Chicken in less than 5 hours. In that time, the amount of Beyond Fried Chicken purchased by guests was equal to the amount of popcorn chicken that KFC would typically sell in one week.

Dairy Farmers of America Brand Launches First Ever Blended Milk Product: 50% Dairy, 50% Plants

If you’re like me, you might have an entire arsenal of milks — plant-based and otherwise — in your fridge.

Apparently, I’m not alone. Nearly 50 percent of consumers buy both plant-based dairy and old-fashioned cow juice. To answer that demand, last week, Minnesota-based Live Real Farms debuted a product meant to replace the entire dairy shelf. Their new Dairy + Blends are 50 percent dairy milk, 50 percent almond or oat milk.

“This is the first-ever milk blend,” Rachel Kylo, Live Real Farms’ SVP of Growth & Innovation, told me over the phone. They began developing the product a year ago, aiming to make something with the nutty flavor of oat or almond milk with the creamy texture and higher protein content of dairy. All of the blends are lactose-free.

Live Real Farms began testing Dairy + Blends in the Minneapolis market in late June. The blended product will roll out to more areas later on this fall through retail partner HEB, as well as certain Targets. The suggested retail price is $3.49-$4.49 for a half-gallon, which is slightly more expensive than conventional, non-organic cow milk but on par with many almond and oat alternatives.

This might be the first blended milk product, but startups and major corporations alike are already experimenting with other blended animal products — namely meat. The primary arguments for blended meat are a) environmental impact, and b) nutrition. By cutting the amount of meat in, say, a burger with plants, companies can make a product that has a small(er) environmental footprint and also less cholesterol, saturated fat, etc. Tyson’s forthcoming Raised + Rooted line features a beef burger blended with plant protein, and startup Better Meat Co. has developed a vegan protein intended to blend with pork.

According to Kylo, however, the main reason consumers are embracing plant-based milk is taste. They value the nutty flavors of alternative milk but also want the creaminess and nutritional profile of regular milk. That may certainly be one motivation, but it conveniently leaves out environmental or ethical arguments for getting off of moo juice.

It’s not surprising that Live Real Farms steers very clear of mentioning the environmental impacts of dairy farming. The brand is a subsidiary of Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), a milk marketing collective made up of 8,000 family farms.

Regardless of the PR schtick, the fact that a brand owned by DFA is launching a blended milk product is significant. It shows that milk alternatives are here to stay. Farmers may be trying to beat back their progress with labeling laws, but they clearly acknowledge that their popularity is not only inevitable, but is also a lucrative business opportunity. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

DFA is exploring multiple ways to bolster milk sales amid a recent decline in the U.S. dairy industry. Just a few months ago the organization launched an accelerator program to incubate young dairy-focused startups and bring new technologies to the agricultural industry.

“The idea that people are either in the dairy or plant-based alternative camp is not the case,” Kylo told me. (Vegans excluded, presumably.) With the Dairy + Blends line, Real Live Farms is betting that consumers’ recent interest in milk alternatives is not just a stopover on their way to cutting out cow milk completely.

Live Real Farms is sending me some samples of their new Dairy + Blends, so check back in soon to read my product review.

JUST Egg Heads to Kroger Grocery Banners as Demand for Plant-Based Egg Grows

On Friday alternative protein startup JUST announced that it would be selling JUST Egg at 2,100 Kroger-owned grocery stores around the U.S.

JUST Egg is a plant-based liquid egg substitute made of mung beans and contains no saturated fat or cholesterol. Over the next few weeks, the product will be sold in the egg aisle of Kroger, as well as Kroger grocery banners like Fred Meyer, and QFC. It’s currently available at Kroger-owned Harris Teeter and Roundy’s brands.

This news is just the latest in JUST Egg’s latest expansion efforts. The plant-based scramble is already pretty widely available in retail: you can find it at Whole Foods, Sprouts, and even Costco, where it’s sold in a 2-pack for $9.99 (at other stores it typically costs almost that much for one 12-ounce bottle).

JUST Egg is also amping up its restaurant presence, and just forged its first fast-food partnership with Tim Horton’s in Canada. And that’s just in North America. Internationally, JUST Egg is also available at both retailers and restaurants in Hong Kong, China, and Europe.

But the fact that JUST is expanding the footprint of its Egg product so quickly indicates that there’s significant consumer demand for a tasty plant-based egg alternative — from both vegans and flexitarians. In fact, in an email to The Spoon JUST reported that a whopping 77 percent of those who buy JUST Egg also eat meat. The fact that JUST will be selling its plant-based scramble in the egg section means that the company has an even better chance of capturing flexitarians who are either curious to try a new product or want to reduce their environmental footprint.

As of now, JUST Egg doesn’t have any significant competition. But given its popularity, I doubt that will be the case for very long. It’s smart to snap up as much retail shelf space and build brand recognition while it’s still the #1 player — before the grocery egg section gets crowded with more alternatives.

If you want to stay up to date on all the plant-based food trends, make sure to subscribe to our weekly alternative protein newsletter Future Food! It’s fun, we promise. 

Future Food: Pigging Out on Omnipork in Hong Kong

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Be sure to subscribe here so you don’t miss a beat!

I just got home from a stopover in Hong Kong after the whirlwind of SKS Japan, and boy it was anything but boring.

In between sampling bubble waffles and copious amounts of dim sum, I got to meet with David Yeung, founder of the Green Monday enterprise. Green Monday is an umbrella organization which includes a non-profit educating consumers on the benefits of meat alternatives, a vegan grocery and wholesale operation, a venture arm, and a branded plant-based pork product called Omnipork.

Yeah. David Yeung is busy.

During my visit I also got to put Omnipork to a taste test. I sampled it tucked in a fried gyoza, crumbled on top of a bowl of ramen, and stuffed inside sweet puff pastry dim sum.

Overall, I thought Omnipork worked pretty well as a pork substitute. It doesn’t have the same unctuous fattiness of actual pork, at least partially because it’s lower in saturated fat, but it’s still tasty and the texture hits close to the mark.

Omnipork is essentially flavorless — which is both a good and bad thing. Yeung told me this was very intentional; he wanted to make a product that was endlessly versatile so it could be incorporated into a wide variety of Asian dishes. However, it can also make for a pretty bland bite if not properly seasoned or combined with tasty sauces.

The versatility bit is key. Yeung’s overarching goal is to make a comprehensive platform to cut down on Asia’s consumption of animal products, starting with the continent’s most popular meat: pork. Yeung said that Asian consumers might have a burger every month or so, but they incorporate ground pork into multiple meals daily. He figured that if he wanted to create a plant-based protein that could have a shot at taking a bite out of growing meat consumption in Asia, he had to make a product specifically tailored for that audience.

Crazily enough, he’s the first to do so. When people think about the new wave of fake meat products, their thoughts automatically turn to Silicon Valley. While there’s certainly plenty of innovation there, Asia is actually the area that seems in most need of tasty, cheap plant-based protein: meat consumption there is projected to rise by 78 percent by 2050, and recent outbreaks have made meat prices skyrocket and also triggered consumer demand for a safer alternative.

I left Hong Kong feeling both inspired by Yeung’s progress and daunted by how far he has to go. If he wants to take a bite out of Asian pork consumption, he’ll need to get Omnipork on a lot more plates. Making it into tasty gyozas is certainly a good start.

Photo: Beyond Meat

Beyond Meat skips Japan

Like any alternative-protein nerd, I kept my eyes peeled during my time in Tokyo to see if I came across any plant-based meat, eggs, etc.

No dice. And now it seems that at least one major alt-protein player won’t be entering the Japanese market at all, at least for a while. Last week Reuters reported that Beyond Meat had dropped plans to start selling in Japan, instead opting to double down on the U.S. market.

This is a change in tune from Beyond CEO’s Ethan Brown statement during the company’s first earnings call a few months ago. Then, he outlined Beyond’s aggressive expansion plan, naming Asia as one of the key areas of focus.

That being said, it makes sense why Beyond has to hit the pause button on outward growth and turned their attention back stateside. The company has announced multiple fast-food partnerships over the past few weeks alone, including large rollouts with Dunkin’ and Subway. A product shortage would be very, very bad right now, as Beyond competes with Impossible Foods in a race to snag the most fast-food partners and steels itself for Impossible to enter retail later this year.

No wonder Beyond has turned its attention back to the U.S.

Photo: Aramark.

Cafeteria special: Meatless meat

As I mentioned above, alternative meat companies have been grabbing headlines lately by partnering with large fast-food chains like Burger King, Subway and Dunkin’. But recently, two new alt-meat partnerships have flown relatively under the media radar — and they shouldn’t.

Last week food service management company Sodexo announced it would launch a new product line featuring the Impossible burger at 1,500 locations in the U.S. A few days later, news broke that food and facilities management giant Aramark would begin using Beyond Meat products to build out its plant-based meat portfolio.

Partnerships like these may not get as much press as fast-food launches, but teaming up with major food and facilities management companies is an important strategic move for companies like Impossible and Beyond.

Most obviously, it’s an opportunity for plant-based meat companies to massively expand their footprint and get their products on even more plates, selling to a captive audience at sports venues, concert halls, and cafeteria. Since both providers also serve a lot of university cafeterias, also a way for them to train younger generations of consumers to expect alternative proteins wherever they dine.

Beyond and Impossible may be just starting to ramp up foodservice expansion, but they’re not the first to do so. Plant-based chicken nugget company Rebellyous has been targeting large clients like cafeterias from the start (they just got into the Microsoft canteen).

If meat alternatives want to give real meat a serious run for its money, they’ll need to capture audience not just in restaurants and grocery stores, but also during their office lunch or ball game dinner. These partnerships are a great start.

Photo: Integriculture

Protein ’round the web

  • An Australian startup is growing kangaroo meat in a lab (via the Wall Street Journal). They currently estimate it would cost about $600 Australian dollars (~$400 USD) to produce one kilogram.
  • Edible insect company Chapul is no longer making protein bars. Instead, they’ll focus on growing bugs to use as fish and poultry feed (h/t Foodnavigator).
  • At SKS Japan we spoke with Integriculture’s founder about his plan to sell cell-based foie gras in restaurants by 2021.

That’s it from me this week. I’m off to grab another coffee to keep my jet lag at bay.

Eat well,
Catherine

Future Food: The New Wave of Protein Might Come from Air, Not Plants

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Be sure to subscribe here so you don’t miss a beat!

Konichiwa! Greetings from the muggy, beautiful city of Tokyo, where we’ve set up camp this week in preparation for SKS Japan. I’ll be leading a panel on alternative proteins with speakers from JUST and Integriculture/Shojinmeat, so keep an ear to the ground for coverage on that conversation.

Tokyo really does seem to be a city of the future — especially when it comes to food. From sushi burritos delivered in cubbies to ramen via vending machine, the dining experience here is always incredibly thoughtful and efficient.

My time here has got me thinking about what sort of simple, elegant solutions might be out there for our food system right now that are right in front of our face.

One that comes to mind is Kiverdi. The San Francisco-based startup feeds carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen to special single-celled organisms to create edible proteins.

It almost sounds too good to be true. Since neither Kiverdi nor other companies turning air into protein (yes, there’s more than one!) have a product to market, it’s too early to tell if they’ll be able to deliver on their goals of creating affordable, super-sustainable protein from the air around us. But the timeline isn’t too distant: both Kiverdi and Finnish gas fermentation startup Solar Foods are hoping to bring a product to market in two years.

At that time, we’ll be able to see if Kiverdi and others can indeed make a neutral-tasting protein from carbon dioxide in a cost-competitive manner (which they claim they can already do). If so, it could rock our food system.

It could be used as an ingredient to make high-protein pastas or breads. It could become a sustainable vegan protein powder. It could be mixed with burgers or chicken nuggets to make blended meat products, further cutting down on emissions by reducing our meat consumption.

That’s just the start. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing our society today, and one of its biggest causes is the amount of carbon trapped in the atmosphere. If there’s a technology that sucks up excess carbon and not only sequesters it, but transforms it into something that can help feed the planet, I’d call that the future of food.

Photo: the Impossible Whopper at Burger King.

Vegan… ish?

If you’re grabbing a plant-based Impossible or Beyond burger at one of the many fast-food restaurants that now serve the burgers, you probably expect that the food you receive will be vegetarian.

Except not really. While the burger itself may be 100% free of animal products the finished combo meal might still have traces of meat due to the restaurant’s cooking process.

Most fast-food joints don’t have the space to carve out a special area just to cook plant-based meat. Burger King has admitted that the patties for its Impossible Whopper are flame-grilled in the same broiler as its chicken and beef products. Likewise, when I tried the Beyond Famous Star burger at Carl’s Jr. earlier this year the manager told me that the burgers are in fact cooked on the same grill as typical beef burgers. (Interestingly, White Castle has a completely separate grill surface to cook the Impossible sliders.)

I’m guessing it’s the same story at most fast-casual restaurants that serve meatless meat. Rare is the restaurant that has the capacity to designate a completely separate area to cook vegan items, unless that place already caters specifically to vegan diners. In fact, last year I went to a Seattle burger chain to try the Impossible burger for the first time (memories!!) and was told that the chefs try to prep the burger on a separate area of the grill, but when it gets busy that doesn’t always happen.

There’s also the fact that many plant-based meat options at fast-food aren’t inherently vegan: they’re dressed up with cheese and mayonnaise and served on egg-based buns. All of which makes sense, since QSR’s aren’t targeting vegans with their newly-adopted Beyond and Impossible products. Instead, they’re hoping to capture the curiosity of flexitarian diners looking to cut down on their meat consumption without sacrificing on flavor.

In the end, I can see how vegans might be annoyed to learn that they can’t really eat plant-based burgers. But I imagine to many, the end result — more people eating meatless meat — justifies the means. Perhaps if meatless meat gains enough popularity fast-food chains will create designated vegan cook areas.

Photo: Subway

Eat Fresh (Plants)

For a limited time this September, Subway will be testing out Beyond Meatball Marinara sandwiches in 685 locations in the U.S. and Canada. That’s a relatively small fraction, as Subway is the largest and fastest-growing fast-food chain with over 25,000 locations in the U.S. alone.

Then again, Beyond has now forged a partnership with the largest and fastest-growing fast-food chain globally. Forget McDonald’s (though they definitely haven’t) — this partnership indicates, as if we didn’t already know, that plant-based meat is becoming more and more of the norm.

Interestingly, the sandwiches feature Beyond meatballs developed specifically for Subway. It looks like more and more plant-based meat companies are developing unique products specifically for their fast-food partners. Dunkin’s new sandwiches contain Beyond breakfast sausages developed specifically for the chain, and Impossible created plant-based sausage specifically for Little Caesar’s.

This move tightens the screws on other QSR’s dragging their feet on adopting meatless meats. I think we’re one step closer to seeing a plant-based McGriddles sandwich.

Photo: Tyson Foods.

Protein ’round the web

  • eat.life, a food delivery app that only has vegan dining options, will launch in London in 2020 (h/t VegNews).
  • Tyson announced it will start selling its Raised & Rooted plant-based chicken nuggets (which contain egg whites) in 4,000 stores, and roll them out in foodservice this September.
  • FoodNavigator wrote a profile on FUMI Ingredients, a Dutch starting making a vegan egg substitute from yeast.

That’s it for this week! I’m off to eat my body weight in 7-11 Egg Salad sandwiches (yes they are actually *that* good).

Eat well,
Catherine

Qdoba CEO: We Chose Impossible Foods for “Its Unique Flavor and Texture”

The world of fast-food burritos has experienced a real shake-up lately, thanks to one thing: plant-based meat.

Now if you’re hitting up the drive-thru at least two popular Mexican food chains, you can opt to replace the beef in your tacos/burritos/bowls with meatless meat. This April, Del Taco rolled out Beyond Meat to all of its menus. Just a month later, Qdoba began serving Impossible’s plant-based beef in all of its 730+ locations nationwide.

The meatless meat lines have been drawn, with Del Taco on one side with Beyond Meat and Qdoba on the other with Impossible. During an email interview with The Spoon, Qdoba’s CEO Keith Guilbault told me that the chain decided to go with Impossible over other plant-based meat suppliers because their “protein stood out for its unique texture and flavor.”

Jill Adams, Qdoba’s VP of Marketing, echoed the sentiment over the phone last month. “We landed on Impossible because it delivers on flavor,” she said. “There’s also high consumer awareness around the product.”

Because of this awareness, she told me that Qdoba had seen a wave of new customers come in specifically to try the Impossible products. In fact, according to Adams, when Qdoba tested Impossible menu items in Eastern Michigan this February they saw transactions grow 4 percent. “There was an immediate uptick,” she said.

The post-Impossible spike isn’t exactly surprising. Immediately after adding Beyond Meat “beef” to their menus, Del Taco reported an increase in both check size and overall food traffic. In fact, many QSR’s report an uptick in traffic and sales immediately after adding a plant-based meat option to their menus.

Whether that uptick will turn into a steady increase remains to be seen. However, for now Del Taco and Qdoba seem to have carved out their own corners. As of now, they don’t have any competition from other Mexican food QSR’s: Taco Bell has a new vegetarian menu but is steering clear of fake meat, whereas Chipotle recently announced that it wouldn’t serve Impossible or Beyond since they were too processed.

Qdoba and Del Taco’s menus are relatively similar, which means that the brand of plant-based meat (or lack thereof) they use could become a significant factor when people decide where they want to stop for fast-food burritos — especially as more and more diners become familiar with meatless meat. But for now, the simple fact that Qdoba and Del Taco both offer plant-based meat could be enough to lure in new customers; vegetarian, flexitarian and otherwise.

Future Food: Finally, Impossible is Headed to Retail

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Hey guys. We may not be having record-breaking heat levels in Seattle, but as we wade into the depths of summer it still seems harder and harder to do anything that’s not jumping in a lake.

One group that doesn’t have the luxury of summer chilling is Impossible Foods. Fresh off of a headline-grabbing four-month shortage, this week the plant-based meat company announced that it had partnered with one of the world’s largest food manufacturers, the OSI Group, in order to increase its production capacity.

Impossible is going to need all the help it can get. Just yesterday it officially announced that it will launch its plant-based meat in retail this September. That means the company has two months maximum before it needs to be prepared to supply not its growing list of restaurant partners — including fast-food behemoths like Burger King, which is rolling out the Impossible Whopper nationwide on August 8 — but also grocery stores. Hopefully Impossible’s shortage really is donezo, because otherwise they could get some serious backlash when shoppers find an empty retail shelf where they were expecting some Impossible “meat.”

Wait, Impossible is going to retail?

Yes it is! We may now know that Impossible will hit grocery shelves in September, but there are still a lot of question marks.

What will its first product be?
A safe bet here would be burgers, as that’s the vast majority of what Impossible sells now to its restaurant partners and the first product that most people associate with its brand. However, since the launch of its new recipe 2.0 back in January, the company has been working to emphasize the versatility of its “bleeding” meatless meat.

Over the past year they have begun to branch out beyond burgers with some of their restaurant partners. At Qdoba, Impossible plant-based protein is turned into seasoned taco “beef,” and at Little Caesar’s, it’s a sausage-like topping for pizza (extra interesting, since that iteration skews more towards pork than beef). Just a few days ago it appeared on Wow Bao’s menu in the form of a spicy Mongolian bao bun.

Maybe instead of a pre-formed patty we’ll see something more ground meat-like, sort of like Beyond Beef? It seems less likely, but they could also to differentiate themselves and offer products that Beyond doesn’t already sell in retail, such as ground pork or breakfast sausage.

How much will it cost?
Obviously Impossible will need to price its product competitively with Beyond Meat. Because the two products are so similar — many people I talk to about them refer to them interchangeably — even a minimal price difference could push someone to put an Impossible product in their cart instead of Beyond.

What’s less clear is if Impossible will be able to hit that competitive price point. Unlike Beyond, its plant-based meat contains heme, which it makes from genetically engineered yeast. I’m not sure how expensive that process is, but it’s one step that Beyond doesn’t have to deal with. Then again, Impossible has been able to sell its products at a pretty competitive price through its fast-food partners (it’s only $1 more than the meat options at both Burger King and White Castle), so clearly they’re able to get their costs down at least relatively low.

Where will it launch?
We don’t yet know which retail partners Impossible will launch with, or how many stores.

But one thing that does seem clear is that Impossible has learned an important lesson from its recent product shortage. In the past, it has been burned by growing too big too quickly. The company is already hedging its bets with the nationwide Burger King launch, stating that Impossible Whoppers will only be available “while supplies last.” It’s likely that they’ll roll out slowly in grocery stores to avoid the embarrassment of another shortage, especially so soon after their last one.

Impossible heading into retail is a big deal not only for the company but for plant-based meat in general. Now consumers who want to try out meatless meat will have more than just one option in the grocery store.

Sure, there are other plant-based meat products sold on store shelves, but Beyond is unquestionably the leader in fake meat retail right now. It also has the first-mover advantage. All of which is to say that Impossible will have to keep hustling on marketing, production, and product innovation to make it stand out in the grocery aisle. Looks like the company won’t be able to chill for a long time.

(photo: Chris Albrecht).

It’s all a process

Speaking of Beyond Meat, the company’s post-IPO honeymoon might be coming to an end. Beyond’s share prices dropped significantly this week, and they’ve also been fielding some critiques regarding their heavy processing methods and long ingredient lists. Even Chipotle threw them some shade.

During their Q2 earnings call this week, Beyond’s CEO Ethan Brown directly addressed concerns by stating that their company’s production methods are admittedly complex, but no more so than those used by a cow to turn plants into muscle.

“When it comes to meat, it’s not a question of processed or not no matter which process they prefer,” he said, referring to making meat from plants and from animals.

That’s an interesting way to look at it. After all, the process of animals digesting plants and turn them into meat is definitely complex — far beyond the scope of my 11th-grade bio abilities. By comparison, extracting protein from peas and beans, adding vitamins and extruding them a machine seems, well, simple.

However, compare Beyond Meat to other veggie burgers — the kind many flexitarians now turn their nose up at — and the processing critiques hold a lot more water. A black bean burger may not be as “sexy” as a burger that turns plants into a pretty damn good simulacrum of meat. However, you also know exactly what’s going into it (mostly beans), and have a pretty good idea of how those ingredients were prepared and assembled (cooked, mashed, shaped, frozen). Both options are still made by machines, so in the end they’re both probably processed a similar amount.

But while people have a pretty good idea about how companies turn beans into burgers, most of us can’t say the same about Beyond, Impossible, and the like. Though I guess we could take Brown up on his offer and visit the Missouri production facility to find out.

Photo: Meatless Farm

Protein ’round the web

  • Fast-casual Asian restaurant Wow Bao is launching a meatless bao bun made with Impossible Foods “meat” on August 5th.
  • In Canada, fast-food chain Tim Horton’s is testing out JUST’s plant-based egg. Might there be Beyond/JUST breakfast sandwiches in our future?
  • U.K. company Meatless Farms, which makes plant-based burgers, sausages, and more, will launch in Whole Foods next week.

Eat well,
Catherine

Impossible Foods Announces It Will Launch in Retail This September

Mark your calendars, Impossible burger acolytes. The plant-based meat company will officially launch a product in retail this September.

That little tidbit was buried in a press release from the Redwood, Calif.-based company announcing that it had gained FDA approval for “use of a key ingredient as a color additive.”

That’s all fine and dandy, but the really juicy news didn’t come until halfway through the release. “Impossible Foods plans to launch the award-winning Impossible Burger in select retail outlets in September,” it noted.

We’ve known for a while that Impossible planned to make its retail debut this fall. Now we know exactly when — give or take 30 days. All of which means we have at most two months before we can buy an Impossible product of some sort alongside other plant-based meat offerings from Beyond, Tofurky, Meatless Farms, and others. No wonder Impossible has begun partnering with external food manufacturers to amp up production, especially in the wake of their recent product shortage.

There are still a lot of question marks around Impossible’s impending retail launch. We don’t know exactly which product they will launch with: maybe their iconic burger, or possibly a ground beef substitute? We also don’t know which retail partners will first start serving Impossible, or how much their products will cost.

What we do know is that the plant-based meat section in grocery stores is becoming more and more crowded. However, I don’t think Impossible will have an issue standing out. Lately Impossible has been building brand recognition by forging restaurant partnerships with everyone from White Castle to Red Robin to Burger King. That recognition will certainly help them pop in a grocery aisle that’s becoming more and more crowded with plant-based meat options, including others that claim to cook and “bleed” like real meat.