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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

plant-based

Beyond Meat Launches Plant-Based Chicken Tenders at Restaurants Nationwide

Beyond Meat announced today that it is launching its new Beyond Chicken Tenders at select restaurants across the country. The plant-based chicken tenders are made from faba beans and peas and have 14g of protein per serving.

That Beyond Meat is expanding the availability of its chicken products is no surprise, since poultry is the most consumed meat in the U.S. It certainly wasn’t going to be a category that Beyond ignored. The company had an earlier chicken strip product that it pulled back in 2012 to focus on its alternative beef and pork. In 2019, Beyond piloted a Beyond fried chicken product with KFC in Atlanta before expanding that program to more states including North Carolina, Tennessee and California. In April of this year, Bloomberg reported that Beyond was telling its customers to expect a chicken product this summer.

Beyond is launching at a time when demand for chicken is soaring, thanks in part to the chicken sandwich wars that restaurants are duking out with one another. As a result, The Wall Street Journal wrote in May that chicken supply is limited and prices are steep. Introducing a plant-based chicken could help restaurants fill in any supply gaps for certain demographics — kids, for instance, probably wouldn’t know if they were eating plant-based tenders vs. animal-based ones.

On the flip side, however, Beyond is entering into an increasingly crowded plant-based chicken tender/nugget space that already includes products from startups such as Daring, Rebellyous, Nowadays, and SIMULATE, as well as giant retailers like Target, which launched its own line of plant-based foods. However, given Beyond’s size, market cap, and extensive retail and restaurant relationships, it towers above its competition and could wind up squeezing out some of these smaller startups before they have the chance to fully mature.

Beyond Chicken Tenders will be available at roughly 400 restaurants across the country starting today. To see if and where they are being offered close to you, visit this restaurant locator.

Motif Adds New Tech to Bring That Elusive Stretch to Plant-Based Cheese

Motif Foodworks, the food technology spinout of synthetic biology unicorn Gingko Bioworks, announced today that it has added a couple more tools to its plant-based food technology toolbox that will help enhance plant-based meat and cheese products and make them more like the real thing.

According to the press announcement, Motif has gained exclusive commercial rights to these technologies as a result of a collaboration announced last June with researchers at the University of Guelph and private research company Coasun.

As described in the press release, the technologies include:

  • Extrudable fat technology: Unique oleogel technology that replicates animal fat, allowing for more authentic fat textures, such as marbling, in plant-based meats—acquired from Coasun.
  • Prolamin technology: Uses plant-based ingredients to improve the texture of plant-based cheese, allowing it to melt, bubble, and stretch like animal-derived dairy—licensed from the University of Guelph.

Both these technologies address two of the most important shortcomings of plant-based products when it comes to creating realistic analogs. On the fat side, while plant-based minced meat replicas of ground beef or chicken nuggets are pretty realistic nowadays, there’s still some work to create realistic whole cut analogs. By acquiring the technology rights to the work of Dr. Alejandro Marangonia, Motif aims to help its plant-based product partners create more realistic marbling in that new plant-based ribeye steak.

For pizza lovers, the prolamin technology is exciting because it addresses one of the biggest challenges when it comes to creating realistic plant-based cheese: achieving the melty cheese “stretch” effect.

You can see the technology in action in the video from Motif below:

Personally, I’ve found some of the new generation plant-based cheeses from companies like Grounded Foods and Miyoko’s Creamery are pretty darn close to the real thing, but I’m still waiting for a good melty plant-based cheese product. With this news from Motif, hopefully plant-based cheese with that realistic stretch is just around the corner.

Target Launches Good & Gather Plant Based Brand

Retail giant Target announced this week the launch of Good & Gather Plant Based, a new line of more than 30 plant-based food and beverage products. The move is a reflection of the growing demand for plant-based foods, and Target’s new branded line could help push the category further into the mainstream.

Good & Gather Plant Based is an extension of Target’s Good & Gather brand, which currently sells more than 2,000 products found throughout the store including pantry items, dairy, deli and frozen foods. It even sells meatless patties and chick’n tenders. The new Good & Gather Plant Based brand will expand those offerings to include new items such as cashew dip, non-dairy chocolate-flavored mousse dip, and buffalo-style cauliflower wings. In the press announcement, Target says that most items will cost less than $5.

Target jumping into the plant-based food space with such gusto further illustrates the growing importance of plant-based food to retail’s bottom line. According to recent data from the Good Food Institute, the U.S. retail market for plant-based foods is $7 billion, up from $5.5 billion in 2019. Additionally, plant-based food sales grew 2.5 time faster than total food sales between 2018 and 2020.

As Liz Specht, Director of Science and Technology for the Good Food Institute pointed out on Twitter:

But Target’s introduction of Good & Gather Plant Based isn’t just a reaction to increased demand for plant-based. With most products costing less than $5, Target’s branded push and massive reach could help drive even more demand for plant-based products. Target says its Good & Gather brand generated more than $2 billion in sales last year (and remember, U.S. plant-based was $7 billion last year). If Target can position its Good & Gather Plant Based as more mainstream and put its promotional muscle behind it, that could actually move the needle for the nascent plant-based category.

Chartwells Higher Education Brings Plant-Based Food to Colleges Nationwide

The last time I ate at a college dining hall, the vegan pickings were slim. I meandered around until I was able to scrounge together a few sides of brown rice, wilted veggies, and french fries. Chartwells Higher Education is striving to change that scenario. This week, the contract food service management company launched a program called 100% Plant Forward to bring plant-based food options to campuses nationwide.

Through 100% Plant Forward, universities can bring more plant-based foods into their dining halls, either via short-term plant-based food pop-ups or more permanent options. In addition to offering fully plant-based foods, Chartwell aims to make its new platform inclusive of global cuisines. Several menu items served through 100% Plant Forward include Thai Spiced Marinated Tofu, Sriracha Roasted Cauliflower, Tikki Chaat, Pomegranate Cauliflower Chickpea Salads, and Braised Lentil Quinoa Burgers.

So far, Chartwells has piloted 100% Plant Forward on several campuses, including Colgate University, St. John Fisher College, and Northeastern University. Colgate University held a 100% Plant-Forward take over of its dining hall for a day, where all-vegan food was served and dining concepts like a vegetable butcher shop and vegan rotisserie were tested out.

Following a vegan, vegetarian, or plant-based diet is not necessarily considered fringe amongst younger generations, especially with Gen Z. Amongst this particular demographic (currently anyone aged 6-24 years old) 79 percent report wanting to eat meat-free meals, while 60 percent are interested in eating more plant-based foods. Gen Z is the average age group that is entering universities, so it makes sense for dining halls to accommodate this demographic’s dietary preferences.

Earlier this year, Chartwells also began piloting ghost kitchens on college campuses to bring a diversity of food options to college students. In addition to Chartwells, a few other companies are attempting to give college dining halls a reboot. Yo-Kai Express started installing hot ramen vending machines on college campuses, while Chowbotics is brought automated salad-making robots. Students on certain college campuses can even have restaurant meals delivered by robots through Starship and Kiwi.

Food technology is changing the way students eat on campus rapidly, and this seems to be a good thing. Thanks to companies like Chartwells, it seems the days of chowing down disappointing vegan options are numbered (hopefully).

Nowadays Raises $2M and Launches First Product, a Plant-Based Chicken Nugget

Max Elder had a pretty good day job. As a former futurist for the appropriately named Institute for the Future, he got paid to look into a crystal ball.

Then he decided to throw that all away to make a difference in the world.

To that end, he left his job last year and went into stealth mode to start a company, the details of which he just unveiled this week.

Elder and his cofounder Dominik Grabinski, a long-time food industry executive, have founded Nowadays, a company which makes plant-based meat, specifically chicken. The company, which raised $1.5 million raised $2 million (editor note: while Tenacious Ventures indicated they’d raised $1.5M, Elder emailed to clarify Nowadays has raised $2 million in total) in pre-seed funding from a group that included Tenacious Ventures and other early stage venture firms, plans to roll out its first product, a plant-based chicken nugget with pea-protein as the primary ingredient, this year in California via direct-to-consumer channels.

To find out more about the decision to start a new career as a plant-based meat entrepreneur, I interviewed Elder yesterday on Clubhouse (where else?).

I asked him how Nowadays is different than other startups in this space. Elder pointed out that most consumers aren’t thinking about saving the world, but just about getting something on the table and, if they can do it in a healthy way, all the better.

“Nowadays was really born out of this assumption that most consumers don’t really want just plant based meat, that removing animals from these products isn’t enough,” said Elder. “The majority of people who are flexitarian, who are looking for an occasional plant based meat alternative, are doing it for health. And nowadays was really started to make plant based meat that is as good for you as it is for the planet.”

In the announcement, Nowadays made clear they would be focused on making healthier, plant-based versions of what is typically categorized as “junk food”. Nuggets clearly fit, but still I wondered why Elder decided to start off in a category where there are already a couple players offering plant-based products.

“Nuggets have a very emotional pull on a lot of American consumers, but they’re also full of junk,” said Elder. “And everyone knows that people who feed their kids nuggets know that they’re junk food. People eat nuggets despite what they are not because of what they are, and to me that’s the best type of category to enter.”

When I asked him directly about rivals like Rebellyous and Nuggs, Elder pointed to Nowadays’ emphasis on a simple and clean ingredient list, while also making clear he doesn’t see these companies as his primary competition.

“I think what we have is a nugget that has the best nutritional profile, and the cleanest ingredient list of any nugget,” said Elder. “I don’t think of our competitor set as Rebellyous and Nuggs. If you’re fighting for 1 percent of the market, you’re in the wrong ring. We’re going after chicken nuggets.”

One of the things I was wondering about is whether Nowadays plans to create other types of meat analogs, and what that might be. Elder made clear that they’ll be sticking with chicken.

“We’re focused on chicken,” said Elder. “I’m deeply concerned about chicken. I’m deeply concerned about the suffering of broiler chickens around the world. We kill about 66 billion of them globally. I also just think that there is a huge environmental crisis.”

Elder said they plan on creating a gluten free version of their nuggets, but then will also explore other types of plant-based chicken products beyond the nugget.

“We are focused on other formats of chicken products using our proprietary blend of of pea protein and ingredients to extrude whole cuts of meat. So the next product is going to be a tender. “

Beyond that, Elder said Nowadays is exploring plant-based chicken breasts and products like schnitzels.

The company raised $1.5 million and Elder said they plan on raising a bigger seed round at the end of this year as they scale beyond their initial direct-to-consumer phase in the California market.

You can hear my full conversation with Max by clicking play below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get our podcasts.

Food Tech Show: Building The Plant-Based Creamery with Miyoko Schinner

Miyoko Schinner has had an amazing journey as a plant-based food entrepreneur.

But that doesn’t mean it was easy. Whether it was the early days in Japan where she ran into the Japanese mafia or her initial struggles trying to scale production for her plant-based cheese recipes in the early days of Miyoko’s Creamery, Schinner’s overcome a number of challenges to get to where she is today as one of the most impactful leaders in today’s plant-based food market.

In this episode of The Food Tech Show, I talk to Miyoko about:

  • Her decision to become vegan and how that shaped her career
  • About becoming a plant-based cookbook author
  • The challenges of raising capital for her first company in the 90s
  • Launching Miyoko’s Kitchen and how it was much easier to find interest for her second startup
  • How she overcame the challenges of scaling production towards large production batches for her plant-based dairy products
  • Her work to help farmers transition towards a post-animal agriculture economy
  • Her legal battle with the state of California over the language to describe plant-based cheese and dairy products

You can hear the story by listen to the podcast in the player below, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

2Foods Launches Plant-Based Junk Food Chain in Tokyo

Veganism and flexitarianism are on the rise in Japan. According to an article by VegNews, there are currently 1,000 vegan restaurants in Japan, compared to just 400 two years ago. To address this increase in plant-forward eating in Japan, TWO inc. officially opened the first three locations of its “healthy junk food” cafe concept 2foods.

2foods is a cafe spin-off of TWO inc.’s FoodTech Park, an experimental store where consumers can experience food tech products from all over the world. (The company described it as a food-tech version of b8ta.) Currently, FoodTech Park is hosting exhibitions from companies like OmniMeat, Next Meat, and MAAHA Chocolate. It is located right next to the 2foods flagship cafe in Shibuya, Tokyo.

The café aims to merge the two worlds of familiar and comforting junk food with better-for-you plant-based ingredients. So far, its menu includes items like plant-based chicken sandwiches, sandwiches with a donut bun, ramen, curry, chocolate brownies, a variety of beverages, and donuts. All of the items are fully vegan, and some of the ingredients have a food tech twist.

For example, the vegan chocolate brownie is made from a base of brown rice flour. However, the rice is processed in a manner that the particles are broken down at a low temperature to be extra fine and retain nutrients. This allows the flour to absorb water and hold together the ingredients like eggs would, resulting in a fluffy, moist brownie with no animal-based ingredients. The same technique is used with brown rice flour to create the cafe’s gluten-free noodles.

The 2foods cafes will co-develop menu items with emerging food tech start-ups, which can also test new products and prototypes at the cafe locations. OmniMeat (previously OmniPork) and 2foods will soon be collaborating to launch an exclusive food product. Additionally, 2foods will partner with food tech start-ups to help commercialize their new products globally and distribute them to its physical stores, online store, and to other retailers at a wholesale price.

The 2foods online store and the concept’s first three physical locations are now open in different areas of Tokyo, Japan. The company plans to launch 100-150 worldwide within the next three years.

Mapping a Path Forward for Farmers in an Alt-Protein Landscape

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Most working in the alt protein space are familiar with research showing that traditional animal agriculture is both bad for the planet and highly un-sustainable as the primary source of calories if we plan to feed 10 billion people on this planet by the year 2050.

Over the past decade, this realization — along with a growing consumer appetite for better tasting plant-forward food and huge leaps forward in food science and biotech — has resulted in massive interest on the part of investors in the alt-protein space.

In spite of the evidence, the entrenched incumbents in traditional agriculture have aggressively pushed back against the growing interest in alt-ag alternatives. For example, the Dairy Association and Cattlemen’s Associations have made significant efforts to counter the fairly substantial body of research that links animal agriculture to higher levels of greenhouse gases. They’ve also underwritten research to highlight consumer confusion about new meat alternatives, hired nutritionists to create counter-narratives about the health benefits of plant-based food, and fought against plant-based alternatives labeling their products as “meat” and “milk.”

This pushback is not a hard sell to the average small- and medium-sized farmer, who knows they will make less money if consumers eat less meat. Unless, of course, these farmers radically change the products they are selling.

Easier said than done. For most people, transitioning to a completely new career or starting a brand-new business is challenging, to say the least. For a farmer, transitioning away from animal agriculture is like doing both at the same time. Throw in other complicating factors, such as family legacies, property rights and whole lot more more considerations, and you see why most livestock farmers would rather just keep doing what they’re doing, which is to sell traditional meat.

The reality is, to get more livestock farmers to convert their legacy farms towards plant-based proteins or cellular agriculture, there’s a whole lot of work that needs to be done and resources to be committed, and even then many farmers will choose not to transition.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, and some organizations are already endeavoring to help farmers make the switch.

On the plant-based side, Refarm’d and Transfarmation are programs that support farmers converting their existing livestock farms into plant-based products. Refarm’d provides resources to help dairy farmers start growing ingredients for plant-based milks such as almond or oat milk. Transfarmation helps farmers shift to growing high-value crops like hemp, and by helping them apply for grants to support the transition.

There aren’t currently any such programs for cell-ag, in part because the market for cell-cultivated meat is so nascent and also because cellular agriculture is a much bigger departure from what is traditionally considered farming.

What would a cell-ag farmer’s life look like? One idea, as outlined by Future Meat‘s Chief Science Officer Yaakov Nahmias, would be a hybrid approach. Existing livestock farmers would invest in bioreactors and other cultivated meat production and produce both animal meat and meat made in bioreactors.

From there, hybrid farmers would be able to compare the amount of time and resources it takes to create each product. If the prognosticators around cellular agriculture are right, cell-cultured meat will become way more efficient from a resource input-to-calorie output perspective, which should mean — beyond the up front capital and retraining costs — cell-cultured meat production should be much cheaper. Add in how much faster it is to create animal cells using cellular agriculture, and the choice may be clear: cell-cultured meat production could be a much more sustainable and competitive business in the long term than traditional farming.

It’s clear converting to plant-based or cellular agriculture future (or both) on the part of farmers will take lots of convincing and lots of resources. Lots of resources usually means government involvement, in the form of new programs, direct subsidies or tax incentives.

While the US government supports animal agriculture with billions in direct subsidies each year, there’s little to no financial support given towards building a more sustainable farmer future. That’s a shame since American meat and dairy farmer will face increasing competition from overseas producers of plant-forward, fermented and cell-cultured food products. Nation-states like Singapore and Israel, which have significantly less farmland than the US, are already betting on future food innovation as a way to become much more, if not entirely, self-sufficient for food, and it won’t be long before other countries (many of them customers of U.S. animal agriculture) take their cues from these early pioneers.

While some of the Green New Deal type legislation-makers did talk of lower-carbon footprint farming as one of the primary goals, much of the focus was on crop farms and not livestock farmers. This is partially due to the massive political influence the cattle and dairy farmer lobbies have in U.S. politics, but also because creating models for lower-carbon outputs for crops is a big enough lift in itself.

While it’s not clear what the Biden administration is thinking around cell-cultured meat production, the Biden campaign made clear ramping up the bio-manufacturing industry was one of their strategic priorities, and specifically made it part of their rural support plan outlined during the campaign.

While cultivated meat-based infrastructure investment might not be the first priority in the coming infrastructure or farm bills in the next couple years, that doesn’t mean Biden and congress can’t push for programs to begin underwrite these future transitions and to also look for creative solutions that could underpin the future of farming. Last year, the UK government announced a program aimed at investing in completely new technologies and business models around agriculture. This type of program is just one potential model for the US government as a way to begin laying the foundation for a way for livestock farmers to prepare for a post animal agriculture future.

Future Food News Round-Up

Apeel Unites Avocado Suppliers Through an Expanded Network Fighting Food Waste – Apeel Sciences announced today that more than 20 leading suppliers from the global avocado industry have joined its network in an effort to keep more food out of landfills.

MeliBio Raises a Sweet $850,000 Pre-Seed Round for Bee-Less Honey – MeliBio, a startup that makes real honey without the need for bees, announced today that it has raised an $850,000 pre-seed round of funding.

TurtleTree Scientific Partners With JSBiosciences to Develop Cell Culture Media at Commercial Scale – TurtleTree Scientific, the B2B arm of cellular ag company TurtleTree Labs, announced a new partnership with JSBiosciences to collaborate on the development of cell culture media.

Nemi Makes Sustainable Snacks From Drought-Tolerant Cactus – Chicago-based company called Nemi is using cactus as its star ingredient to make sustainable snack foods

UNNICO to Soon Launch Plant-Based Dairy Products In Terra Cotta Packaging

There are plenty of plant-based yogurts on the market at this point, and a lot of them are really good. However, for those who are health or environmentally conscious, many of these yogurts pose a problem — sugar content and plastic. Some yogurts can contain up to 20 grams of sugar, and plastic is the most common packing for yogurt. UNNICO is entering the crowded plant-based yogurt to provide a sugar-free plant-based yogurt packaged in ceramics.

I spoke with Nicolas Riggio, the founder of UNNICO, on the phone this week to talk about the company’s products and the upcoming market launch. Riggio said that the company will be launching six initial products in the market sometime in March or April. UNNICO’s oat-based yogurt will come in four flavors, plain, bourbon vanilla, strawberry, and mixed berry. The coconut cream yogurt will come in three flavors, strawberry cheesecake, caramel salt, and cookies and cream. None of the yogurts will contain added sugars but will use an alternative sweetener called allulose that doesn’t raise blood sugar at all.

The initial plant-based cheese product will be an almond and pea protein-based cream cheese that contains 3 grams of protein, with more flavors to come in the future. The company will also have one dessert, a dark chocolate ganache made from coconut milk with only 6 grams of sugar.

What really differentiates UNNICO’s products from other plant-based dairy products is the terra cotta packaging. All of the previously mentioned products will come in terra cotta packaging. When UNNICO’s D2C platform and subscription service is up and running, consumers can order these products and then ship back the terra cotta packaging to receive a discount on future orders. The used terra cotta will then be recycled to make materials like bricks. This idea is reminiscent of Heineken’s old rectangle-shaped bottles; the bottles were designed so once empty, they could be used to build homes in impoverished areas.

There are several plant-based yogurt companies that use an alternative to plastic, like Coconut Cult and Culina for example. Both of these coconut-based yogurts come in glass packaging, which is nice because the glass jars can be re-used. Although glass is considered more sustainable than plastic, it still takes a decent amount of energy to produce glass and also transport it.

When UNNICO’s products launch in early spring, they will first be available in grocers, delis, and stores in the New York metro area. The yogurts and ganache will retail for $3.69-$3.89, with the cream cheese costing $6.99.

Beyond Meat and PepsiCo Partner Up for Plant-Based Snacks Joint Venture

Beyond Meat and PepsiCo announced today that they are forming the PLANeT Partnership, LLC, a joint venture that will develop snacks and beverages made from plant-based protein. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

The PLANeT Partnership will lean on Beyond Meat’s plant-based protein food expertise and PepsiCo’s massive marketing and commercial sales infrastructure to scale any new product options created.

There are a couple of ways to interpret this news. First, PepsiCo’s involvement is another example of how plant-based protein is going mainstream. According to the Good Food Institute’s 2020 Plant-Based Market Overview, “grocery sales of plant-based foods that directly replace animal products have grown 29% in the past two years to $5 billion.” And those numbers were released before the pandemic, an ongoing event that’s spurred explosive sales of plant-based foods. Meticulous Research projected sales of plant-based foods would “grow at a CAGR of 11.9% from 2020 to 2027 to reach $74.2 billion by 2027.”

So it makes sense for PepsiCo to partner with a well-known brand in the plant-based food space to get in on some of that sweet plant-based money.

In addition to money, there’s another “green” aspect to the partnership: sustainability. One of the main benefits of plant-based foods is that they take less of a toll on the planet. PepsiCo isn’t exactly known as a steward of the environment (though it does run its Greenhouse Accelerator program), and creating the PLANeT Partnership allows them to get a little eco-halo effect and create a line of snacks that will appeal to conscious consumers.

I’m curious to see what role the direct-to-consumer sales channels play in all this. Both PepisCo and Beyond Meat launched D2C channels last year. Obviously PepsiCo has deep in-roads with traditional retail, and in-store is where the big money is. But as shoppers get comfortable with buying more of their groceries online, the PLANeT Partnership has an opportunity to build a robust D2C channel from the ground up and own more of its customer relationship and data.

But mostly, I’m interested to see what actual food comes out of this partnership. Having been in the Beyond Meat test kitchen, I know firsthand that its culinary team is remarkable and have no doubt they could come up with tasty treats.

Now we just need to see if this PepsiCo + Beyond Meat endeavor will get Coca-Cola and Impossible Foods to announce their own partnership.

Jimmy Dean Launches Plant-Based Patty Sandwiches at Sam’s Club

Jimmy Dean, a US-based pork producer owned by Tyson Foods, announced today the launch of its new plant-based patty breakfast sandwiches at Sam’s Club and other undisclosed retailers. The company will be launching two different breakfast sandwiches with one already available in stores, and the other launching in Spring 2021.

The breakfast sandwich launched at the end of December 2020 is the Plant-Based Patty, Egg & Cheese Croissant Sandwich. Jimmy Dean is known for its breakfast patties and links, and this new product provides a meat-free breakfast alternative that still maintains a high amount of protein. The plant-based patty is made from soy protein, and egg whites, and the sandwich also includes American cheese and eggs, clocking in at 13g of protein.

Launching sometime in Spring 2021, the Plant-Based Patty & Frittata Sandwich totals 15G of protein and features a vegetable and grain patty made from black beans, quinoa, brown rice, soy protein, and egg whites. This sandwich uses an English muffin base, and also includes a spinach and egg frittata and American cheese. Although the sandwiches are not vegan friendly, they are suitable for those who follow a flexitarian or vegetarian diet.

Jimmy Dean is certainly not the first large meat producer to launch plant-based options. With the plant-based meat category being valued at $939 million in 2020 and a survey showing that 50% of consumers have tried plant-based meat, it makes sense for meat producers to add plant-based options to their portfolio. The largest producer of meat in the world, JBS, owns Planterra, which created a brand called Ozo that has an entire line of meatless burgers, grounds, and meatballs. Smithfield Foods, one of the largest pork producers in the world, launched a line of plant-based proteins through the brand Pure Farmland. Other meat producers such as Tyson, Hormel, and Cargill have also produced meatless products.

Located in the frozen aisle within Sam’s Clubs, the Plant-Based Patty, Egg & Cheese Croissant Sandwich comes in a pack of 12 and retails at $11.65. The Plant-Based Patty & Frittata Sandwich comes in a 4-count pack has a suggested retail price of $7.29, and it is currently undetermined which retailers this sandwich will launch in this upcoming spring.

Plant-Based E-Commerce Site PlantX Expands To US and Israel

Vancouver-based PlantX, an e-commerce site for plant-based groceries, recently announced its expansion into the US and Israel as well as new brick-and-mortar locations. I had the opportunity to speak this week with Sean Dollinger and Alex Hoffman, the co-founders of PlantX, to discuss the details of the company’s expansion news.

PlantX launched this year and has been operating its e-commerce site in Canada, and now the service is expanding to sell groceries to consumers in the United States and Israel. To accommodate these new channels, the company will be opening brick-and-mortar stores that will serve as shipment fulfillment centers. The US location will be based in San Diego, California, while the Israel location is currently undisclosed.

Hoffman emphasized that the stores will be much more than a grocery store or fulfillment center though; their primary focus will be to provide a learning center that educates consumers on a plant-based diet. The physical location will also include onsite kitchens for meal delivery service and a coffee shop serving plant-based items. To encourage the continued use of its e-commerce site, PlantX customers can actually go shop in these physical locations and can use their phones to scan QR codes and have the groceries delivered to their house.

The demand for purchasing groceries online has certainly soared during the pandemic; online grocery shopping hit a record of $7.2 billion in sales over the summer. PlantX is among a number of smaller e-commerce sites for plant-based only products like GFTO it’s Vegan, Billion Vegans, and Vegan Essentials; however, none of these companies offer physical locations that customers can visit.

Dollinger said that it is the company’s goal to have a brick-and-mortar location in every country, enabling consumers to use the e-commerce site throughout the world. In addition to the main flagship locations in each country, PlantX will be opening smaller franchise locations that will serve as grocery stores, fulfillment centers, and learning centers sometime in the future.