Last year, the execs at Motif Foodworks figured they’d make some finished products to showcase the company’s next-gen plant-based ingredients in alt-beef, chicken, or pork.
The tests went so well that the company, which normally focuses on making plant-based meat building blocks for other manufacturers, has decided to launch its own line of finished-format private label products targeted at the foodservice and food retail markets.
Motif announced this news today as part of a release that led with the news of Robert Downey Jr’s Foodprint Coalition investing in Motif Foodworks. In fact, the launch of the new line was almost a footnote in a press release with the headline “Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition Ventures Joins Motif FoodWorks in its Effort to Reimagine Plant-Based Foods.”
Sure, it’s exciting to announce a celebrity investor, but the truth is you can’t walk on a red carpet nowadays without turning around and knocking over an alt-protein investing movie star. So the private label launch is the more interesting news of the two and, I’m guessing, more impactful long-term for Motif’s business.
From a business perspective, it’s a smart move to chase a market that accounts for 17% of meat in North America and almost half of all meat sold in Europe. While the private label has only been a small part of plant-based market thus far, some like Trader Joe’s and Walmart have already launched some lines of their own branded alt-meat products, and I’m sure the trend will only continue to grow in the coming years.
And that’s just food retail. The private label opportunity is probably even more significant in foodservice, where the allure of having a branded plant-based burger is probably declining for restaurants. The company is betting on its HEMAMI (Motif’s umami flavor technology) and APPETEX (its texture/mouthful tech) as differentiators in a crowded plant-based food market. I think they’re right since the reality is these types of tech-forward advances are beyond the scope of typical suppliers of meat for food retailers and restaurants.
I also think a healthy private label business is good for the broader plant-based meat industry, which still needs to work on bringing the price differential down between traditional meat and plant-based products. And with the food industry’s continuing battle with inflation turning consumers to store branded products, it seems like it might be time for the era of private-label meat to begin.
