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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

vegetarian

New Year, New Food: U.K. Grocery and QSR’s Cash In on Veganuary

When the New Year hits, some people do juice cleanses, some try to eat fewer sweets, and some abstain from booze. Others do Veganuary (vegan + January), a month-long pledge to not eat any animal products which is backed by a U.K. charity. Started in 2014, Veganuary is reportedly about to have its biggest year yet, with over 170,000 people signed up to participate. And that doesn’t include those participating independently.

Beyond New Year’s resolutions, demand for plant-based foods (especially protein) is on the rise. In 2019, the plant-based protein market is expected grow at a CAGR of over 8 percent globally.

When it comes to feeding this demand, the U.K. is one of the leaders as we start 2019. Over half of all Brits either are flexitarian or are interested in pursuing a flexitarian diet. And retailers, from fast-food joints to grocery chains, are taking notice. Here are a few of the most interesting plant-based products that launched in the U.K. this Veganuary:

Pizza Hut
In celebration of Veganuary, Pizza Hut announced this week it would launch a limited-edition vegan pizza topped with jackfruit, a popular meat substitute, on January 1. Memorably dubbed the Jack ‘n Ch**se (see photo above), the pizza will feature a tomato base, dairy-free cheese, corn, red onions, peppers, and BBQ jackfruit, all covered with a BBQ sauce drizzle. It costs £11.29 ($14.23 USD) and is available at all 253 Pizza Hut locations in the U.K. If Pizza Hut sells at least 10,000 of these vegan pizzas by the end of January, they will become a permanent menu item.

 

Photo: Greggs

Greggs
Greggs, the largest bakery chain the U.K., is embracing Veganuary by vegan-izing its most popular product: the sausage roll. Starting on January 3, the company will roll (ha) out a vegan version made with meat substitute Quorn. The roll will be available in 950 Gregg’s locations for £1 ($1.24).

Last year PETA launched a petition urging Greggs to create a vegan version of its sausage roll. It was signed by 20,000 people. But the quick-service bakery has reportedly been working on a vegan sausage roll recipes for quite a while in order to capitalize off of increased demand for meat-free products.

 

Photo: Sainsbury’s

Sainsbury’s
Sainsbury’s is ramping up its selection of vegan products in the New Year. According to LiveKindly, the U.K. grocery retailer launched 29 new plant-based products on January 1, including mushroom-based minced “beef” to jackfruit burgers to something intriguingly called a “shroomdog.” These additions bring Sainsbury’s lineup of vegan products to over 100 items, which makes sense: the chain recently reported a 20 percent rise in sales of meat-free items.

 

Photo: Waitrose

Waitrose
It’s a widely known fact that Brits love fish ‘n chips — but what about fishless fish n’ chips? Grocery chain Waitrose just rolled out its own brand of Fishless Fingers, which are essentially sticks of flavored tofu breaded with, among other things, seaweed. The vegan fish sticks cost £3.19 ($4.02) per pack through January 30, at which point they’ll jump up to £3.99 ($5.03).

So What?
British QSR’s and grocery chains are reading the tea leaves (or the consumer reports): plant-based foods are only going to continue to grow in popularity, spurring demand for better-tasting, cheaper vegan foods. U.K. companies are jumping in headfirst, launching wide varieties of vegan/vegetarian products at accessible price points. As we in America work to take advantage of the recent boom in plant-based eating, we might want to look across the pond for an example.

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If you get the chance to try any of these products, we’d love to hear how you liked them! Leave a comment or tweet us @TheSpoonTech. 

Good Dot Paves Way for Plant-Based Meats in India with Vegan “Mutton”

Plant-based meat companies are largely based in two continents: Europe and North America. But in places where alterna-meats could have the largest impact on health and the environment, there are very few options available.

One company working to change that is Good Dot, a startup making plant-based meats, as their website states, “in India, for India, by India.”

Founded in 2016, the Udaipur-based company makes meat alternatives out of soy, wheat, and pea protein. Its flagship product is a vegan mutton, and it also has a dehydrated plant-based “chicken” product and an “egg” scramble in its lineup (some Indians don’t consider eggs vegetarian). The company is also working on a shredded-chicken alternative.

When I first heard about Good Dot, I wondered: in a land where 80 percent of the population believes that cows are sacred, and where vegetarian dishes like palak paneer, lentil-based dal and curried bhindi are the norm, is there really a need for meat alternative?

Apparently, I — and many others — am completely off base here. “It’s a huge misconception that India is a primarily vegetarian country,” said Abhishek Sinha, co-founder and CEO of Good Dot. In fact, he told me that around 72 percent of Indians do consume meat.

In a country of 1.3 billion, that still leaves over 360 million vegetarians. Like most alterna-meat companies, however, Good Dot isn’t just targeting vegetarians. Instead, it markets its products as an easy replacement that tastes as good as meat but is healthier for you (lower saturated fat, etc.) and better for the planet. Good Dot’s products are also shelf-stable, which means that people can store them for long periods of time (up to one year) without worrying about spoilage, as they would with meat.

In order to gain a foothold in the market, however, Sinha knew that Good Dot needed to get its products to cost the same — or less — than regular meat. “We believe that to make plant-based meat mainstream it is important to have cost parity with real meat,” he said. “This is where our strength lies.” Good Dot’s “mutton” is at price parity to its traditional counterpart, and its vegan egg product is cheaper than traditional eggs.

Another challenge Good Dot had to tackle was distribution. Chain grocery stores aren’t common in India; locals rely on smaller neighborhood shops and outdoors markets. To get around this hurdle, Good Dot sells its products through RCM, a direct selling company in India with 7,500 stores, as well as online via the Good Dot website and Amazon. In addition to its direct-to-consumer channel, the company also supplies its plant-based meats to hotels and restaurants throughout India.

In addition to its CPG business, Good Dot also has a food stall franchise called GoodDo which sells fried “chicken” made with Good Dot’s plant-based meat. GoodDo currently has four locations in India, and Sinha told me they plan to open 30 more.

Good Dot currently has a team of around 120 people and has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from New Crop Capital, as well as angel investors.

Its products are only available in India for now, but Sinha said Good Dot is in “advanced stage” talks with Canada and UAE about distribution opportunities. The startup can carve out some space in these markets thanks to the novelty of its products: while Beyond and Impossible already offer vegan burgers and sausages, no one is offering plant-based mutton (yet).

However, the place where Good Dot can make the biggest impact is on its home turf. Demand for meat in India is growing rapidly: as national wealth increases, more and more people are turning to a meat-heavy diet. This shift puts pressure on environmental resources, especially water, and also leads to more greenhouse gas emissions.

A similar dietary change is happening in China, where there’s a growing demand for pork despite the government’s goal to cut meat consumption in half.  There, Omnipork is trying to do with pork what Good Dot is doing with chicken and mutton: feed the local demand for meat with a plant-based alternative, one that’s developed specifically for the tastes of the local population instead of the Western world.

The lack of consumer demand for plant-based meat in India is partly because, up to now, there haven’t been good options available. “Bleeding” vegan burgers from Impossible and Beyond wouldn’t make sense in the Indian market, since more than three-quarters of the country are Hindu and don’t eat beef in the first place. By targeting culturally appropriate meats (mutton and chicken), Good Dot has a chance to catalyze demand in the second-highest populated country globally and pave the way for more alterna-meat companies outside the Western world.

Let’s Unpack Impossible Foods’ Strategy to Edge in On the Beef Market

By now, you may well have sampled an Impossible Burger. (We certainly have — and liked it.) If you haven’t, you’re probably at least curious about the plant-based burger which claims to taste, cook, look, and even bleed like real beef.

The Redwood City-based startup released their 2018 Impact Report this week, touting three of their achievements over the past year: their growing reach (and growing customer demand), their ace-in-the-hole ingredient, heme, and their sustainability mission. With their progress, they hope to continue on their quest to replace beef burgers with their plant-based patties. Here’s how:

  1. Larger availability, smaller price point

Last year Impossible patties were available in only 40 restaurants. Now, you can find them in 3,000 restaurants in the U.S., Hong Kong and Macao. To keep up with rapidly increasing demand, Impossible Foods had to hire a second shift of employees to work in their large-scale commercial plant in Oakland, California, which produces about 500,000 pounds of plant-based meat each month.

In addition to widening their availability, Impossible has also been dropping its price point. Initially they were available only at Momofuku Nishi, David Chang’s hip NYC restaurant, for $18 (albeit with fries). Now you can pick on up at one of 140 White Castle locations for only $1.99.

Impossible Foods has chosen to market their meatless patties in restaurants because of chefs’ trendsetting power with one highly influential demographic: millennials. Millennials are driving the explosive growth of the plant-based meat market and are leading the charge on flexitarianism. Impossible Foods knows this, and is taking advantage; about three-quarters of its customers also eat meat.

“We want meat eaters globally to happily prefer our plant-based vegan products because they think it’s just better,” David Lee, COO and CFO of Impossible Foods, told crowds at TechfestNW earlier this year. It’s a smart move on Impossible Foods’ part to take any self-righteous guilting out of the equation. In fact, they seem to be moving towards a branding strategy where they don’t differentiate themselves from meat at all. Their website’s slogan is: “We make delicious meat from plants”.

Not to be nitpicky, but technically, they don’t — they make vegetarian burgers out of plants, which happen to mimic the things we love about meat (umami flavor, juicy fattiness, etc.). The secret to their burger’s taste-alike success? Well, that would be…

2. The buzzy molecule behind the “bleeding” burger

A big part of Impossible’s branding is their patties’ uncanny ability to “bleed” just like beef. This is thanks to heme, a molecule found in red meat — and also plants, which is where Impossible creates and harvests it. When we sampled the Impossible burger, we could taste the animal almost-metallic funkiness (yes, that’s a good thing) that comes from heme. Heme not only gives the patties a distinctly beef-like flavor — it’s also one of the most important aspects of their marketing strategy. The reason that a burger made from plants can be dubbed as “meat” is because it has some of the same chemical flavors, down to the molecule.

A few months ago the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) flagged heme as a potential allergen after Impossible sent in their burger for a voluntary food safety test. Recently, however, the FDA gave heme the green light, declaring it safe. The FDA holdup wasn’t much of a roadblock; Impossible could (and did) sell their burgers widely. More of an issue, at least to some, is the fact that the patties aren’t GMO-free. In fact, heme is made through genetically engineering. But the GMO aspect doesn’t seem to cool excitement over this molecule, which is one of Impossible’s biggest selling points — one which allows them to position their products as a “burger,” not a “veggie burger.”

3. Mission Earth 

Plants have a smaller environmental footprint than animals — they just do. And beef is one of the worst culprits of all. In the impact report, Impossible Foods’ CEO and founder Pat Brown said that his company was on track to “eliminate the need for animals as a food production technology by 2035.” He told Time that by doing so, we can save Earth and “keep it habitable” so we won’t be forced to relocate to Mars.

Obviously, this is super ambitious — and optimistic. Even if we could eliminate the need for animals as food (that is, come up with enough plant-based protein to sustain the world) many people would be hard-pressed to give up meat — no matter how realistic the veggie burger.

There’s no question demand for (and acceptance of) plant-based protein is on the rise. The market is increasing at a CAGR of 5.9% and is projected to reach $14.22 billion by 2022. Almost 40% of people are trying to incorporate more plant-based proteins into their diets.

Which sounds super encouraging, until you realize that 2018 is also the year we’re projected to eat more meat than ever before. So while Impossible’s sales might be growing, is it moving any closer to its goal of replacing beef? Or is it just becoming a supplementary option for our protein-crazed selves?

Right now we’re at a critical juncture for the future of meat alternatives; they’re clearly gaining popularity and reach, but are they actually making a dent in meat production? As of yet, not so much. But with continued technical innovation, and new manufacturing methods, they might become so good that they might reach Impossible’s self-professed goal to be so good that carnivores choose their burgers over the real thing.

Conclusions

With heme now FDA-approved, and its continuing march towards affordable ubiquity, Impossible seems to show no sign of slowing down its growth, both to new marketplaces and new heights of media attention. Apparently, the company also has patents on the flavor chemistry used to create pork, chicken, and fish flavors, and plan to make plant-based alternatives to all three in the future.

If it can fix a few training issues, and avoid the roadblocks that Beyond Meat has experienced with meeting growing demand, maybe they can take some of the wind out of beef’s sales — and then conquer the rest of the animal kingdom. Of course, as long as lab-grown meat doesn’t knock them out of the water first.

 

 

The Number of Vegetarians Today Is the Same as in 2012 — Is That About to Change?

With so many companies debuting new (and tasty) ways to eat meat made from plants, you’d think that the number of vegetarians and vegans would be on the rise, right?

Apparently, wrong. Recently, Mara Judkis wrote a Washington Post article which blew our preconceived notions about the number of non-meat-eaters out of the water. In the piece, she wrote that only 5% of Americans identified as vegetarian; a number which has remained unchanged since 2012 — and, in fact, is down from the number of vegetarians in 1999 and 2001. From the article:

What’s remarkable is how little has changed, even as our food culture and habits have evolved over the past 20 years. In 1999, there were no “Meatless Mondays,” no Pinterest, no “Food, Inc.,” no fast-casual salad places, no Goop. Information about a vegetarian diet — at least for middle- and upper-class people who have more dietary choices — has seemingly never been more abundant. But it’s not resulting in any noticeable increase in the rate at which people adopt the diet — a fact that may prove either galvanizing or discouraging for plant-based advocacy groups. 

This is especially surprising to us at the Spoon, as we’ve covered a bounty of companies developing new, better tasting meat alternatives. From Beyond Meat to Impossible Foods, companies are producing meaty simulacrums that not only taste like meat, but also cook like meat and even bleed like meat. With all these new options, it seems like more people would be skipping the meat altogether.

In fact, demand for plant-based products is on the rise. Mintel reported that the number of vegetarian products on the market doubled between 2009 and 2013, and a Nielson study with the Good Food Institute showed that the plant-based food industry topped $3.1 billion in sales in 2017. Beyond Burgers are flying off retail shelves faster than the company can make them, and even fast food joints like KFC and White Castle are investing in plant-based “meats” to meet burgeoning consumer demand.

Judkis points out that the study doesn’t take into account the rise in flexitarianism. While Americans may not be abstaining from meat altogether, more are cutting down; in fact, 60% of carnivores are working to reduce their meat consumption. At the same time, Americans are projected to eat more meat than ever before in 2018, according to the USDA. Basically, Americans’ demand for protein — animal or otherwise — is on the rise.

In the end, Judkis doesn’t make a prediction of whether or not the number of vegetarians and vegans will continue to stay static. I think we’re at the calm before the storm. There are a plethora of companies that are either releasing plant-based protein products, or are just about to: Good Catch Foods’ vegan tuna will be available by the end of 2018, and JUST’s mung bean-based “egg scramble” is popping up in grocery stores around the country. And of course we’re a few years away from cultured meat, which, depending on how you look at it, could be the key to eliminating traditional meat and turning everyone “vegetarian.”

Judkis’ article focused on America, but a lot of plant-based innovation is happening in other countries. Denmark’s PlantJammer is an app working to help people cook vegetarian meals from whatever’s in their fridge, Vivera just debuted its plant-based steak in Belgian supermarkets, and Omnipork is developing a vegetarian pork product to meet China’s rising meat demands.

As in the U.S., many of these company’s products are either still in development, or else reach only a niche audience. Likely, the amount of vegetarians and vegans will rise as meat alternatives become more affordable, available, and indistinguishable from meat — and as traditional meat starts to rise in price thanks to environmental constraints.

Food Tech News Roundup: Recyclable Meal Kits, KFC Goes Vegan(ish), and a Dairy App

Time for this week’s food tech news roundup! This week on the Spoon we covered self-heating beverage cans, beer made from surplus bread, and indoor smart grow system Ava’s (one of the Smart Kitchen Summit startup showcase finalists of 2017!) seed funding. We also launched a new podcast episode discussing how machine learning can help dairy farmers.

But enough about us — here are some of the food tech news stories that caught our eye this week:

Photo: Marley Spoon

Marley Spoon files IPO in Australia
Meal kit subscription service Marley Spoon filed for an initial public offering (IPO) this week in Australia, according to TechCrunch. The company is headquartered in Berlin, but decided to list on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) because Down Under is one of its biggest markets. Marley Spoon has tried to distinguish itself from competing services like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh through its paid partnership with Martha Stewart and its launch of budget-friendly line Dinnerly. The IPO is expected to give Marley Spoon a market capitalization of $152 million — but we’ll see if it can overcome challenges others like Blue Apron faced post-IPO, and whether Marley Spoon will make the move into retail stores like Hello Fresh, Plated and Home Chef.

Photo: Purple Carrot

Purple Carrot unveils 100% curbside recyclable packaging
Marley Spoon wasn’t the only meal kit company with an announcement this week. Purple Carrot, the plant-based meal kit service, sent out a press release to tell the world about their “new 100% curbside recyclable packaging.” Meal kits may cut down on food waste, but they’re notorious for their packaging waste; even if many elements are technically recyclable they often require a good deal of effort on the consumer’s part to break them down or drive them to a facility capable of processing them. Purple Carrot promises that its new packaging will be 100% fit for at-home recycling — which could be a huge step towards mitigating plastic packaging waste.

 

Photo: Stellapps

Gates Foundation invests $14M in dairy tech app
Last week Stellapps Technologies, the India-based IoT and data analysis stack for the dairy supply chain, raised a $14 million Series B round, as reported by AgFunder News. The round was led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and IndusAge Partners. Founded in 2011, Stellapps uses sensors, machine learning, and automation to optimize the entire dairy supply chain: from production to shipping to distribution. Technology has unlocked a new era of cow and dairy management, with startups like SomaDetect and Connecterra allowing farmers to make more data-driven decisions.

 

Pixabay

KFC to test vegetarian fried “chicken” in U.K.
KFC UK has made promises to cut their calorie content by 20 percent over the next 7 years, and one of the ways they’re working towards this goal is by developing a vegetarian version of their iconic fried chicken. Apparently, the new menu offering will still use the secret blend of 11 herbs and spices that made the Colonel famous, and will debut some time in 2019. This comes on the heels of the plant-based Impossible burger’s launch at White Castle.

 

Photo: Beyond Meat

Beyond Meat doubles production to meet increased demand
This week, plant-based protein company Beyond Meat announced that it would double their production to sate the growing hunger for their plant-based burgers. According to Plant Based News, Beyond burgers are outselling beef burgers in some stores in California, and Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown has said that the company is ahead of their sales targets. All of which means that the demand for meat-like vegan burgers is there, and is growing — the question now becomes if Beyond Meat can keep up with demand, especially as it rolls out in 50 countries this summer.

Did we miss anything? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech!

Pig, Out: Omnipork Hopes to Replace China’s Most Consumed Meat

Dumplings, char siu, lo mein, sweet and sour stir fries — a lot of China’s most-loved dishes feature one meat above all: pork. In fact, mainland China is the world’s largest consumer of pork; they’re projected to consume about 56 million tons of it this year alone.

David Yeung is trying to curb Chinese pork consumption by replacing it with a plant-based option called Omnipork. Made from soy, pea, mushroom and rice proteins, Yeung hopes it will exactly mimic the taste and texture of pork. It contains about a third of the calories and saturated fat of traditional pork, as well as more fiber, calcium, or iron. And, since it’s not made from an animal, it doesn’t have any antibiotics or hormones, and carries less of a risk of foodborne illness.

This isn’t Yeung’s first foray into meat alternatives. He is an investor in Beyond Meat and brought the meatless burgers over to Hong Kong to sell in Green Common, a vegetarian grocery store and casual dining chain that he founded. Green Common is one of the few places in the world to serve Just Scramble, a mung bean-based egg substitute.

Omnipork will launch in Hong Kong in June, at Michelin-starred restaurant Cantonese Ming Court. Yeung’s company Right Treat is working to get their product approved by Chinese regulators. If they succeed, Yeung hopes to start selling it in mainland China by the end of 2018. 

According to a taste test with CNNMoney, however, Omnipork isn’t fooling anyone yet. Part of the issue might be because there’s so little precedent; Right Treat is one of the first to focus on making a plant-based pork product. Sure Beyond Meat has a (still relatively new) Beyond Sausage and there are a few companies turning jackfruit into pseudo pulled pork. But compared to beef — especially burgers, “bleeding” and otherwise — there are very few examples of plant-based pig products. Add to that the fact that they’re trying to make an all-in-one pork replacement — one that steams, fries, and patties like pork — and they’re going where no meat alternative company has gone before.

Which is also why Omnipork has such great potential. Since there are so few vegan “pork” products, if Yeung can successfully develop one that has the same taste and texture as the real thing, it could be massively successful. After all, pork is the most consumed meat in the world, according to the World Watch Institute — and much of it is consumed in China. 60% of all hogs are bred in China, 95% of which are slaughtered and eaten before they leave the country.

Yeung realized that if he was going to tempt China away from pork, his product would have to be tailored to Chinese culinary tastes. While the majority of plant-based meat alternative companies are developed for Western palates, he worked to create a specifically ‘Chinese’ plant-based pork product. (He did, however, team up with U.S. scientists to develop it.) Because if a pork alternative is going to make a serious dent in the meat industry, it has to make a serious dent in the Chinese pork market.

Yeung’s timing just might pay off. There are around 50 million vegetarians in China, and, thanks to growing concern for health, food safety scares, and millennial dining habits, the number is projected to rise. Pair this with the fact that the Chinese government announced two years ago that they’re aiming to cut national meat consumption by 50% and a growth in the Chinese vegetarian protein market seems inevitable. If demand for meat alternatives increases in China, as it did in the U.S., then Omnipork could soon be flying off the shelves — as long as the flavor gets a little closer to pork.