Silicon Investor - Impossible Foods and Beyond

[Chartgod] Just gambling ;-) +++ [youtube video] +++ [graphic] +++ [graphic] +++ [gr...

Chartgod — 7/9/2026 5:42:01 AM

Just gambling ;-)

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[Ron] Jumping the shark? Beyond Meat's 'Protein Soda' theverge.com

Ron — 1/28/2026 11:42:27 AM

[Ron] Beyond Meat extends distribution in Walmart chain, and reaches meme status. cnbc...

Ron — 10/22/2025 10:04:10 AM

Beyond Meat extends distribution in Walmart chain, and reaches meme status.
cnbc.com

[Ron] Beyond Meat's shares soar on better-than-expected Q4 revenue despite weak US sal...

Ron — 2/27/2024 8:21:40 PM

Beyond Meat's shares soar on better-than-expected Q4 revenue despite weak US sales

finance.yahoo.com

[Ron] Beyond Meat fell in late trading after the plant-based burger company said it’s ...

Ron — 8/7/2023 6:10:30 PM

Beyond Meat fell in late trading after the plant-based burger company said it’s unlikely to hit its goal of becoming cash-flow positive in the second half of the year. The company also trimmed its sales outlook.
finance.yahoo.com

[Ron] USDA Approves Sales of Chicken Grown From Cells Grown in a Lab nbcnews.com fina...

Ron — 6/21/2023 5:51:55 PM

USDA Approves Sales of Chicken Grown From Cells Grown in a Lab
nbcnews.com

final regulatory hurdle cleared for several companies.

[Glenn Petersen] This company could take lab-grown meat mainstream thanks to a green light from t...

Glenn Petersen — 5/19/2023 8:32:20 AM

This company could take lab-grown meat mainstream thanks to a green light from the FDA

PUBLISHED FRI, MAY 19 20237:00 AM EDT
Natasha Piñon
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- As demand for plant-based meat cools, advocates for cultivated meat, which is grown directly from animal cells, think they can target a wider consumer base.

-- Last fall, cultivated-meat company Upside Foods became the first in the U.S. to be viewed as safe for human consumption by the Food and Drug Administration.

-- With regulatory approval in its sights, Upside Foods sees 2023 as a watershed moment for the cultivated-meat industry.

A look at Upside’s prepared chicken product. / Upside Foods
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When Amy Chen took her first bite of chicken meat grown directly from cells in a lab, her initial reaction was a cliché one-liner: It tasted like chicken.

That bite was years in the making.

Chen is the operating chief at Upside Foods, a Berkeley, California-based food-technology company that’s been working to bring what’s known as cultivated meat to the American mainstream since 2015.

Chen’s unusual dining experience, which she calls “the most remarkable and most unremarkable” of her life, could become a lot more common in the years to come. In November, the Food and Drug Administration cleared Upside’s cell-cultivated chicken as safe for human consumption, marking the first time the agency has given that designation to a lab-grown meat product.

The FDA green light brings Upside to a major inflection point, Chen said. Since 2015, the company has largely been a scientific endeavor. Now, the next chapter of Upside’s story is whether that credible science can turn into a functional business model.

Upside Foods’ pivotal moment also comes at a key moment in the alternative meat industry. Demand for plant-based meats, once the darling of meat alternatives, has largely cooled as an influx of products crowded the market. Yet the environmental concerns that drove their rise to popularity persist: Global emissions from food production are expected to rise 60% by 2050, with livestock a major driver of that increase.

Big name backers, such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, plus industry leaders like Chen, hope that cultivated meat, which doesn’t require the land or livestock-related emissions that comes with traditional meat production, could be the solution.

But getting consumers on board — and the products on grocery shelves — promises to be a steep climb.

Will the public dig in?

The cultivated-meat industry could have a wider consumer base than previously introduced alternative meat products, because unlike plant-based meats, it’s “real” meat — minus the slaughtered animals.

If the taste is up to snuff, as Chen felt it was, Upside’s products could potentially appeal to both conflicted carnivores and vegetarians who avoid meat for environmental or animal-welfare concerns. The challenge for companies like Upside is getting the public on board with eating meat made in a lab from animal cells.

While some vegetarians might be willing to partake, Chen said Upside is “laser-focused” on targeting “improvers,” or people who recognize the current food system is unsustainable and want to make it better — but still eat meat, maybe occasionally or maybe daily. “When you think about that consumer [group], it’s actually a pretty decent part of the population,” she said.

Chen jokes with her team that their current task is merely getting “people past thinking that this is a science project.”

To the untrained ear, it certainly sounds like a science project: To make its chicken product, Upside first takes a small amount of cells from a fertilized chicken egg. Then, its scientists select the best cells to develop a cell line. Those cells are placed in a cultivator, where they’re fed nutrients like water and amino acids in order to multiply. After a few weeks, the meat is removed from the cultivator and separated from the cell feed so it can be shaped into a chicken fillet.

That’s a far cry from the comparatively simple process for making plant-based meats. And, accordingly, some traditional meat companies have expressed interest in the burgeoning cultivated-meat industry, which one day could become a competitor.

Tyson Ventures, the venture capital branch of Tyson Foods, for example, was an early investor in Upside.

“That sort of perspective from a meat company says a lot about how they view the potential consumer base,” said Elliot Swartz, the lead cultivated-meat scientist at the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on improving the global food system. The organization, which advocates for alternative protein innovation, has been funded by Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator, according to Crunchbase. Y Combinator has also funded cultivated-meat company Micro Meat.

Chef Dominique Crenn at work in her kitchen / Upside Foods
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Rather than thinking of other alternative meat companies as Upside’s rivals, Chen regards the company’s main competition as the status quo, since meat eaters can already get what they’re looking for at a low price.

An Upside Foods representative said it expects to enter the market at a “price premium” but the company’s “aspiration” is to achieve price parity with traditional meat in the next five to 15 years.

There are plenty of other companies in the cultivated-meat space, which could also sway prices. Swartz said there’s about 150 companies worldwide developing cultivated meat or helping build the industry’s future supply chain. Other companies, like Finless Foods, BlueNalu and Fork & Good, are also developing various cell-cultured meat products in the U.S.

A Fork & Good representative said the company expects to “sell at the cost of meat of the same value,” while a BlueNalu representative said it aims to “offer products at or close to price parity,” but says it’s “not in a position to provide details around cost” since it has yet to bring a product to market.

But despite these signs of growth, customers may not be able to try cultivated meat for some time. Upside plans to debut its chicken products in restaurants, starting with Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn, helmed by chef Dominique Crenn, in San Francisco, because of a marked tendency to try new dining experiences outside of the home.

That debut can’t occur, however, until Upside gets the full regulatory go-ahead. Chen added that the company will keep its meat exclusively in restaurants “for some time” before expanding to consumer products.

That’s been a common go-to-market strategy for similar companies, Swartz pointed out, adding that Impossible Foods took that approach in 2016 when it launched its products at David Chang’s Momofuku Nishi in New York City.

“I think it will be a near-ubiquitous strategy in this industry,” he said, especially since most cultivated-meat facilities lack the production volume for much more at the moment.

“You cannot, with the existing infrastructure, get these products onto grocery store shelves,” Swartz added.

Beefing up

The entire cultivated-meat industry faces a problem of scale. While hailed as a climate-friendly meat alternative, the products can only realize that truth when they can be shipped in cost-efficient volume in order to compete with the traditional grocery fare on store shelves.

In fact, cultivated-meat companies may never compete with traditional meat in price, Swartz said, but in order to demonstrate true proof of concept, they’ll have to at least demonstrate that they can make products in accordance with their estimated pricing models.

“What drives consumers really comes down to price, taste and convenience,” he said. “Convenience implies operating at massive scale, and one of the limiting factors for the industry is going to be building new infrastructure.”

There isn’t a supply chain in place for cultivated meat, and the blueprint is being created in real time by companies like Upside Foods.

In 2021, Upside opened its first production facility in Emeryville, California, a 53,000-square-foot space powered entirely by renewable energy. At that facility, Upside tests new technologies and processes to determine what changes need to happen in order to scale up, Chen said.

The plan is to transfer those models into Upside’s eventual larger facilities, she said, adding that its first commercial plants will likely open later this year.

Upside’s 53,000 square foot Emeryville, CA facility is powered by renewable energy. / Upside Foods
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“When we talk about scale, especially with respect to the food system, it’s still really, really small scale,” Swartz said of existing cultivated-meat facilities, including Upside’s. As the industry grows, he said he expects it to take a similar path to another once-fringe, now-ubiquitous, innovation: electric vehicles.

When electric vehicle companies started out, the cost of batteries was tremendously high, so much so that batteries were often the most expensive part of producing a given vehicle. Electric vehicle companies worked around that by introducing hybrid options “where the cost is diluted by the existing product that’s on the market,” Swartz explained.

Some cultivated-meat companies are taking a similar approach, mixing cultured animal cells with plant-based proteins to keep costs down and increase the range of available products.

After Upside launches its first consumer product, the cultivated chicken fillet, its next debut will be ground products made up of both animal cells and other ingredients, including vegetables and plant-based proteins.

Industry prices could be influenced by other companies taking the same hybrid approach, but some cultivated-meat companies, like BlueNalu, have expressly said they have no plans to bring plant-based proteins into their mix.

Another crucial boon for the electric vehicle industry was governmental funding, in which agencies invested in research and encouraged incentives for building new electric vehicle infrastructure. The cultivated-meat industry will need a similar boost if it’s ever going to become a grocery store staple, Swartz said.

Upside is part of a multi-member coalition, the Association for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation, that lobbies on behalf of cell-based meat interests, with a particular focus on working with regulators to create a transparent pathway to market.

Within the past decade, investors already poured billions of dollars into cultivated-meat companies, but that’s just “a drop in the bucket compared to what’s going to advance this still nascent technology,” Swartz said. To get cultivated meat on grocery store shelves at a reasonable price point, it’s going to take “many, many, many more billions of dollars,” he added.

Red meat for regulators

One other factor is keeping cultivated meat outside of supermarkets: government clearance. While the FDA milestone last November was a watershed moment in the cultivated-meat industry, Upside still has a number of regulatory hurdles to get over before its products enter the U.S. market.

The FDA’s clearance was a voluntary premarket consultation, which means the agency has no further questions about the safety of Upside’s products. Now, Upside must meet the same stringent FDA requirements as any other food product, including registering its facilities, an agency official told CNBC via email.

In March 2019, the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed to a joint regulatory framework for handling foods made with animal-cell technology. When regulating companies like Upside Foods, the FDA will oversee cell collection, cell banks and cell growth and differentiation. In the cell-harvest stage, oversight will shift to the USDA-FSIS, which will oversee post-harvest processing and product labeling.

The joint regulatory structure means Upside’s manufacturing establishments need a grant of inspection from the USDA-FSIS in addition to meeting FDA requirements. Additionally, its food products will need a mark of inspection from USDA-FSIS before they can be sold in the U.S. FSIS stands for the Food Safety and Inspection Service.

A USDA representative told CNBC that Upside’s grant of inspection application is currently under review and “proceeding normally.”

Upside Foods’ office space / Upside Foods
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The grant process requires discussions between the company and the USDA to ensure all meat and poultry products are safely produced and properly labeled, according to the representative. That makes it unclear when products could be OK’d for sale.

Chen says Upside is “optimistic” it’ll happen this year, and the company is conducting its internal planning with that timeframe in mind, while ultimately deferring to the agencies. “That process is thorough and ongoing,” she added. “We’ve had really productive conversations going on with the USDA.”

While curious consumers who’ve known about cultivated meat for awhile might be impatient for their first taste, Swartz noted that “for a technology that incorporates different aspects of biotech, it’s a very fast timeline to get government approval.”

Though Upside Food was the first to get the FDA’s premarket seal of approval, a second entity, GOOD Meat, Inc., a cultivated-meat company that received regulatory approval from the Singapore Food Agency in 2020, made the grade in March.

These moves have paved the way for others. While the FDA doesn’t typically discuss the status of ongoing consultations, the agency says it’s already in talks with other companies working to make food from animal cells.

Chen, for her part, is excited for what’s to come. “This is the moment where cultivated meat comes to the world, and comes into its own,” she said.

Upside Foods hopes cultivated meat goes mainstream (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Meat adjacent: Moooove over: How single-celled yeasts are doing the work of 1,...

Glenn Petersen — 3/12/2023 5:30:58 PM

Meat adjacent:

Moooove over: How single-celled yeasts are doing the work of 1,500-pound cows

Cowless dairy is here, with the potential to shake up the future of animal dairy and plant-based milks

By Laura Reily
The Washington Post
March 12, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

BERKELEY, Calif. — The first course was a celery root soup lush with whole milk. The last was a spice cake topped with maple cream cheese frosting served with a side of ice cream. And then a latte with its fat cap of glossy foam. In all, a delicious lunch. Maybe a little heavy on the dairy.

Only this dairy was different. It was not the product of a cow or soybean or nut. The main ingredient of this milk was made by microbes in a lab, turned into tasty and recognizable food, and then served to a hungry reporter.

Lab-grown meat is coming. But lab-grown dairy has already arrived.

Dozens of companies have sprouted up in recent months to develop milk proteins made by yeasts or fungi, including Perfect Day, the California-based dairy company that laid out this unusual spread. The companies’ products are already on store shelves in the form of yogurt, cheese and ice cream, often labeled “animal-free.” The burgeoning industry, which calls itself “precision fermentation,” has its own trade organization, and big-name food manufacturers such as Nestlé, Starbucks and General Mills have already signed on as customers.

The rapid advancement in this area has sparked hope for a revolution in the dairy industry, and not just because it’s kinder to the cows. Precision dairy doesn’t have cholesterol, lactose, growth hormones or antibiotics (though those with dairy allergies should beware). And cattle, for beef or dairy, is said to be the No. 1 agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide. Consumers concerned about climate change or animal welfare have been anticipating the U.S. launch of cultivated meat, which is grown in labs from animal cells, but cultivated dairy could have just as much of an impact on the environment — with fewer regulatory hurdles to clear.

Despite widespread acceptance of soy, oat and almond milk, U.S. consumers, even vegan ones, continue to be underwhelmed by plant-based cheese options: Mostly made of starch and oil, they often lack the flavor or texture (no gooey strings, not enough bounce) of real cheese. And cheese is especially bothersome for the environment, more so than its liquid counterpart: Making one pound of cheese requires 10 pounds (or about five quarts) of cow’s milk. The World Economic Forum and many scientific reports suggest cheese generates the third-highest emissions in agriculture after beef and lamb.

For Ryan Pandya, chief executive of Perfect Day, those are the problems he’s solving. But it really started as a bagel problem.

Studying chemistry and bioengineering at Tufts, he’d gone vegetarian but still had a craving and taste for animal products.

“I had a bagel with vegan cream cheese that was so bad that it led me to investigate. What’s so hard about this? A lot of dairy alternatives are not made of food,” he said with a wince.

He hit upon a process called precision fermentation, similar to what has been used for decades to brew beer, make insulin for diabetic patients or produce rennet for cheese.

“Rather than using 22nd-century technology to produce meat, we’re using 20th-century technology to produce milk protein,” he said.

There are bubbling stainless steel fermentation tanks, software that maintains temperatures, agitator motors and oxygenators. And after the microbes eat their sugar solution and are programmed to make the desired proteins, there’s a lengthy process to separate the milk protein from the medium, then to wash it and dry it in a spray dryer so the powder can be used to make food.

Beyond the fermentation process, making usable milk proteins is similar to that at regular cow dairies, which have stainless steel tanks, spray dryers and freeze dryers, pasteurizers and vacuum pumps, chillers and steamers. “We get to the same powder, but these are the cows,” said Irina Gerry, chief marketing officer at Change Foods in Palo Alto, Calif., pointing to the fermenters in their San Jose lab.

The world’s demand for dairy keeps going up. But it’s not necessarily liquid milk. As countries develop and have burgeoning middle classes, the demand for liquid milk drops and enthusiasm for cheese and other products skyrockets. The cheese category has grown 19 percent since 2017, according to Mintel’s Future of Cheese 2022 report, with plant-based versions making up a minuscule part of that market.

General Mills, which produces household brands like Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Annie’s, Nature Valley and Häagen-Dazs, launched a series of Bold Cultr cream cheeses, first using precision-dairy milk proteins from Perfect Day, then from Israeli foodtech start-up Remilk. (Last month, General Mills said it was “deprioritizing funding” for these cream cheeses, so its future is uncertain.) Perfect Day’s ingredients are being used in Brave Robot ice cream in the United States, Modern Kitchen cream cheese in the United States, California Performance Co. protein powder in the United States, Singapore and Hong Kong; and Coolhaus ice cream products in the United States and Singapore.

Perfect Day, the first to market in the United States, is also partnering with Mars, Nestlé, Starbucks, Graeter’s and other companies to provide milk protein for products. Its office is a gleaming, multistory facility in an industrial part of Berkeley, Calif. that has become a locus for food and biotech start-ups. It has fermentation and separations teams, analytics and regulatory experts, legal and logistics teams, as well as two full-time chefs to prototype products and dishes in a sleek exhibition kitchen. In addition to its Berkeley facility, the company operates a 90,000-square-foot production facility in Bangalore, India and a 58,000-square-foot factory in Salt Lake City.

Change Foods, founded in 2020, is headquartered in both Australia and the United States, and is in the process of building a commercial manufacturing plant in Abu Dhabi that will produce the volume of animal-free milk protein casein equivalent to the output of 10,000 dairy cows. Like Perfect Day, it aims to be an ingredient company that supplies its milk protein to other established food companies, but it will launch its own branded cheese products in 2025.

Precision fermentation dairy’s growth has to happen fast to be price competitive with traditional animal dairy and to gain widespread adoption, said Ravi Jhala, Perfect Day’s global head of commercial. Recent bobbles in plant-based meat sales are a cautionary tale.

Part of the reason analysts see a bright future for precision dairy is the desire by mainstream food companies to reduce their carbon footprint. Many have trumpeted their sustainability goals, often making promises like having net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, or 2040, or beyond. To get there, they are turning to companies like Perfect Day, which is collaborating with Mars to develop a more eco-friendly chocolate bar.

But will customers buy it? It is delicious? Most of the 28 precision dairy companies gearing up globally are selling their milk proteins as ingredients to other food companies, so the finished products are only as good as the food companies making them. One company’s plain cream cheese may be creamy and indistinguishable from a cow-based one, but another company might decide to solve too many problems simultaneously: Animal-free, sugar-free, fat-free, all-natural and low calorie. That could be a recipe for a sad schmear or pint, something that could turn shoppers off to the whole category.

Consumers are loyal to brands, not ingredients, experts say. And brands get to decide what their messaging is to consumers. That General Mills cream cheese? It’s marketed as a “lactose free, non-animal cream cheese alternative.” Mars describes its new chocolate as a silky smooth chocolate (not an “alternative” to chocolate) that uses “real dairy protein …. without any inputs from animals.” Brave Robot ice cream leans heavier on the sustainability and cruelty-free aspects. So even the messaging around precision dairy could be confusing.

“Nestlé and Mars, they have the reach and the customers. They could position these new products as extensions of existing product lines, but the jury is still out on what the labels will say,” said Tony Moses, who is in product innovation for CRB, a consulting and manufacturing company for the food and beverage industries.

Traditional cow dairy has pushed back against plant-based milks using words like “milk” or “cheese” in a series of largely unsuccessful lawsuits. At the end of February, the FDA announced that oat, soy and almond drinks can keep the word “milk” in their names, but squabbles around precise language will likely recur when more of these precision dairy products reach the market.

The International Dairy Foods Association opposes any explicit or implicit use of the term “dairy” for precision products without qualification in their marketing and merchandising, said spokesman Matt Herrick.

“Our position is that FDA must develop a uniform, mandated disclosure approach to this technology to ensure labeling is truthful and not misleading for consumers,” he said.

Grace Floyd works in the bio-analytics lab at Perfect Day. (Carolyn Fong for The Washington Post)

Development of these products comes at a time when there’s huge interest in finding alternative protein sources to feed a skyrocketing global population more sustainably. Still, for an industry in its infancy, the way forward could have significant roadblocks.

The dairy industry, with its clout and hefty lobbying budget, may not agree there is room for everyone: In 2022, U.S. cow dairy had ceded 16 percent of all retail milk sales to plant based, according to data from SPINS and the Plant Based Foods Association.

Plant-based milk companies also may not welcome the competition, especially if cultivated dairy products are positioned as more sustainable and less resource-intensive. (A glass of almond milk takes 23 gallons of water to produce, according to the nonprofit Water Footprint Network.)

The industry is also likely to run up against Americans’ increasing discomfort with processed food. The cow dairy industry and plant-based companies could team up to paint these newcomers as Franken-foods made by mad scientists in a lab.

And the regulatory path ahead is not assured for this fledgling industry. As a comparison, CBD-infused food and drink products burst onto the scene a few years ago as more states decriminalized marijuana and hemp. But after deliberation, in January, the FDA refused to regulate it and asked Congress to step in. For now it’s still illegal, and CBD food companies are in limbo.

For many of these venture capital-funded start-ups, any of these hiccups could mean the difference between success and failure.

Stakes are high: TurtleTree in Sacramento and Biomilq in Durham, N.C., are both focused on using this technology to produce human breast milk or its components. Last year’s infant formula crisis made it clear that finding enough nutritionally appropriate alternatives to breast milk is a national food security imperative.

In a way, lab-grown cultivated meat may have cast its looming shadow over this new dairy technology, leaving it shrouded in mystery.

“This is an industry that jumped to the market way faster than I thought it would and part of that is the regulatory hurdles,” Moses said. “Great things are happening in the lab, but it’s that getting to market, that commercialization piece, that is less certain. I’m watching what Perfect Day is doing. How did this get here without us knowing?”

Milk, cheese and ice cream without the cow has entered the marketplace - The Washington Post

[Glenn Petersen] Beyond Meat Is Struggling, and the Plant-Based Meat Industry Worries A few year...

Glenn Petersen — 11/27/2022 3:34:14 PM

Beyond Meat Is Struggling, and the Plant-Based Meat Industry Worries

A few years ago, business was booming. That growth has slowed, with some wondering if the number of consumers has reached its limit.

By Julie Creswell
New York Times
Published Nov. 21, 2022
Updated Nov. 24, 2022

Beyond Meat is dealing with layoffs and a declining stock price, despite bright spots like the popularity of a Beyond Meat chicken dish at Panda Express restaurants.Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
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For a while, it seemed Beyond Meat was taking over the world.

Its faux burgers and sausages were landing on dinner plates in homes throughout the United States and on the menu boards of chains like Subway, Carl’s Jr. and Starbucks. When the company went public in 2019, its shares skyrocketed as investors bet that the meatless movement was finally having its moment. During the pandemic, Beyond Meat’s grocery store sales surged as curious consumers tried its vegan options.

But these days, Beyond Meat has lost some of its sizzle.

Its stock has slumped nearly 83 percent in the past year. Sales, which the company had expected to rise as much as 33 percent this year, are now likely to show only minor growth. McDonald’s concluded a pilot of the McPlant burger — made with a Beyond Meat patty — this year with no plans to put it on the menu permanently.

In late October, the company said it was laying off 200 people, or 19 percent of its work force. And four top executives have departed in recent months, including the chief financial officer, the chief supply chain officer and the chief operating officer, whom Beyond Meat had suspended after his arrest on allegations that he bit another man’s nose in a parking garage altercation.

What investors and others are debating now is whether Beyond Meat’s struggles are specific to the company or a harbinger of deeper issues in the plant-based meat industry.

“At the category level, we’re seeing volumes for plant-based meats down 22 consecutive months now,” said John Baumgartner, a consumer food analyst at the financial institution Mizuho Americas.

A few years ago, investors expected the category to explode with growth year after year, Mr. Baumgartner said. Now, he said, those expectations are being reconsidered.

“We’re positive on the future for plant-based meat, but this is a 20- to 25-year story,” he said. “It’s not going to happen in three to five to 10 years.”

Some say the slowdown in sales is a product of food inflation, as consumers trade pricier plant-based meat for less-expensive animal meat. But others wonder if the companies have simply reached the maximum number of consumers willing to try or repeatedly purchase faux burgers and sausages.

Analysts at Deloitte, who conducted a survey of consumers this year, questioned whether the 53 percent who were not buying plant-based meats could be turned into customers.

“The category had been growing at double-digit for a long time and was expected to continue, but what we saw this year is that the number of consumers who were buying it did not increase,” said Justin Cook, the U.S. consumer products research leader at Deloitte.

While inflation played a role, so did a decline in the perception that plant-based meats are healthier than animal proteins. (The companies focus on the environmental benefits.) But the Deloitte analysts said another problem might be resistance to a product that some segment of customers see as “woke” and linked to politically left-leaning ideas.

In August, when the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain stated on its Facebook page that it had begun offering the meatless “Impossible Sausage,” the post was flooded with thousands of comments from irate customers. “Go woke, go broke,” one wrote. “You just lost a ton of your base. You obviously don’t know your patrons.”

The data around the category are mixed. Over the past year, volume sales of refrigerated plant-based meats slid 11.6 percent, with packages of faux ground meat and patties taking a particular beating, according to IRI, a market research firm. But volume sales of frozen plant-based meats, which are typically less expensive than the refrigerated products, fell only slightly. Volume sales of faux chicken nuggets and patties rose sharply.

Moreover, while some plant-based meat manufacturers are struggling, others are seeing rising sales.

In October, the Brazilian meatpacking giant JBS said it was closing Planterra Foods, its plant-based meat operation, after just two years. And volume sales for the vegetarian-meat maker Morningstar Farms, which Kellogg has said it plans to spin off or potentially sell, dropped sharply in nearly every category this year, according to the IRI data. On a call with Wall Street analysts in August, Kellogg’s chief executive, Steven Cahillane, attributed the drop to supply-chain issues with a co-manufacturer of the products.

But privately held Impossible Foods said demand for its products grew tremendously last year.

“We’re not experiencing anything like what Beyond Meat has reported or some of the other brands in the space,” Keely Sulprizio, a spokeswoman for Impossible Foods, said in an email. “Quite the opposite: We’re seeing hypergrowth, with over 60 percent year-over-year dollar sales growth in retail alone.”

The IRI data show that while volume sales of Impossible ground meat and faux burger patties were down slightly, volumes of other categories, including frozen faux meat and chicken, soared.

“We launched in frozen more recently with a larger family size, and it’s been very popular with both retailers and consumers,” Ms. Sulprizio said.

In a call with Wall Street analysts in early November, Ethan Brown, the founder and chief executive of Beyond Meat, said an increasing number of plant-based meat players were battling for a smaller group of consumers as shoppers traded down to less-expensive animal proteins. As a result, “a shakeout does appear to be underway, and we expect more brands to either retreat or consolidate,” Mr. Brown said. Beyond Meat declined to comment for this article beyond the call with analysts.

While the company hoped to restore growth to its refrigerated products, which have some of the highest profit margins, Mr. Brown noted that it was expanding distribution for many of its frozen products.

“Frozen plant-based chicken is the largest single subcategory in all of plant-based meats and continues to grow at a double-digit pace,” he said.

Mr. Brown also noted that McDonald’s continued to offer the McPlant burger in other markets, including Britain and Ireland, and that Beyond Meat was testing new products with other chains, including KFC and Taco Bell.

Panda Express, for instance, said in September that it would offer Beyond the Original Orange Chicken on its menu nationally for a limited time after an initial offering in New York City and Southern California sold out in less than two weeks last year.

It “showed us just how great the demand is for an innovative plant-based dish at Panda,” Evelyn Wah, vice president of brand innovation for Panda Express, said in an email. She added, “We’ve been pleased with the positive sentiment we’ve received from our guests.”

Mr. Baumgartner said that when his firm had asked consumers in a survey why they weren’t buying plant-based meats, they said they didn’t like the taste. While the competitive companies have continued to improve existing products while quickly rolling out new ones, he said, he is concerned that some products are coming to market too quickly.

“You’re not selling iPhone version 1.0 and maybe it’s not the best and greatest, but the consumer can upgrade to version 2.0, which has better graphics and keypad,” Mr. Baumgartner said. “If you roll something out in the food industry that’s not quite where it needs to be in terms of quality and taste and the consumer tries it and has a bad experience, he’s not coming back.”

nytimes.com

[Glenn Petersen] Scroll down for the discussion of meat substitutes: The World Needs Processed ...

Glenn Petersen — 11/27/2022 8:38:02 AM

Scroll down for the discussion of meat substitutes:

The World Needs Processed Food

The stigma against processed food is growing, but there's no way to sustainably feed 8 billion people without it.

Hannah Ritchie
Wired
November 23, 2022

THE WORD “PROCESSED” has become something of a slur.

Say “processed food” and most of us picture unhealthy, cheap junk. Fresh food straight from the garden or the field is good. Once we’ve put it through a processing plant or a laboratory, we’ve removed its halo qualities and added a bunch of bad ones. That means meat substitutes are no better than junk food.

But this perspective is short-sighted. We’re not going to feed billions a nutritious diet sustainably without food processing. The growing backlash against processing is one that neither people nor the planet can afford.

The benefits of processed food

Processed food is more than Coca-Cola, Dairy Milk chocolate, and ready meals. Most plant and animal products go through some form of processing to convert them into something that we can—and want to—eat. We mill grain into flour to make bread. We butcher and debone animals to get meat. We pasteurize milk.

Processed foods have brought us countless benefits, many of which we quickly forget. Iodized salt is just one example; iodine deficiencies used to be common across the world, leading to increased risks of stillbirths and miscarriages, significant reductions in IQ, and reduced cognitive development. Most of the world now consumes salt with iodine added, and many countries have eliminated this deficiency. By adding nutrients to food, we’ve been able to address a number of other micronutrient deficiencies.

We’ve been able to preserve food and increase its shelf life, reducing food waste. We’ve reduced the spread of food-borne diseases. Those with food allergies and intolerances can now eat a balanced diet. We don’t need to spend the day preparing food—this has been particularly important for the educational and career development of women. Last but not least: taste. Our shelves are now lined with great-tasting foods.

Of course, when people talk about “processed” food they’re often talking about ultra-processed food (UPF). These snacks and prepared meals are designed to have a longer shelf life and be more convenient and palatable. Corporations work hard to find the “Goldilocks” flavor profile we can’t resist by adding sugar and fat to make food as tasty as possible. Many describe these finely tuned combinations as addictive.

It’s true that increased consumption of ultra-processed food has been linked to poor health outcomes. It has been associated with lower consumption of essential nutrients, such as vitamins C, D, and B12. The more of these foods we eat, the more likely we are to be overweight or obese. This puts us at higher risk of health conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer. Ultra-processed foods are easy to overconsume.

The problem with most UPFs is that they are higher in calories, sugar, and fat. And they’re lower in protein and fiber, the nutrients that keep us full.

But this isn’t inherent to food processing itself. What matters is what corporations add to our food. They can create healthier foods if they want to—or if we demand it.

The growing backlash against meat substitutes

One area where I see the biggest backlash against processing is with meat substitutes.

These products try to emulate the experience of meat and include plant proteins such as soy-based sausages; Impossible and Beyond Meat burgers; proteins made from fermentation, such as Quorn, and lab-grown meat.

Passionate meat eaters and vegans don’t always see eye to eye, but they do often agree that natural is best. Vegans push back against meat substitutes because they’d rather people go straight to natural plant foods like peas, beans, and lentils. Meat eaters push back on these products for their artificiality, calling them “Frankenfood.”

Headlines critical of these foods go something like this: “People have told you that meat substitutes are super healthy, but they’re lying to you.”

So are meat substitutes better for your health or are they part of an elaborate con?

Well, “healthy” compared to what?

Are they better than meat equivalents? Are you better off going for an Impossible or Beyond Meat burger than a beefburger? Or a soy-based sausage over a pork one? Possibly.

I crunched the numbers on the nutritional profile of meat substitute products and compared them to meat. (You can find a graph of this comparison here.) To their credit, meat substitutes tend to be lower in calories and saturated fat and higher in fiber. To their detriment, some are lower in protein, and importantly, often contain lower-quality protein, meaning they contain less of the essential amino acids that we need.

When it comes to sodium, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Substitute burgers tend to be comparable to beef. Substitute sausages look bad, but they contain less salt than their pork equivalents.

Many substitute products are now fortified with Vitamin B12, iron, and calcium. The Impossible burger actually has more Vitamin B12 and iron than beef. Many plant-based milks are fortified too. (I compared the nutrition of dairy and plant-based milks here.)

On balance, they’re probably a bit better for our health than their meat equivalents.

Are they better than whole, plant-based foods? Less likely, but possible, depending on the nutrients you’re trying to optimize for. They are higher in protein and have micronutrients added that plants don’t have much of, such as Vitamin B12. But they are also higher in saturated fat and salt.

However, this showdown between natural plant foods and meat substitutes is kind of beside the point. People who want a whole, plant-based diet aren’t the target for these products. If people want to switch to plant proteins such as peas and lentils, great. But this group is a minority. What meat substitutes offer is an easy swap for people who want “meat-like” meals. Many want an experience similar to meat: Substitutes try to give them this without killing animals—and without the high environmental cost of farming meat.

To have a chance of meeting our global climate targets, ending deforestation, and protecting the world’s wildlife, we need to eat much less meat. Both plant foods and meat substitutes have a much lower carbon footprint, use much less land, and cause less water pollution than meat. The environmental toll can be 10 to 100 times lower than that of beef or lamb.

Meat substitutes are our best shot at feeding the world without destroying it. The backlash to these products is counterproductive. And the blanket dismissal of such foods as “ultra-processed” isn’t helping. Most are defined as ultra-processed based on the methods used to produce them. But if we list the reasons UPFs are bad for our health, meat substitutes have almost none of those qualities. As shown above, they are generally not high in calories—most are lower than meat. They have less saturated fat, almost no added sugars, and are higher in fiber.

What they do have are additives. Impossible Foods adds them to give its burgers a juicy, meat-like texture. Many companies add binding agents and preservatives to extend their products’ shelf lives. People get freaked out by lists of ingredients they don’t recognize. But the notion that how pronounceable something is can determine whether we should eat it is not scientifically sound. You can probably pronounce “lead” and “mercury,” but I don’t recommend seasoning your dinner with them.

This is still an area that needs more research, but I’ve seen little good evidence that additives or sweeteners consumed within regulatory guidelines have negative health impacts.

We shouldn’t be eating them all the time, but as part of a diverse diet, there is little to suggest meat substitutes are bad for our health. In fact, some can be a nutritional plus.

Food processing could alleviate malnutrition for billions

Meat substitutes are mostly targeted at wealthy consumers. But the implications of a backlash to processed food are just as harmful for people with less money—if not more so.

More food processing, not less, could improve health and nutrition in developing countries.

Billions of people in the world suffer from “hidden hunger”—they don’t get enough of the micronutrients that are necessary for good health. The preferred way to address this would be for them to eat a more diverse diet.

That’s a nice pipe dream, but it’s decades away. These billions can’t afford a healthy, balanced diet even if they spend all of their income on food. The goal is to make sure their incomes rise, but this will take time.

What are we going to do in the meantime? Accept that billions are left malnourished and billions of children will never reach their potential?

We could solve this problem quickly and cheaply with more food processing. Simply add micronutrients to staple foods. Micronutrient fortification—the addition of key vitamins and minerals to foods such as flour, salt, bread, and cereals—is incredibly cost-effective. It can cost mere cents or a few dollars per person per year. To move from a diet that meets an individual’s energy needs—eating cheap staples that are high in calories—to a nutritionally complete or healthy diet will cost someone at least a few dollars per day. Micronutrient fortification would cost just a few dollars per person per year.

This is also true of meat and dairy products. In richer countries, we consume a lot of meat, and most people could easily cut back. Poorer countries eat very little meat, if any. Without nutritious alternatives, eating more animal products might actually be good for health. The problem is that meat is expensive—economically as well as environmentally. It’s hard to get cheap meat without sacrificing welfare and environmental standards. So we face a dilemma: Increasing meat consumption for those with lower incomes would improve nutrition but result in a larger environmental footprint.

But if meat substitutes become cheaper, we have the opportunity to make low-cost, high-quality protein available for everyone. People will be able to improve their nutrition long before they can afford to buy more meat. What’s even more promising is that consumers in low- and middle-income countries seem to be more accepting of meat alternatives. We don’t have a lot of data on these markets, but large surveys across China, India, and the US suggest that Chinese and Indian consumers would be much more likely to buy plant-based substitutes and lab-grown meat than Americans.

I’m all for a predominantly whole-food diet. But used in the right way and in moderation, processed foods could be a big boon for global nutrition. Stigma against them hinders such efforts, so rather than shunning food processing, we should embrace it in the appropriate contexts.

It’s not the process; it’s what we add that matters

I’m not here to defend ultra-processed foods or big food corporations. They’ve hijacked our food system in many ways and have created a plethora of health problems. But we need to stop throwing all processed foods into one group.

The problem is not the process itself; it’s what we add and how we do it. We can use processing to enhance nutrition or hinder it. We can embrace it where it adds value and boycott it where it doesn’t.

The backlash against food processing is a luxury that the world can’t afford to embrace. It’s not good for people or the planet. Nutritionally sound processed foods are one of many tools that will help nourish billions without destroying the environment.

The World Needs Processed Food | WIRED

[Labrador] BYND - This will be an impossible task - Not sure how the CEO can come out and s...

Labrador — 10/24/2022 5:14:02 AM

BYND - This will be an impossible task - Not sure how the CEO can come out and suggest this-

President and CEO Ethan Brown commented, “Beyond Meat is implementing measures to drive more sustainable growth, emphasizing the achievement of cash flow positive operations within the second half of 2023. While we believe the current headwinds facing our business and category—including record inflation—are transient, our mission, brand, and long-term opportunity endure. To manage through the current environment and realize the opportunity ahead, we are significantly reducing expenses and sharpening our focus on a set of key growth priorities.”

[Glenn Petersen] Layoffs at BYND: Beyond Meat exec accused of biting man’s nose is out, as compa...

Glenn Petersen — 10/14/2022 8:49:53 AM

Layoffs at BYND:

Beyond Meat exec accused of biting man’s nose is out, as company announces broad layoffs

PUBLISHED FRI, OCT 14 20227:26 AM EDT
UPDATED 20 MIN AGO
Mike Calia @NEWSMC615
Sara Salinas @SARACSALINAS
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Beyond Meat announced the departures of three top executives — including Chief Operating Officer Doug Ramsey, who was recently arrested for assault.

-- Beyond Meat also said it plans to cut 19% of its workforce, or about 200 employees.The company also said its chief growth and financial officers were out.

Beyond Meat’s announced significant workforce cuts and the departures of three top executives — including Chief Operating Officer Doug Ramsey, who was recently arrested for assault.

Beyond Meat plans to cut 19% of its workforce, or about 200 employees, the company said in a regulatory filing. The cuts are expected to be completed by the end of the year and are an effort to achieve cash flow positive operations within the second half of 2023.

Shares of the company, already down about 77% so far this year, fell in premarket trading Friday.

As part of the job cuts, the role of chief growth officer has been eliminated and Deanna Jurgens, who held that role, will leave the company. Her departure aligns with the exits of two other C-suite executives, all announced Friday. The company said its chief financial officer is also leaving.

Ramsey left the company effective Friday, weeks after he was arrested for allegedly biting a man’s nose following a college football game in Arkansas.

Douglas Ramsey
Source: Washington County, Arkansas
-----------------------

The company had originally suspended Ramsey after the arrest became public last month. Beyond Meat revealed Ramsey’s exit in a securities filing Friday morning. CNBC has reached out to Ramsey for comment.

In September, Ramsey was charged with making terroristic threats and third-degree battery after allegedly assaulting a driver in a parking garage near Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Police said Ramsey punched through the back windshield of a Subaru after it hit the front tire of Ramsey’s car, according to a police report. Ramsey then allegedly punched the Subaru driver and bit his nose, “ripping the flesh on the tip of the nose,” the report said. Police also said the victim and a witness also claimed Ramsey told the Subaru driver he would kill him.

Ramsey joined Beyond Meat in December. He spent three decades at Tyson Foods, where he oversaw its poultry and McDonald’s businesses.

The company said in the filing said Jonathan Nelson, its senior vice president of manufacturing operations, will permanently oversee Beyond’s operations activities. He took over Ramsey’s role on an interim basis last month.

The filing also revealed that Chief Financial Officer Philip Hardin stepped down from his post earlier this week. Hardin will leave the company after a roughly two-week transition period to pursue another opportunity, according to the filing.

Lubi Kutua, previously Beyond Meat’s vice president for financial planning and analysis as well as investor relations, assumed the top financial role on Thursday.

Beyond Meat did not immediately return request for comment on the changes.

– CNBC’s Amelia Lucas contributed to this report.

cnbc.com

[Ron] Road Rage: Beyond Meat COO accused of biting man’s nose outside football game ...

Ron — 9/20/2022 9:47:09 AM

Road Rage: Beyond Meat COO accused of biting man’s nose outside football game

marketwatch.com

[Ron] Interesting thanks. The stock closed up more than 20% today. A lot of people wer...

Ron — 8/5/2022 6:02:37 PM

Interesting thanks. The stock closed up more than 20% today. A lot of people were puzzled.

[Craig Lacy] Motley Fool's take on the financial report: fool.com Up $7 today

Craig Lacy — 8/5/2022 4:04:15 PM

[Ron] Beyond Meat Inc. reported another rough quarter Thursday, leading to announced ...

Ron — 8/5/2022 9:55:48 AM

Beyond Meat Inc. reported another rough quarter Thursday, leading to announced layoffs that underscore a bleak outlook from Wall Street.

A drop in revenue and lowered forecast mirrored a recent harsh assessment from JP Morgan analysts, sizing up Beyond’s star-crossed relationship with McDonald’s Corp. MCD, -0.64%, among other factors.

The maker of plant-based meat products posted a net loss of $97.1 million, or $1.53 a share, compared with a net loss of $19.7 million, or 31 cents a share, in the same quarter a year ago. Net revenue, at $147 million, declined 1.6% from $149.4 million last year.

Analysts polled by FactSet expected a net loss of $1.28 a share on revenue of $149.2 million.

marketwatch.com

...stock moving up this morning...

[Glenn Petersen] Beyond Meat stock falls after conclusion of McDonald's McPlant test Published T...

Glenn Petersen — 7/28/2022 2:17:58 PM

Beyond Meat stock falls after conclusion of McDonald's McPlant test

Published Thu, Jul 28 202211:02 AM EDT
Amelia Lucas @Thxamelian
CNBC.com
Key Points

McDonald's said it has concluded the U.S. test of its McPlant burger as planned.
Analyst research reported lackluster demand for the meatless burger, which is made using Beyond Meat patties.
McDonald's sells the McPlant burger in several European markets but hasn't announced a nationwide launch for the menu item in its home market yet.

Shares of Beyond Meat fell 6% in morning trading after J.P. Morgan said McDonald's ended its U.S. test of the McPlant burger, which uses Beyond's meatless patties.

The fast-food giant confirmed to CNBC Thursday that the McPlant test concluded as planned. Neither McDonald's nor Beyond Meat has announced any plans for additional testing or a nationwide launch.

Beyond's stock has fallen 53% this year, dragging its market value down to $2.06 billion. Wall Street has become skeptical over the company's long-term growth opportunities as grocery sales lag. Moreover, buzzy partnerships with restaurant giants like Pizza Hut owner Yum Brands and McDonald's haven't progressed to many permanent nationwide menu offerings yet.

McDonald's first tested the meat-free burger in eight restaurants in the U.S. in November to understand how the menu item would impact its kitchens. In mid-February, it rolled the McPlant out to roughly 600 locations to learn more about consumer demand for the menu item.

Analyst research reported lackluster demand for the Beyond burger. BTIG analyst Peter Saleh wrote in a June note that franchisees told him that McPlant sales were disappointing, coming in at or below the low end of projections. J.P. Morgan analyst Ken Goldman wrote in his note on Thursday that some McDonald's restaurant employees told him that the burger didn't sell well enough, potentially putting a nationwide launch in jeopardy.

"Consensus contemplates 21% growth for BYND's total top line this year, followed by another 25% next year. These rates will not be easy to hit, in our view, without [McDonald's] in the US," Goldman wrote.

McDonald's and Beyond announced a three-year partnership in early 2021. The burger chain has already started selling McPlant burgers in some international markets, including Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In May, Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown said that the McPlant is selling well in the U.K. and Austria.

Beyond is expected to report its second-quarter earnings after the bell on Aug. 4.

cnbc.com

[Ron] Patent lawsuit over heme could affect meatless meat sector protocol.com

Ron — 7/24/2022 5:22:36 PM

[Ron] Beyond Meat’s Pepperoni Problem Threatens Its Fast-Food Future archive.ph

Ron — 7/21/2022 6:26:19 PM

[Salt'n'Peppa] Vegan infant formula. Fast growing Israeli company. BABYF (BABY.TO). CEO is a mo...

Salt'n'Peppa — 5/19/2022 4:30:25 PM

Vegan infant formula. Fast growing Israeli company. BABYF (BABY.TO). CEO is a mother of 4 and motivated.
Undiscovered, but not for long.

Here is a recent article:
worldbizmagazine.net

Think of it as Beyond Meat for toddlers. :)

[Glenn Petersen] Beyond Meat shares tumble after company reports widening loss, disappointing rev...

Glenn Petersen — 5/11/2022 5:50:11 PM

Beyond Meat shares tumble after company reports widening loss, disappointing revenue

PUBLISHED WED, MAY 11 20224:19 PM EDT
UPDATED 46 MIN AGO
Amelia Lucas @THXAMELIAN
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Beyond Meat reported a wider-than-expected loss for its first quarter as it offered steeper discounts and cheaper prices to international consumers.

-- Shares of the company fell as much as 25% in extended trading, extending the stock’s losses from earlier in the day.

-- The company’s gross margin was 0.2% of revenue during the quarter, tumbling sharply from its gross margin of 30.2% a year ago.

Beyond Meat on Wednesday reported a wider-than-expected loss for its first quarter as its margins shriveled and cheaper prices weakened international sales.

Shares of the company fell as much as 25% in extended trading, extending the stock’s losses from earlier in the day. Beyond’s stock closed Wednesday down 13.8% ahead of the company’s earnings report.

Here’s what the company reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

Loss per share: $1.58 adjusted vs. $1.01 expected

Revenue: $109.5 million vs. $112.3 million expected

Beyond reported first-quarter net loss of $100.5 million, or $1.58 per share, wider than its net loss of $27.3 million, or 43 cents per share, a year earlier.

In a statement, CEO Ethan Brown said that the company saw a “sizable though temporary” hit to its gross margin to support strategic launches. The company’s gross margin was 0.2% of revenue during the quarter, tumbling sharply from its gross margin of 30.2% a year ago.

Excluding items, the company lost $1.58 per share, wider than the $1.01 per share expected by analysts surveyed by Refinitiv.

Net sales rose 1.2% to $109.5 million, falling short of expectations of $112.3 million.

Total volume, which strips out the impact of pricing or currency fluctuations, increased 12.4% in the quarter. However, net revenue per pound shrank by 10%. The company said it increased discounts for international customers and reduced prices in the European Union.

In the United States, Beyond’s revenue rose 4%, helped by the grocery launch of its plant-based jerky through its joint venture with PepsiCo. However, U.S. food service revenue, which includes sales to restaurants and college campuses, fell 7.5% during the quarter. And although its grocery segment reported sales growth of 6.9%, the company said products besides the jerky saw their sales shrink.

Outside of its home market, Beyond’s revenue shrank 6.2%, although the company said it sold more pounds of its meat substitutes in both international grocery stores and food service outlets. Beyond also said foreign exchange rates hit its international sales.

The company reiterated its full-year revenue forecast of $560 million to $620 million.

Read the full earnings report here.

Beyond Meat (BYND) Q1 2022 earnings miss estimates (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Impossible Foods taps Chobani executive as new CEO, founder Pat Brown steps down...

Glenn Petersen — 3/17/2022 2:46:56 PM

Impossible Foods taps Chobani executive as new CEO, founder Pat Brown steps down

PUBLISHED THU, MAR 17 202212:44 PM EDT
UPDATED 13 MIN AGO
Amelia Lucas @THXAMELIAN
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown is stepping down as CEO, and Chobani’s departing operating chief, Peter McGuinness, will take the helm of the company.

-- Brown will continue working at the company as chief visionary officer and will report to the board.

-- McGuinness’s departure from Chobani comes as the yogurt maker reportedly delayed its initial public offering due to market conditions.

Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown in 2019 / Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Images
---------------------------------------------

Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown is stepping down as CEO, and Chobani’s departing operating chief, Peter McGuinness, will take the helm of the company.

The transition comes after a roller coaster two years for the plant-based meat industry. Impossible and rival Beyond Meat both saw their grocery sales skyrocket in the early days of the pandemic as meat shortages boosted sales and helped to offset slumping restaurant business.

But in recent months, sales in the plant-based meat category have slowed, prompting concerns about long-term growth prospects. Nevertheless, Impossible did report that its fourth-quarter retail revenue soared 85%.

Brown founded Impossible a decade ago with the goal of combatting climate change by reducing meat consumption. Since 2016, it has sold meat substitutes and has expanded its distribution to tens of thousands of retailers across three continents, while introducing food items at global restaurant chains like Starbucks and Burger King.

In a letter published on the company’s website, Brown said Impossible’s growth has meant that the demands of helming the business have encroached on other tasks, such as leading strategic initiatives, sharing the company’s mission and guiding research.

“Given the momentum of our business, our accelerating product pipeline, ongoing international expansion and the magnitude of our mission, the leadership demands of the commercial business will inevitably continue to grow,” Brown wrote.

Starting April 4, McGuinness, a food industry veteran, will join the company as CEO and a director. For the past eight years, he’s been with yogurt maker Chobani, helping the company expand into oat milk, coffee creamers and other categories.

Brown will continue working at Impossible as chief visionary officer and will report to the board. His roles will include leading in such areas as research and technology innovation, strategic initiatives, public advocacy and the company mission. He will also remain a director on the company’s board.

“Peter and I will work together to lead Impossible and its long-term strategy, combining our complimentary strengths and experience,” Brown wrote in his letter.

McGuinness’s departure from Chobani comes as the yogurt maker reportedly delayed its initial public offering due to market conditions. Choani initially filed to go public in November.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported nearly a year ago that Impossible was weighing going public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company or an initial public offering. Since then, the stock has taken a beating, with shares falling 63%.

Impossible Foods taps top Chobani executive for its new CEO (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Kroger, Impossible Foods partner to create meat substitutes; Beyond Meat shares ...

Glenn Petersen — 3/4/2022 2:50:44 PM

Kroger, Impossible Foods partner to create meat substitutes; Beyond Meat shares fall

PUBLISHED FRI, MAR 4 20222:35 PM EST
Amelia Lucas @THXAMELIAN
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Kroger announced Friday that it has partnered with Impossible Foods to create meat substitutes for its private label business.

-- Shares of Impossible’s rival Beyond Meat tumbled in afternoon trading.

-- Credit Suisse analyst Robert Moskow wrote in a Friday note to clients that he views the partnership as a threat to Beyond.

Kroger announced Friday at an investor event that it has partnered with Impossible Foods to create meat substitutes for its private label business.

Shares of Impossible’s rival Beyond Meat tumbled 7% in afternoon trading. The stock has fallen 68% in the last 12 months, dragging its market value down to $2.72 billion.

Credit Suisse analyst Robert Moskow wrote in a Friday note to clients that the partnership could be a threat to Beyond.

“We view this test as a threat to Beyond Meat because it demonstrates the willingness of a big competitor to ‘margin down’ into co-branded private label products in order to maximize the reach of its products,” he wrote.

Moskow compared the test to the co-branding strategy that Costco’s Kirkland line uses for fresh meat with large suppliers like Tyson Foods. Those products have both Kirkland’s and Tyson’s logos on their packaging.

The partnership could introduce meat alternatives to more consumers, particularly those who are more price sensitive. Both Beyond and Impossible are pushing to achieve price parity with animal meat, which could attract more shoppers to eat their versions instead. Rising costs for meat in recent months have helped both companies draw closer to that goal.

Kroger has already dabbled in private label plant-based meat. The retailer, which is the largest U.S. supermarket chain, released a beef alternative in 2020 under its Simple Truth brand. It has since released meatless turkey slices, plant-based chicken patties and other meat substitutes.

A representative for Impossible did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Impossible is privately held, so it doesn’t have to share its financial results publicly. However, Reuters reported nearly a year ago that the startup was exploring going public through an initial public offering or special purpose acquisition company within the next year.

Kroger, Impossible Foods partner to create meat substitutes; Beyond Meat shares fall (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Beyond Meat shares tumble after reporting wider-than-expected loss, shrinking re...

Glenn Petersen — 2/25/2022 9:32:51 AM

Beyond Meat shares tumble after reporting wider-than-expected loss, shrinking revenue

PUBLISHED THU, FEB 24 20224:11 PM EST
UPDATED THU, FEB 24 20226:09 PM EST
Amelia Lucas @THXAMELIAN
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Beyond Meat’s stock tumbled after the company reported a wider-than-expected loss and shrinking revenue in its fourth quarter.

-- CEO Ethan Brown said in a statement that the company expects to “substantially moderate” the growth of its operating expenses in 2022.The company’s revenue outlook for 2022 also fell short of Wall Street’s expectations.

Beyond Meat on Thursday reported a wider-than-expected loss and shrinking revenue for its fourth quarter as it shifts its focus from slumping grocery sales to scaling its production for large fast-food launches.

The new year kicked off with the debut of KFC Beyond Fried Chicken, while February brought an expanded test for McDonald’s McPlant burger, which is made with Beyond’s beef patty substitute.

Despite the potential new business and a plan to cut back on spending, the company’s stock fell 11% in extended trading as its 2022 revenue outlook was disappointing.

Here’s what the company reported in the three months ended Dec. 31 compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

Loss per share: $1.27 vs. 71 cents expected

Revenue: $100.7 million vs. $101.4 million expected

Beyond reported fourth-quarter net loss of $80.37 million, or $1.27 cents per share, which is wider than its loss of $25.08 million, or 40 cents per share, a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv were forecasting a loss of 71 cents per share.

Executives said higher costs came from the company’s choice to lean on more expensive co-manufacturing facilities rather than its own manufacturing plants for production. In addition to costing more, the shift also meant paying higher transportation and logistics fees.

“This allocation was the right decision, given the long-term importance of the supported projects,” CEO Ethan Brown said on the conference call with analysts.

Brown said in a statement that the company expects to “substantially moderate” the growth of its operating expenses in 2022, which could help it return to profitability.

“The investments we made in our team, infrastructure, and capabilities across the U.S., EU, and China, as well as extensive product scaling activities for key strategic partners, weighed heavily on operating expenses and gross margin during a fourth quarter and year that were already impacted by lower than expected volumes,” Brown said in the statement.

During the quarter, net sales dropped 1.2% to $100.7 million, falling short of expectations of $101.4 million.

U.S. grocery sales fell 19.5% to $49.98 million. Beyond attributed the slump to softer demand, increased discounts, loss of market share and five fewer shipping days compared with the year-ago period. After experiencing soaring demand in 2020, the company’s largest division by revenue has struggled to keep up that pace of growth.

On the conference call with analysts, Brown attributed some of the slowing growth to the company’s decision to focus on its restaurant business, rather than creating new grocery products, which typically drive demand. However, he said the return of in-store sampling, expanded distribution and new marketing should help revive grocery sales.

Brown also teased the coming launch of a product through the company’s joint venture with PepsiCo, which will reportedly be meat-free jerky. CFO Phil Hardin said the new product uses an “expensive process” that will drag down first-quarter profits, although costs should improve later in the year.

U.S. food service saw its sales climb 34.7% in the quarter to $20.63 million. Outside Beyond’s home market, international sales rose 22.6% to $30.07 million across both grocery and food service.

This marks the second consecutive quarter that Beyond has disappointed investors and analysts with its losses and revenue. The company said its third-quarter results were hurt by a number of factors ranging from the delta variant to distribution issues to a $1.9 million write-off tied to water damage at one of its plants.

Still, its fourth-quarter revenue falls within the outlook it provided to analysts in November of $85 million to $110 million as it forecast that some of the same operational challenges would drag down its results.

For 2022, Beyond is forecasting revenue of $560 million to $620 million, up 21% to 33% compared with the prior year. That outlook falls slightly below Wall Street’s net sales forecast of $637.3 million. Brown also said the company expects higher costs for the first half of 2022, although it will scale back on hiring and other spending.

Beyond Meat (BYND) Q4 2021 earnings miss estimates, stock tumbles (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] McDonald’s McPlant burger made with Beyond Meat sold better than expected, analy...

Glenn Petersen — 1/26/2022 9:19:55 AM

McDonald’s McPlant burger made with Beyond Meat sold better than expected, analyst says

PUBLISHED WED, JAN 26 20228:43 AM EST
Amelia Lucas @THXAMELIAN
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- In December, participating McDonald’s locations sold roughly 70 McPlant burgers per location every day, according to Piper Sandler.

-- The burger chain began testing the plant-based burger created with Beyond Meat in just eight restaurants in November, with a wider-scale test planned to begin Feb. 14.Piper Sandler analyst Michael Lavery wrote that the boost to Beyond’s U.S. revenue could be as high as $215 million annually.

McDonald’s McPlant Burger / Courtesy: McDonald’s
----------------------------

McDonald’s McPlant burger is more popular than initially expected, according to Piper Sandler analyst Michael Lavery.

In December, participating locations sold roughly 70 of the plant-based burgers it created with Beyond Meat per location every day in the chain’s initial small test of the menu item.

The fast-food giant began testing the McPlant burger in November in just eight restaurants to get a sense of how it would impact its operations. On Feb. 14, the chain will expand the test to about 600 restaurants in the San Francisco Bay and Dallas-Fort Worth areas to learn more about consumer demand.

Lavery wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday that test locations were selling about three times more McPlant burgers than he initially forecast. For comparison, an average McDonald’s restaurant typically sells about 110 Big Macs per day.

Even with such a small sample size, Lavery said that early interest and willingness to try the product may be greater than expected, in a win for Beyond. He initially estimated a $75 million to $100 million boost in Beyond’s U.S. revenue due to the McPlant.

“While we believe test stores likely received a lift from exclusivity (drawing some sales from nearby stores that did not offer it), and that sustainable, repeat sales will settle in at a much lower rate, initial McPlant sales could prove to be closer to 8-10% of burger sales, or $170-215M (annualized),” he wrote.

For Beyond Meat, a nationwide launch of the McPlant burger is a massive opportunity to impress consumers with its meat substitutes, in addition to the revenue lift just from sales to McDonald’s. Wall Street analysts have grown bearish on the stock, saying the company is struggling with competition and falling U.S. grocery sales.

Beyond’s stock rose nearly 3% in premarket trading on Wednesday, while shares of McDonald’s were up just 1%. Shares of Beyond have fallen 66% over the last 12 months, dragging its market value down to $3.99 billion. McDonald’s stock, on the other hand, climbed 17% in the same time, bringing its market value to $195 billion.

McDonald's McPlant burger made with Beyond Meat sold better than expected (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] KFC to launch plant-based fried chicken made with Beyond Meat nationwide PUBLIS...

Glenn Petersen — 1/4/2022 6:49:39 PM

KFC to launch plant-based fried chicken made with Beyond Meat nationwide

PUBLISHED TUE, JAN 4 20224:43 PM ESTU
PDATED 7 MIN AGO
Amelia Lucas @THXAMELIAN
Kate Rogers @KATEROGERS
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- KFC restaurants nationwide will add Beyond Meat’s plant-based chicken to menus, starting Monday for a limited time.

-- Fast food companies have recently tested or added plant-based items as more customers look to trim meat consumption.

-- KFC and Beyond Meat say they are bullish on the product despite the launch coming amid the surge in the Covid omicron variant.

KFC restaurants nationwide will add Beyond Meat’s plant-based chicken to its menus, starting Monday for a limited time.

The launch comes after years of testing from the Yum Brands chain and Beyond Meat to create a meat substitute that mimicked the taste and texture of whole muscle chicken, like chicken breast.

The two companies first tested plant-based chicken at an Atlanta restaurant in August 2019 — and sold out their limited supply in less than five hours. KFC then tested the new item in Nashville, Charlotte, N.C., and southern California two years ago.

The popular fried chicken chain is counting on customers making healthier choices to fulfill typical New Year’s resolutions. “This is really about where the customer is going; they want to eat more plant-based proteins,” said Kevin Hochman, U.S. president of KFC. “It’s January, so it’s a time of New Year’s resolutions and wanting to do something different in your diet.”

More Americans are embracing a so-called flexitarian diet in which consumers cut down on their meat consumption for health and environmental reasons. That has driven the growing popularity of plant-based substitutes.

“From a supply perspective, we feel really good about it, and it’s something we have experience with in initial trials,” said Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown.

Hochman and Brown are so bullish on the product that they’re not deterred by the current nationwide surge in the Covid omicron variant.

The partnership hits at the time of national labor, with many eateries running short staffed. To run smoothly even with fewer workers, some chains have been reluctant to add new items or even scaled back their menus. Surges in new Covid-19 cases exacerbate those issues as workers call in sick due to positive tests or exposure to infection.

Nearly a year ago, Beyond Meat announced a formal partnership with Yum to make exclusive plant-based substitutes for Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC. Chipotle Mexican Grill rolled out plant-based chorizo Monday at its restaurants nationwide. It also is targeting customers who are trying to eat less meat in 2022.

Ramping up for launches

In preparing for launches to come in the new year, Beyond Meat poached industry veterans from Tyson Foods for its C-suite in December, adding Doug Ramsey as chief operating officer and Bernie Adcock in a new role of chief supply chain officer.

Ramsey spent three decades at Tyson, overseeing its poultry and McDonald’s businesses. Adcock also spent 30 years at Tyson with a focus on operations and supply chain management.

“We’re continuing to grow the operations team; they did a lot of work to help the team get ready in these final days,” Brown said, adding the Yum tie-up has been years in the making. “They’ve helped us prepare for this and we brought in, I think, some of the top executives in the industry.”

Beyond Meat is looking to get its stock back on track. In the last 12 months, shares have lost half their value, dragging the company’s market value down to $3.9 billion. The stock closed Tuesday down 5% at $61.62 and short sellers betting against the stock represent 37.2% of available shares, according to Factset.

On the other hand, shares of Yum have climbed 30% in the last year, bringing its market value to $40.3 billion. Strong demand for KFC’s fried chicken has helped lift the price. The chain’s U.S. same-store sales jumped 13% on a two-year basis during its third quarter.

Synergies with retail

The partnership does provide an opportunity, however, for “Beyond” restaurant sales. The company is hoping to attract more customers to its grocery store products, which sold briskly early in the pandemic, but then saw declines in subsequent quarters.

“It has great synergies with what we are trying to do in retail,” Brown said.

To promote the new menu item, YouTube star Liza Koshy will star in the plant-based chicken’s ad campaign, in the latest partnership between fast food chains and influencers. However, KFC will not be targeting vegans and vegetarians directly with its marketing because the Beyond Fried Chicken is made using the same equipment as KFC’s traditional fried chicken.

Customers can buy KFC’s Beyond Fried Chicken in six- or 12-piece orders, with dipping sauce included. Prices start at $6.99, excluding tax.

KFC to launch plant-based fried chicken made with Beyond Meat nationwide (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Beyond Meat shares crater as losses mount, company expects weak U.S. sales growt...

Glenn Petersen — 11/11/2021 3:21:29 AM

Beyond Meat shares crater as losses mount, company expects weak U.S. sales growth ahead

PUBLISHED WED, NOV 10 20214:21 PM EST
UPDATED WED, NOV 10 20219:02 PM EST
Amelia Lucas @THXAMELIAN
CNBC,com

KEY POINTS

-- Beyond Meat reported a wider-than-expected loss for its fourth quarter and revenue that fell short of analysts’ estimates.

-- The company also disappointed investors with its revenue outlook for the fourth quarter.

-- U.S. revenue fell 13.9% compared with a year ago, mostly due to weaker grocery demand.

Beyond Meat on Wednesday reported a widening loss in its third quarter as U.S. demand for its meat substitutes shrank and higher costs ate into its profits.

The company also disappointed investors with its fourth-quarter outlook, indicating that sales aren’t expected to snap back immediately. Shares of the company tumbled 18% in extended trading.

Here’s what the company reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

Loss per share: 87 cents vs. 39 cents expected

Revenue: $106.4 million vs. $109.2 million expected

Beyond reported fiscal third-quarter net loss of $54.8 million, or 87 cents per share, wider than a net loss of $19.3 million, or 31 cents per share, a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv expected a loss of 39 cents per share.

The company said it faced higher transportation and warehousing costs and increased its inventory write-offs, which hurt its profits. About $9 million was written off due to water damage at one of its plants, which mostly affected packaging.

Net sales rose 12.7% to $106.4 million, missing expectations of $109.2 million. Compared with the second quarter, its revenue fell, bucking typical seasonal trends for the company’s products. Customers usually buy more Beyond Burgers during the summer to grill.

The company reported strong growth outside the United States, with international grocery and restaurant divisions each seeing sales more than double during the quarter.

However, U.S. revenue fell 13.9% compared with a year ago, mostly due to weaker grocery demand. CEO Ethan Brown told analysts that grocery sales didn’t help make up for shrinking food service orders, unlike in 2020.

The company also said softer demand and operational challenges, like severe weather, hurt its domestic sales. Brown said new competitors in the market are putting pressure on its market share, but data doesn’t reveal that the lower demand is due to other companies stealing its customers. New products, like its meatless chicken, slightly offset U.S. sales declines.

In October, the company warned investors that it would be reporting weaker sales than it had previously predicted, citing a wide range of factors, including the delta variant and distribution problems.

And the company’s forecast doesn’t indicate a sunnier fourth quarter. Beyond is predicting net sales of $85 million to $110 million for those three months. Wall Street was expecting revenue of $131.6 million during the quarter.

Beyond said it’s expecting some of the operational challenges from the third quarter to drag down its fourth-quarter results as well. It also cited restaurants’ labor challenges and hesitant ordering behavior due to uncertainty tied to the pandemic as other factors embedded in the outlook. The company noted that the period contains 5 fewer shipping days than a year prior.

“Near-term market and operating conditions notwithstanding, we remain committed to our long-term strategy,” Brown said in a statement.

He told analysts he is feeling optimistic about 2022. He hinted at new product launches coming next year, saying that some of those items could reach price parity with meat.

Beyond Meat (BYND) Q3 2021 earnings miss (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Beyond Meat stock tumbles 14% after lowering third-quarter revenue outlook PUBL...

Glenn Petersen — 10/22/2021 9:50:36 AM

Beyond Meat stock tumbles 14% after lowering third-quarter revenue outlook

PUBLISHED FRI, OCT 22 20219:11 AM EDT
UPDATED 15 MIN AGO
Amelia Lucas @THXAMELIAN

KEY POINTS

-- The company said it now expects to report net sales of $106 million for the quarter, down from its prior forecast of $120 million to $140 million.

-- Beyond said that a number of factors hurt its revenue for the quarter, including the delta variant and severe weather.

Shares of Beyond Meat tumbled more than 14% in premarket trading Friday after the company warned it expects to report lower revenue for the third quarter than previously forecast.

Beyond said it expects net sales of $106 million, below its prior outlook of $120 million to $140 million. Wall Street analysts surveyed by Refinitiv were anticipating revenue of $133.1 million for the quarter. The company did not release an outlook for its quarterly earnings, but analysts were expecting a loss of 29 cents per share ahead of Friday’s announcement.

The company said multiple factors caused the lag in sales, including the impact of the Covid-19 delta variant. Beyond said a Canadian distributor decreased retail orders for longer than expected as its restaurants reopened, and it had expected incremental orders that didn’t materialize after one of its large customers changed distributors. Labor shortages also likely delayed distribution expansion and shelf resets, the company said.

Operational challenges also hurt its results. A Pennsylvania facility lost potable water for two weeks and another suffered water damage to inventory after severe weather, Beyond said.

Beyond did share one bright spot for sales during the quarter: an international customer accelerated orders. The company did not disclose the customer’s name.

Beyond’s initial forecast for its third-quarter revenue disappointed investors when the company released it in early August. After soaring grocery sales last year during lockdowns, demand has fallen. At the same time, food service orders haven’t rebounded completely yet, even as restaurants operate at full capacity. Executives said last quarter that many eateries were being more conservative with their orders because they were unsure of the impact of the delta variant on business.

Beyond is expected to report its full third-quarter results after the bell Nov. 10.

The stock has fallen 13% this year, giving it a market value of $6.87 billion.

Beyond Meat stock tumbles 14% after lowering third-quarter revenue outlook (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Burger King becomes the first fast-food chain to test Impossible Foods’ meatless...

Glenn Petersen — 10/6/2021 9:31:34 AM

Burger King becomes the first fast-food chain to test Impossible Foods’ meatless nuggets

PUBLISHED WED, OCT 6 20216:00 AM EDT
Amelia Lucas @THXAMELIAN
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Burger King will test Impossible Foods’ meatless nuggets in several markets, making it the first fast-food chain to offer the company’s new chicken alternative.

-- The Restaurant Brands International chain first worked with Impossible Foods two years ago as the first fast-food chain to sell its meatless burgers.

-- The test comes as traditional chicken meat becomes more expensive and harder to find.

Burger King’s Impossible Nuggets / Burger King
---------------------

Burger King will test Impossible Foods’ meatless nuggets in several markets, making it the first fast-food chain to offer the company’s new chicken alternative.

Starting Monday, customers in Des Moines, Iowa, Boston and Miami will be able to try the plant-based Impossible Nuggets.

The Restaurant Brands International chain first worked with Impossible Foods two years ago as the first fast-food chain to sell its meatless burgers. After an initial lift to sales from the buzzy item, the chain cut its price, bringing it closer to a beef Whopper. Burger King’s rival McDonald’s has a partnership with Impossible’s primary challenger Beyond Meat, although they haven’t yet launched a plant-based item together nationwide in the U.S. yet.

For Burger King, the Impossible Nuggets offer a similar opportunity to the Impossible Whopper to drive traffic to its restaurants. While meat alternatives are more common on fast-food menus now, chicken substitutes are a rare find since both Impossible and Beyond only launched their iterations recently. Impossible began rolling out its meatless nuggets in restaurants and grocery stores in September, while Beyond’s tenders hit restaurants in July.

The test comes as traditional chicken meat becomes more expensive and harder to find. According to Bank of America Securities, chicken commodity prices have doubled this year. Yum Brands’ KFC stopped advertising its chicken tenders due a supply shortage last month.

Burger King also announced Wednesday that it will roll out Ghost Pepper Chicken Nuggets nationwide on Monday. Unlike the Impossible Nuggets, these are made with white meat chicken.

Shares of Restaurant Brands have risen less than 1% this year, giving it a market value of $28.5 billion.

Burger King to test Impossible Foods' meatless nuggets (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Impossible Foods launches chicken substitute in U.S. restaurants, announces groc...

Glenn Petersen — 9/7/2021 11:22:41 AM

Impossible Foods launches chicken substitute in U.S. restaurants, announces grocery release

PUBLISHED TUE, SEP 7 20219:00 AM EDT
Amelia Lucas @THXAMELIAN
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Impossible Foods’ meatless chicken nuggets will debut in restaurants Tuesday.

-- The chicken substitute will be available in supermarkets by the end of September.

-- After difficulty receiving regulatory approval for its use of heme in the European Union and China, the company skipped using the ingredient in its chicken alternative.

-- Beyond Meat launched its own chicken tenders in restaurants in July.

Impossible Foods’ chicken substitute at Fuku / Source: Katelyn Perry
---------------------------------------------------

Impossible Foods on Tuesday launched its meatless chicken nuggets in restaurants and announced plans to bring the new offering to supermarkets by the end of the month.

In the last decade, chicken has overtaken beef as Americans’ top meat choice, making it a target for the companies like Impossible that are looking to replace or reduce consumption of animal meat. The Impossible Chicken Nuggets help the company catch up to rival Beyond Meat, which launched chicken tenders in U.S. restaurants this July, more than two years after discontinuing its original chicken alternative.

Impossible’s meatless nuggets use soy as the protein source. However, unlike its meat-free burgers and sausage, the nuggets do not contain heme, which is produced from genetically modified yeast.

While Impossible has secured approval from the Food and Drug Administration to sell products made with the additive in the United States, China and the European Union have barred its products because of that ingredient, posing a setback to its global ambitions.

Touting product benefits
To convince consumers to try the plant-based poultry alternative, Impossible is touting the nuggets’ environmental and health benefits. Based on preliminary estimates from Impossible, the nuggets use roughly 48% less land and 43% less water than chicken-based nuggets, and generate more than a third less greenhouse gas emissions. The Impossible nuggets contain 40% less saturated fat and 25% less sodium than a chicken nugget, according to the company.

Restaurant chains that will carry the poultry alternative include chef David Chang’s Fuku, Fat Brands’ Fatburger and Dog Haus.

Fuku CEO Alex Munoz-Suarez said in an interview that roughly 30% of consumers who responded to its customer satisfaction survey asked for a vegan or vegetarian option on its fried chicken-heavy menu.

It’s also a continuation of the relationship between the two companies since Chang’s Momofuku Nishi was the first restaurant to debut the Impossible Burger in 2016. Munoz-Suarez said Fuku tried Beyond’s chicken alternative as a patty for a meat-free sandwich but thought its shape was too perfect, pushing it to stick with Impossible as its partner.

Faster grocery ramp-up

Walmart, Kroger and Albertsons are among the grocery stores that will carry the chickenless nuggets in their frozen aisles by the end of September. Over the next three months, Impossible plans to have the chicken substitute in more than 10,000 grocery stores nationwide. The suggested retail price is $7.99 for roughly 20 nuggets.

That’s a much faster timeline for the rollout than Impossible’s most recent launch, its meat-free sausage. The company introduced the meatless pork alternative to restaurants nationwide in June 2020. More than a year later, it brought the sausage to grocery stores.

Impossible has been investing heavily in ramping up its research and development and production to keep up with demand and attract investors. Reuters reported in April that the company is preparing to go public sometime in the next 12 months through an initial public offering or a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Impossible is reportedly seeking a valuation of at least $10 billion, several billion dollars higher than the current market capitalization of Beyond Meat. To date, Impossible has raised $1.5 billion from private investors.

Impossible Foods launches chicken substitute in U.S. restaurants (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] A CNBC article suggests that Impossible Foods may IPO in the fall: Get ready fo...

Glenn Petersen — 9/3/2021 9:57:34 AM

A CNBC article suggests that Impossible Foods may IPO in the fall:

Get ready for a possibly record-breaking rush of IPOs this fall (cnbc.com)

[Craig Lacy] Can you eat to save the planet? weforum.org

Craig Lacy — 8/11/2021 3:08:43 PM

[Glenn Petersen] h/t Julius Wong Plant-Based Fish Is Rattling the Multibillion-Dollar Seafood In...

Glenn Petersen — 8/11/2021 9:47:08 AM

h/t Julius Wong

Plant-Based Fish Is Rattling the Multibillion-Dollar Seafood Industry

Beyond and Impossible showed the potential for plant-based proteins. Now tomatoes are coming for tuna.

By Irina Anghel
Bloomberg Businessweek
August 4, 2021, 1:00 AM CDT

Mimic Seafood’s Tunato nigiri. SOURCE: MIMIC SEAFOOD
--------------------------------

When a tuna marketing executive took a bite of the dehydrated tomato seasoned with olive oil, algae extract, spices, and soy sauce early last year, he was shook. “This is going to be a problem for us,” he said. At least that’s how Ida Speyer, co-founder and chief executive officer of Mimic Seafood, recalls it, designating it the highest praise she could’ve imagined for the delicate slice of tuna that—despite what the marketing executive’s taste buds indicated—contained no tuna at all.

The Madrid-based startup’s Tunato product, fabricated from a specialty tomato variety grown in southern Spain that resembles sliced sushi-grade tuna in shape and size, is part of a growing class of food innovations fighting for the last empty shelf in the booming plant-based protein market: seafood.

Faux fish, which Speyer concedes “maybe 5 or 10 years ago would have seemed too far out, too different, or only something for vegans,” is just a tiny fraction of the alternative protein market, dwarfed by the more mature faux meat and alt-dairy sectors. U.S. sales of plant-based seafood grew 23%, to $12 million, in 2020, compared with a traditional seafood market worth tens of billions of dollars, according to the Good Food Institute, an international nonprofit pushing for more sustainable proteins. But the sector is evolving quickly. Investment in U.S. plant-based seafood hit $70 million in the first half of 2021, as much as in the past two years combined.

It’s still a minnow compared with the country’s plant-based meat market, which has ballooned to about $1.4 billion in 2020 sales as companies roll out alternative chicken nuggets and pork sausages to join the faux ground beef and burgers already in household fridges. Concerns about red-meat consumption, antibiotics in livestock, and climate change have enticed more global shoppers to go meatless, at least once a week, but fish, with its heart-healthy reputation, doesn’t have the bad rap. Still, fears of overfishing, heavy-metal consumption, and microplastics, fueled by documentaries such as Netflix’s controversial Seaspiracy, are priming the switch. The potential market could be huge: Beyond vegans and flexitarians, faux fish might also be a welcome addition to, say, a pregnant woman avoiding high-mercury swordfish or a consumer with a shellfish allergy. And big corporations have taken notice.

Meat giant Tyson Foods Inc.’s venture arm bought a minority stake in New Wave Foods, a maker of plant-based shrimp, in 2019, almost two years before Tyson released its first vegan hamburger. In Thailand in March, Thai Union Group PCL, which owns the Chicken of the Sea brand, introduced its plant-based line OMG Meat, including crab cakes and fish burgers, with plans for a vegan shrimp later this year. Nestle SA’s nonfish tuna is available in parts of Europe, while Swedish retailer Ikea sells vegan caviar, derived from kelp seaweed.

Finggerino tomatoes used to make Mimic Seafood’s meatless tuna.
SOURCE: MIMIC SEAFOOD
----------------------------------

Thai Union, whose familiar tinned fish brands also include John West and King Oscar, began mulling plant-based products about three years ago to get ahead of concerns around sustainability. It rolled out its first vegan product—a flaked faux tuna made of soy, wheat, and pea protein that can be used in a traditional mayonnaise-based salad—in 2020. “We have the customers in our hands,” says Tunyawat Kasemsuwan, director of the company’s global innovation center, referring to the name recognition its brands already have. Thai Union is mainly targeting flexitarians, whose share in the population has been growing, and young consumers. “Gen Z will be the first movers, but there will be a ripple effect” on traditional seafood consumers, who tend to be older primarily because seafood is a premium-priced product, he says.

Most of the companies entering the nascent sector don’t have Thai Union’s global research and development, manufacturing, and distribution might, but the cottage industry is awash with experimentation. Breaded and fried products have had some of the quickest uptake. They include the Good Catch faux fish fillets and crab cakes recently added to the menu at five Long John Silver’s locations in California and Georgia. Gathered Foods, maker of Good Catch, says it’s too soon to comment on the trial, but “if you create that availability,” says co-founder Chris Kerr, “consumers will show up.”

Breaded products are also proliferating in the faux meat market, with Impossible Foods Inc. and Beyond Meat Inc. introducing plant-based chicken products this year. It’s simpler to mimic ground and spiced meats like patties and sausages instead of whole-muscle cuts, including chicken breast and filet mignon. The faux fish industry is discovering the same. “It’s much easier to re-create a dense, juicy beef burger than a flaky, delicate fillet of fish,” says Jen Lamy, Boston-based senior manager of the Good Food Institute’s Sustainable Seafood Initiative.

----------------------

Plant-Based Alternatives

Food Category / 2020 sales / % Change from 2019

Milk	$2.5b	20%
Meat	$1.4b	45
Seafood*	$12m	23
Prepared meals	$520m	29
Ice cream and frozen novelty	$435m	20
Creamer	$343m	32
Yogurt	$343m	20
Protein liquids and powders	$292m	10
Butter	$275m	36
Cheese	$270m	42
Tofu and tempeh	$175m	41
Baked goods and cookies	$152m	-1
Ready-to-drink beverages	$137m

*Subcategory of plant-based meat.
Data: Good Food Institute, Spins
---------------------------------------------------------

French foodmaker Odontella SAS sells a plant-based smoked salmon made from algae and pea protein in specialty supermarkets across Europe. The product is a long way from its origins as a 2007 experiment in co-founder Alain Guillou’s kitchen. It tastes very close to the real thing, though the price is heftier.

The key to price parity will be scaling up production and tapping more markets. “When that happens, you know the mega tipping point is here,” says David Yeung, founder and CEO of OmniFoods, a Hong Kong-based foodtech known for its vegan pork that’s been expanding into seafood. “I truly believe this is a matter of two to three years.”

Because seafood is rich in vitamins and minerals, which already makes it a healthy protein alternative to meat, vegan startups have to ensure the same nutrients end up in their plant-based replicas. Algae like those in Odontella’s fake salmon also contain the omega-3 fatty acids in conventional fish. OmniFoods uses a high-quality canola oil in its new seafood line for the same reason. Faux-fish makers also risk pushback from traditional fishing trade groups who don’t want vegan products labeled as “tuna” or “salmon,” mirroring the debate about whether faux animal products can be labeled meat across the U.S.

Beef for sale alongside Impossible Burger’s plant-based meat at a Los Angeles grocery store in 2019.
PHOTOGRAPHER: PATRICK T. FALLON/BLOOMBERG
----------------------

If plant-based seafood maintains its growth rate, it can catch up with fake meat’s share of the conventional market within the next decade, the Good Food Institute’s Lamy says. The technology is “not quite there yet,” she says, but the sector’s making progress. “If you look even at just photos of products from now vs. three years ago, it’s totally a different game.”

Spain’s Mimic is banking on that. Although it halted distribution of its tomato-based tuna when Covid-19 lockdowns hit, it plans to resume sales in several Spanish cities by the end of the year, eventually expanding into Denmark. The startup has visions of becoming “the Oatly of seafood,” giving the traditional protein market a run for its money as nut and oat milks did for cow’s milk.

“I think if the dairy industry had known 10 to 15 years ago what was coming, they would have prepared differently. The seafood industry can actually in a way benefit from what we have seen with dairy and beef, because the change will come,” Speyer says of her expectation that more consumers will move away from traditional seafood. “It’s going to be a party for the rest of us. But for some companies, this could be a real crisis.”

BOTTOM LINE - The plant-based fish market is a drop in the bucket compared with that of faux meat, but it’s growing fast as consumers try to minimize their impact on the oceans.

Plant-Based Sushi, Faux Fish Rattle the Multibillion-Dollar Seafood Market - Bloomberg

[Glenn Petersen] Bezos, Gates back fake meat and dairy made from fungus as next big alt-protein ...

Glenn Petersen — 7/3/2021 5:16:51 PM

Bezos, Gates back fake meat and dairy made from fungus as next big alt-protein

PUBLISHED SAT, JUL 3 202110:00 AM EDT
Bob Woods
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Chicago-based Nature’s Fynd has meatless breakfast patties and hamburgers, dairy-free cream cheese and yogurt, and chicken-less nuggets scheduled to hit grocers’ shelves later this year.

-- The alternative foods sector grew U.S. retail sales 27% in 2020, and bringing the total market value to $7 billion.

-- Nature’s Fynd is building a 35,000-square-foot factory on the site of Chicago’s former Union Stockyards, the epicenter of the 20th-century meatpacking industry.

Unearthed by co-founder Mark Kozubal as a microbe from volcanic hot springs in Yellowstone National Park, Fy is the fermented, versatile, protein-rich source that Nature’s Fynd and its CEO Thomas Jonas are hoping becomes the next big thing in alternative meat and dairy.
Nature’s Fynd
--------------------------------------

As consumers become increasingly comfortable eating faux-meat burgers that look, cook and taste like the real thing, a food-tech start-up backed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates is using fungus as the primary ingredient to create alt-meat foods.

Nature’s Fynd, based in Chicago, has raised $158 million in funding from investors including Bezos, Gates, and Al Gore. The company’s meatless breakfast patties and hamburgers, dairy-free cream cheese and yogurt, and chicken-less nuggets are scheduled to hit grocers’ shelves later this year.

The alternative foods sector skyrocketed in 2020, growing U.S. retail sales 27%, and bringing the total market value to $7 billion, according to the Plant-Based Foods Association (PBFA), a trade group comprising more than 200 member companies. Meanwhile, shipments of alt-protein products from food service distributors to commercial restaurants rose 60% year-over-year in April, according to research firm NPD Group.

The ascendant industry is headlined by Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, whose alt-meat burgers, chicken and sausage products have disrupted the $733 billion U.S. food manufacturing industry. That has prompted Tyson Foods, Purdue, Hormel, Cargill and other traditional meat producers to launch their own products in the category.

Some alt-meat sales growth slowed amid the pandemic and restaurant closures. A recent report from J.P. Morgan claims that Dunkin’ has dropped its breakfast sandwich using a Beyond sausage patty from most restaurants, though that has not been confirmed by either company (Dunkin’ and Beyond Meat did return calls by press time.) Still, plant-based and cultured foods are projected to take a 60% market share of global meat sales by 2040, according to consulting firm AT Kearney.

Having lost 1% of its overall market to-date probably doesn’t rattle meat producers much, but looking at the declining costs of alt-meat should raise their eyebrows. In mid-June, Beyond Meat was selling for $6.40 per pound, bringing it closer to the price of traditional beef, making some progress on a long-term goal of Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown to reach cost parity with traditional meat. Beef patties were then selling for $5.26 per pound, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Impossible Foods has cut its restaurant prices twice in the past year, and in February, the company slashed retail prices by 20%, lowering the price of two quarter-pound patties to $5.49.

Nature’s Fynd was co-founded in 2012 — initially as Sustainable Bioproducts — by Thomas Jonas and Mark Kozubal, now chief executive and chief science officers, respectively. A few years earlier, Kozubal had unearthed a microbe, Fusarium strain flavolapis, from volcanic hot springs in Yellowstone National Park. He led an R&D team that formulated the microbe into what the company calls Fy, the fermented, versatile, protein-rich source for Nature’s Fynd’s products.

Fermentation has been used in making bread, beer, wine, cheese and other products for millennia, and is now emerging as a key alt-protein platform with major potential to align science with entrepreneurship, policy and investment, according to the Good Food Institute. Even so, Nature’s Fynd has some catching up to do. U.K.-based Quorn, founded in 1985, has been offering its fungus-based meatless products in the U.S. since 2002. It was acquired by Philippine food maker Monde Nissin for about $830 million in 2015, according to Reuters. And the field of other potential competitors is growing.

I don’t know anyone over 40 who is saying, ‘I should eat more meat.’ - Thomas Jonas CO-FOUNDER AND CEO

Much as cows, chickens and pigs were domesticated centuries ago as protein sources, “now is the time for this second domestication,” Jonas said in a recent interview. “The farming of this microbe is an efficient way of producing protein that is just as good.”

Bringing the evolution full circle, Nature’s Fynd is building a 35,000-square-foot factory on the site of Chicago’s former Union Stockyards, the epicenter of the 20th-century meatpacking industry.

The climate-conscious food consumer

Beyond fungus, Nature’s Fynd also is representative of the food sustainability movement, whose mission is to reduce the carbon footprint of global food systems, which generate 34% of greenhouse emissions linked to climate change.

“The challenge for this and future generations is to learn to do more with less,” Jonas said. “Because with eight billion people, the Earth is not getting any bigger, its resources are dwindling and climate change is making it even more difficult to find land to grow crops to feed animals. The math just doesn’t work. So, the whole goal of our new protein system is to increase the efficiency of the complete protein chain.”

Consumer acceptance, of course, is paramount to Nature’s Fynd business model. In February, the company launched a limited, direct-to-consumer sampling of its patties and cream cheese exclusively online. Chief marketing officer Karuna Rawal said the formal product rollout will focus first on retailers, with food service partnerships to follow. “It’s important that we start with retail and be able to tell our story to the consumer in a way we can control the narrative,” she said.

In that vein, Nature’s Fynd packaging is emblazoned with a “Fy” badge, a la “Intel Inside,” to create brand recognition and loyalty.

With $158 million in funding from Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Al Gore and other investors, Nature’s Fynd meatless breakfast patties and hamburgers, dairy-free cream cheese and yogurt, and nuggets, minus chicken, are scheduled to hit grocers’ shelves later this year.
Nature’s Fynd
--------------------------

Not surprisingly, the greatest appeal for alt-meat products is among younger consumers.

“Gen Zers and millennials are the largest purchasers in the plant-based space,” said Sabina Vyas, director of strategic initiatives and communications at the PBFA. “As their purchasing power builds, [food] companies are going to have to adapt accordingly.”

Sixty-three percent of U.S. consumers between ages 24 and 39 believe their nutritional needs can be fully met with a plant-based diet, according to research from One Poll.

“I don’t know anyone over 40 who is saying, ‘I should eat more meat,’” Jonas said.

Chris Rivest, a senior climate-tech investor at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, established in 2016 by Gates and a coalition of private investors concerned about the impacts of climate change, said food is a commodity, with purchases based on taste, nutrition and cost.

He is a fan of the fungus, saying he was “blown away” by products he taste-tested (Gates was similarly impressed during a “60 Minutes” segment) and its nutritional value.

The company says the vegan protein includes all 20 amino acids, including the 9 essential amino acids, and good levels of fiber, vitamins and minerals, with no cholesterol or trans fats. It says Fy has one-tenth the fat of ground beef and 50% more protein than tofu; twice as much protein as raw peas.

Rivest also thinks the business can compete on cost. “We think the Nature’s Fynd model can undercut costs of traditional protein sources,” he said. “That’s what really sold us on this opportunity.”

Like many start-ups, scale is going to be critical for Nature’s Fynd’s success.

“We expect to have a lot of demand versus our [manufacturing] capacity, so we have to move fast and raise additional capital to move forward,” Jonas said. “We’re competing against the meat industry, which has been working on its supply chain for 300 years, so we have big catching up to do.”

Bezos, Gates back fungus fake meat as next big alt-protein (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] As grocery prices rise, alt-meat takes a bigger bite of Big Meat’s burger Laura...

Glenn Petersen — 6/8/2021 11:56:57 AM

As grocery prices rise, alt-meat takes a bigger bite of Big Meat’s burger

Laura Reiley
The Washington Post
June 8, 2021

Plant-based meat was having a moment before the pandemic, nabbing celebrity investors, record-setting IPOs, “Whopper” fast-food deals and high-end chefs who transformed pea protein and soy into savory, expectation-defying deliciousness.

Then the pandemic hit, restaurants closed, and many Americans were stuck at home battling anxiety and sourdough starters. Industry executives wondered whether enthusiasm for this new food category would falter and sales flag — would plant-based meat turn out to be a fad rather than a movement? It fleetingly looked grim: Last April, plant-based protein shipments to restaurants fell 27 percent, according to market research firm NPD Group.
However, it appears that those worries were ill-founded. “Alt-meat” has emerged stronger than ever, much of it because of one thing: price.

Myriad pandemic pressures upended the pricing formulas for both traditional meat and plant-based proteins, making alt-meat a more competitive choice at the grocery store, far more quickly than any expert could have predicted.

It used to be that plant-based proteins generated a ton of hype and heady righteousness for health-oriented and environmentally focused consumers, yet a pound of ground Impossible Burger was still way more than double that of even the fanciest ground beef — making this new generation of faux meat a reach for the cost-conscious cook.

Supply-chain problems and virus outbreaks in meat-processing plants have led to meat price increases that far outstrip those of groceries overall. Meanwhile, it’s getting easier and less expensive for companies to create a lot more of these plant-based proteins, bringing down the costs of the soy and pea-protein meats, dairy and eggs much faster than anticipated.

A pound of ground Beyond Meat is down to about $5.70. Beef prices, up 3.3 percent from a year ago, mean ground beef can cost between $4.10 and $6, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Impossible Foods has cut its restaurant prices twice in the past year, and in February, the company cut retail prices by 20 percent, bringing the price of two quarter-pound patties down to $5.49.

“We plan to keep lowering prices as we achieve new production records and economies of scale and ultimately undercut the price of ground beef from cows,” said Impossible Foods President Dennis Woodside in an email.

Even plant-based egg prices are coming down. Matt Riley, senior vice president of global partnerships at Eat Just, said the company took its mung-bean-based Just Egg from $7.99 to $5.99 in March 2020 and then down to $3.99 in January of this year — about the price of many pasture-raised eggs at the farmers market.

These price reductions, against a backdrop of surging grocery prices overall, have pushed the skeptics and the curious over the edge: They’re trying it. Beyond Meat’s grocery store revenue was up 108 percent in 2020, with more people reportedly becoming repeat customers. And while Impossible Foods, a private company, doesn’t release sales numbers, in 2020 it expanded retail sales from fewer than 150 grocery stores to 17,000 stores, as well as via direct-to-consumer sales.

And the playing field got more crowded. In a year when groceries were just about the only thing consumers were buying, an eye-popping 112 new plant-based meat, egg and dairy brands hit grocery aisles in 2020, reflecting some $3.1 billion worth of new investments in “alternative proteins,” according to the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes alternatives to traditional meat, dairy and eggs.

Also, even as many restaurants were reduced to takeout, delivery and limited indoor dining, plant-based proteins on restaurant menus jumped by 118 percent in 2020, according to Datassential, a food market research company.

While the plant-based industry is growing, it still represents a minuscule part of the $1.4 trillion global meat market, said Steve Meyer, an economist with Partners for Production Agriculture.

“A lot of the things that have been said about those products have always dealt with growth rates,” Meyer said. “But when you start at zero, the growth rates are pretty darn high.”

John Robinson, senior vice president of membership and communications for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said that meat substitutes did not encroach upon beef sales during the pandemic, citing NielsenIQ data showing beef sales volume was up 2 percent in 2020. He said meat substitutes still represent less than 1 percent of the market volume: “This tells us that consumers still prefer beef over alternative proteins,” he said.

In other words, Big Meat isn’t scared.

The irony is, Big Meat and massive agribusinesses are driving down prices for plant-based products. Hedging their bets, Smithfield, Perdue, Hormel, Tyson and other huge meat companies have jumped into the fray. The price of Tyson’s Raised & Rooted spicy plant-based nuggets also inched down 24 percent during the pandemic. Plus, food-processing giants such as Archer-Daniels-Midland are developing “hundreds of different prototypes to fine-tune and customize to customers’ needs,” said Wendy Van Buren, the global commercial growth leader of alternative proteins for ADM. She said her mission is to make products that are more “accessible” to customers — meaning cheaper.

Lewis Bollard, program officer at Open Philanthropy, a research foundation that gives grants in areas including global health and farm animal welfare, said big food companies such as Cargill or Tyson help drive the ability to produce ingredients and products at a larger scale, building new layers of infrastructure to get them onto supermarket shelves.

“Plant-based start-ups are different than tech start-ups, because you need enormous production capacity. It’s a huge challenge going from almost nothing a decade ago to trying to compete with the animal agriculture industry that has had 1,000 years to scale up,” he said. Plus, as the big companies buy larger quantities of ingredients like yellow peas and mung beans, the price they pay drops, Bollard said.

One reason some people may be exploring plant-based proteins could be the growing number of people concerned about personal health and weight gain during the pandemic, according to Wendy Wesley, a nutritionist in St. Petersburg, Fla.

“My phone is blowing up with people who’ve gained the Covid 30,” she said. “They know the way out of this is through plant proteins. I’m not a vegan or vegetarian, but I’m always looking for ways to replace an animal protein with a plant protein, and my clients are in lockstep with me.”

She said that before the pandemic, prices on plant-based protein products was an issue: “People said, ‘Wow, that’s expensive,’ so coming down in price may turn some people into experimenters.”

As grocery prices rise, alt-meat takes a bigger bite of Big Meat’s burger (msn.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Plant-based milk company Oatly to go public, seeking $10B valuation Courtenay B...

Glenn Petersen — 5/19/2021 7:13:03 PM

Plant-based milk company Oatly to go public, seeking $10B valuation

Courtenay Brown
Axios
May 19, 2021

Plant-based milk company Oatly is going public. It's the latest example of "alt-food" catapulting into the mainstream: on shelves — and in investing.

Driving the news: It's expected to be valued at $10 billion, an eye-popping valuation that in some cases rivals that of food giants that make more widely consumed products.

Why it matters: Renewed attention to the role of meat and dairy in climate change is causing an all-out food war.

-- The sector is in the eye of the storm, as a growing number of investors and consumers shift dollars to sustainable options.

What they're saying: Oatly's public market debut set for tomorrow "reflects the maturity and the staying power of the plant-based business. It’s also highlighting it’s not just a fad," a partner at a food and beverage advisory firm told Bloomberg.

The backdrop: Fast-casual chains are bulking up vegan offerings. Starbucks recently added oat milk to its menu.

-- Items from fake meat companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are popping up on menus and in grocery stores across the country.

-- Drake today joined the celebrity roster of "alt-food" investors: The rapper was part of a $40 million investing round in plant-based chicken firm Daring Foods.

-- One of the world's top restaurants, Eleven Madison Park, reopened with a meat-free menu because the "current food system is simply not sustainable," the chef told the New York Times. (It'll still offer milk with coffee.)

-- Many restaurants won't have the resources (or desire) to follow suit.

The other side: Nebraska, one of the top beef-producing states, is doubling down with a " beef passport." If patrons in the state order beef dishes off certain restaurants' menus, there's a chance to win a prize.

What to watch: Any reversal on the part of alt-food consumers determining whether products are healthy or sustainable enough is a business risk.

-- "[O]ur consumers rely on us to provide them with high-quality plant-based products. ... Any loss of confidence on the part of consumers in the ingredients used in our products ... would be difficult and costly to overcome," per Oatly's IPO filing document.

Plant-based milk company Oatly to go public - Axios

[Glenn Petersen] Beyond Meat swings to a loss as grocery sales growth slows PUBLISHED THU, MAY 6...

Glenn Petersen — 5/10/2021 4:54:48 AM

Beyond Meat swings to a loss as grocery sales growth slows

PUBLISHED THU, MAY 6 20214:13 PM EDT
UPDATED THU, MAY 6 20216:28 PM EDT
Amelia Lucas
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Beyond Meat on Thursday reported a wider-than-expected loss in the first quarter.

-- The company said restaurant customers are taking longer to return and grocery shoppers aren’t stockpiling its meat substitutes anymore.

-- Beyond did not provide an outlook for the full year, citing the uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

-- For the second quarter, the company is forecasting revenue in the range of $135 million to $150 million.

Beyond Meat “Beyond Burger” patties made from plant-based substitutes for meat products sit on a shelf for sale on November 15, 2019 in New York City.
Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images
--------------------------------------

Beyond Meat on Thursday reported a wider-than-expected loss in the first quarter as restaurant customers take longer to return and grocery shoppers aren’t stockpiling its meat substitutes anymore.

However, CEO Ethan Brown said the company is seeing a “slow thaw” in its food service segment in the United States and some international markets, prompting the company to issue a revenue forecast for the next quarter.

Shares of the company fell 6.7% in extended trading.

Here’s what the company reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

Loss per share: 42 cents adjusted vs. 19 cents expected

Revenue: $108.2 million vs. $113.7 million expected

Beyond reported fiscal first-quarter net loss of $27.3 million, or 43 cents per share, down from net income of $1.8 million, or 3 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding expenses from early debt extinguishment, the company lost 42 cents per share, wider than the loss of 19 cents per share expected by analysts surveyed by Refinitiv.

This is the third quarter in a row that Beyond has reported a wider-than-expected loss. The company has been investing back into its business as it tries to position itself as a global player. Beyond now has production facilities in China and the Netherlands, for example.

Net sales rose 11.4% to $108.2 million, missing expectations of $113.7 million.

U.S. retail sales jumped by 27.8% during the quarter. Sales in grocery and convenience stores accounted for more than three-quarters of the company’s total U.S. revenue. Prior to the pandemic, retail sales made up only about half of Beyond’s revenue.

Food service sales in the U.S. fell 26% as streamlined menus and less customer traffic at restaurants hurt demand. Beyond also lost roughly 3,000 foodservice locations, which the company attributed to the pandemic. Brown said that the company has added about 2,400 locations since the quarter ended.

Rival Impossible Foods has been slashing prices of its meat substitutes, helping it toward its goal of achieving price parity with beef. According to Brown, the move hasn’t pulled many customers away from Beyond’s products, which he said shows strong brand loyalty.

“We just did some comparative data analysis, and we looked at their consumer and our consumer and take-away and things of that nature, and what’s really interesting is while they’re doing a really good job building the category and bringing people into the category, they’re not sourcing a lot of our consumers,” Brown said.

Outside of Beyond’s home market, sales rose 12.5%, fueled by skyrocketing retail demand. International grocery sales nearly tripled during the quarter. In total, international sales account for a quarter of the company’s revenue, and Beyond’s meat substitutes are sold in more than 80 countries worldwide.

For the second quarter, the company is forecasting revenue in the range of $135 million to $150 million, representing an increase of 19% to 32% compared with the year-ago period. Wall Street analysts are expecting net sales of $142.8 million next quarter. Executives said that the company did not include a significant uptick in its foodservice sales in the forecast.

Brown said that the company will revisit the outlook if there’s a significant resurgence of Covid-19 in the U.S. or other important markets.

Beyond did not provide an outlook for the full year, citing the uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

CFO Mark Nelson retired Wednesday, which was previously announced. Brown said that the company will reveal his successor in the coming weeks.

Beyond Meat (BYND) Q1 earnings miss (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] Vegan food unicorns are taking over the market The plant-based meat and dairy i...

Glenn Petersen — 3/29/2021 7:11:17 PM

Vegan food unicorns are taking over the market

The plant-based meat and dairy industries are worth a combined $22B and are growing fast.

By: Ethan Brooks | @damn_ethan
The Huustle
March 24, 2021

There’s a new cow in town, and this one really is ready to jump over the moon.

NotCo is a Bezos-backed plant-based protein company from Chile that makes vegan milk, mayonnaise, ice cream, and burgers.

They’ve raised $120m so far thanks to Giuseppe, their patented AI software, which helps them analyze and develop new product recipes.

Now, they’re eyeballing a $1B valuation as they expand further into the US, Canada, and Mexico.

There’s a surprising number of vegan moo-nicorns

According to Lever VC, a leading investor in the alt-protein space, the plant-based meat and dairy industries are worth a combined $22B and are growing fast.

-- Just Inc. (plant-based eggs) is valued at $1B+

-- .Beyond Meat (plant-based meats) has an $8.8B market cap.

-- Oatly (oat milk) recently rais ked $200m at a $2B valuation and is reportedly targeting a $10B IPO.

The industry is projected to grow 31% YoY, reaching $85-$140B in the next 10-15 years — and, most likely, minting several new billion-dollar companies along the way.

The first-ever Chilean unicorn?

There’s another interesting angle here: If NotCo does hit a $1B valuation, it’ll be Chile’s first unicorn startup — vegan or not.

Despite pandemic woes, Latin America saw a record 488 VC deals in 2020, and Mexico and Uruguay minted their first billion-dollar startups.

NotCo — which so far only operates in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and the US — is projecting 4x sales growth in 2021 as they move into even greener pastures.

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[Glenn Petersen] Beyond Meat strikes deals with McDonald’s, Yum but shares fall on wider quarterl...

Glenn Petersen — 2/25/2021 7:32:22 PM

Beyond Meat strikes deals with McDonald’s, Yum but shares fall on wider quarterly loss

PUBLISHED THU, FEB 25 20214:17 PM EST
UPDATED THU, FEB 25 20215:57 PM EST
Amelia Lucas
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Beyond Meat has struck deals with fast-food giants McDonald’s and Yum Brands.

-- The company fell short of Wall Street’s estimates for its fourth-quarter revenue, and it reported a wider-than-expected quarterly loss.

-- The company declined to provide an outlook for 2021, citing the uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

Beyond Meat on Thursday announced that it has struck deals with fast-food giants McDonald’s and Yum Brands, but shares fell on a disappointing earnings report.

The company posted a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss as the cost of global expansion and weak restaurant sales weighed on the business.

The company’s stock whipsawed in extended trading, initially falling on the earnings news, then rising on the supply agreement, driven by hopes that the new restaurant deals will fuel growth. Recently, shares were down about 3%.

Here’s what the company reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

Loss per share: 34 cents adjusted vs. 13 cents expected

Revenue: $101.9 million vs. $103.2 million expected

The company reported its fiscal fourth-quarter net loss of $25.1 million, or 40 cents per share, widened to a loss of $452,000, or 1 cent per share, a year earlier.

Excluding expenses attributed to the pandemic, Beyond lost 34 cents per share, wider than the loss of 13 cents per share expected by analysts surveyed by Refinitiv.

Net sales rose 3.5% to $101.9 million, missing expectations of $103.2 million. U.S. grocery revenues climbed 76% in the quarter, although the company noted that retail demand has moderated since the early stages of the crisis.

CEO Ethan Brown said that Beyond is still the top plant-based meat alternative in grocery stores, based on IRI data.

On the other hand, U.S. foodservice revenue tumbled 42.6% during the fourth quarter as the pandemic continued to weigh on restaurant demand for meat substitutes. But the years-long partnerships with McDonald’s and Yum show that restaurant companies still believe consumers want plant-based alternatives.

Under the new three-year deal with McDonald’s, Beyond will be the preferred patty supplier for its McPlant burger, which is being tested in some markets globally. McDonald’s and Beyond will also work together to develop new substitutes for pork, chicken and egg.

Likewise, Beyond and Yum will work together to make exclusive menu items for KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut over the next several years. Financial terms for both strategic partnerships were not disclosed.

Executives declined to elaborate further on the financial impact of the two partnerships during the conference call. However, Brown told analysts that the impact of the deals in 2021 is expected to be “fairly modest.”

“These deals are enormous,” Brown said. “They are the biggest deals you could possibly put together in food in our sector. And we don’t want people to get ahead of themselves.”

He also declined to provide more detail on its joint venture with PepsiCo, which was created to produce and distribute plant-based drinks and snacks.

The deals also come as Beyond tries to position itself as a global player. Its international revenue fell 16.5% during the quarter, dragged down by declines in its foodservice segment. The company noted that it spent more on expanding in Europe and China.

Other costs of the growing business included an increased headcount as it adds to its workforce, spending more on marketing and development and investments in its information technology infrastructure.

Brown also said that the company will release two updated versions of its meatless burger patties this spring. Both are its juiciest burgers yet, according to Brown, and one will boast 55% less saturated fat than a traditional 80/20 beef patty. The other, consistent with its current iteration, will contain 35% less saturated fat.

Beyond Meat declined to provide an outlook for 2021, citing the uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

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[Glenn Petersen] Is color additive that makes Impossible Burgers "bleed" safe? BY KATE GIBSON CB...

Glenn Petersen — 2/7/2021 7:31:20 AM

Is color additive that makes Impossible Burgers "bleed" safe?

BY KATE GIBSON
CBS News
FEBRUARY 4, 2021 / 3:18 PM / MONEYWATCH

A genetically engineered color additive that makes Impossible Foods' plant-based burgers appear to "bleed" like real meat should not have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration without more extensive testing, a food advocacy group says.

The Center for Food Safety is challenging the FDA's 2019 approval of soy leghemoglobin, a so-called heme colorant produced in genetically engineered yeast that is used in the vegan burgers now sold in supermarkets and restaurants across the country, according to a court documents filed last week.

"Because [genetically engineered] heme is new to the human diet, and substantial quantities are added to the Impossible Burger, FDA should have required extensive safety testing before approving its use as a color additive, as required by law," the nonprofit group said in a statement.

According to Bill Freese, the center's science policy analyst, the federal agency gave the substance the green light without long-term animal studies looking at potential adverse effects including cancer and reproductive impairment.

"We find this to be all the more troubling because a number of potential adverse effects were detected in a short-term rat trial: disruption of reproductive cycles and reduced uterine weights in females, and biomarkers of anemia, reduced clotting ability, and kidney problems," Freese said.

Reached for comment, an FDA spokesperson said by email that the agency does not comment on possible, pending or ongoing litigation.

Impossible Foods dismissed the notion that its products might be unsafe to consume, with a spokesperson saying in an email that all had "undergone rigorous safety testing and meet or exceed all relevant federal requirements."

The company also accused the Center for Food Safety of having an axe to grind against Impossible Foods, calling the non-profit focused on improving food production an "anti-GMO, anti-science organization."

Impossible Foods has seen explosive growth, with the plant-based protein maker's products sold worldwide. The California-based company recently introduced soy-based products mimicking pork and sausage, and its burgers are sold at major restaurant chains including Burger King.

While questioning what it terms the "premature introduction" of Impossible Foods products containing genetically engineered heme in supermarkets and restaurants across the country, the Center for Food Science said it "avidly supports plant-based eating."

Impossible Burger has said its vegan products are environmentally friendly as they use less land and water and produce fewer greenhouse gases than animal products do. But some health experts are skeptical of processed alternative burger products' nutritional values, saying they come with a fair helping of saturated fat, for instance.

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[Glenn Petersen] Impossible Foods’ plant-based meat just got closer to the price of regular meat ...

Glenn Petersen — 2/7/2021 7:26:14 AM

Impossible Foods’ plant-based meat just got closer to the price of regular meat

The 20 percent price cut is part of a strategy to take plant-based meat mainstream.

By Kelsey Piper
Vox
Feb 2, 2021, 11:35am EST

Impossible Foods announced they’re cutting retail prices by 20 percent in a bid to compete with animal meat. Patrick T. Fallon/Getty Images
--------------------
In the past few years, meatless meat products have taken off among consumers. But the meatless meat market is still only about 1 percent of the meat market. One of the biggest reasons: Plant-based meat products are considerably more expensive.

There are signs, though, that that’s changing. Impossible Foods products on grocery store shelves should get about 20 percent cheaper in upcoming weeks, the company announced Tuesday morning. The company will suggest to retailers that prices drop to $5.49 (from $6.99) for a two-patty package and $6.99 (from $8.99) for a 12-oz. package of ground Impossible beef in the US (actual prices will vary by location and by retailer).

The announcement follows a similar price cut Impossible Foods made for restaurant distributors at the start of the year, and it’s the latest attempt by plant-based meat makers to cut into meat’s big price advantage.

The pandemic has only underscored the importance of cutting into that price advantage and making meatless meat a mainstream alternative to factory-farmed meat. Slaughterhouses, long notorious for their terrible working conditions, have been coronavirus hotspots, in some cases because they responded to the coronavirus crisis by telling employees not to take any sick leave for any reason. And then there are the larger-scale problems that the pandemic reminded the world of: It is a public health hazard to raise animals for food in crowded conditions that can incubate and rapidly spread disease, and our farming practices risk starting the next global pandemic.

In light of those problems, consumers have shown greater interest in plant-based offerings. More and more traditional food companies have launched plant-based meat brands, more and more fast food and casual dining restaurants have added menu options, and major players in the field have raised a lot of money.

Having won the first battle — getting consumers interested enough to try plant-based foods, and investors interested enough to fund them — plant-based meat companies are setting their sights on a bigger challenge: getting plant-based meat products as cheap as animal meat products are. The plant-based meat industry has to be bigger to compete with animal products on price — and competing on price is a key component of getting bigger as an industry.

One pound of factory-farmed beef burgers at the Walmart near me costs just $2.80/pound. To give every person access to plant-based alternatives and to meaningfully transition away from factory farming, plant-based alternatives have to get just as cheap — without cutting any of the same corners.

Plant-based meat is still a long way away from the rock-bottom prices of animal meat. But Impossible Food’s 20 percent price cut is one more step toward making plant-based meat a reliable alternative to factory-farmed animal meat.

Why is meat so cheap anyway?

Meat in America is shockingly, unprecedentedly cheap.

The average price for a meat alternative sold in a grocers’ meat department in the US last year was $9.87/pound. The average price for beef? $4.82/pound. Chicken is even cheaper, at $2.33/pound.

That’s a big difference, and might go a long way toward explaining why even as consumer interest increases and the flavor profile of plant-based meats gets closer and closer to the flavor profile of animal meats, plant-based meats still make up only a very small share of sales.

“The animal industry has optimized its processes for a century,” Dennis Woodside, the president of Impossible Foods, told me.

“The most processed cheap forms of chicken are just insanely cheap, relative to historical standards and relative to other food products on the market,” Lewis Bollard, who researches farm animal welfare at the Open Philanthropy Project, told me last summer. “The chicken industry has managed to cut all their corners, they don’t pay their environmental bills, they don’t pay for a lot of the public health hazards they cause. They have managed to produce a product that is just artificially cheap and hard to compete with.”

But optimization is just one part of the story. The other is that the meat industry has accrued a lot of political power that they’ve leveraged to make meat cheap — and to make Americans eat a lot of it.

Animal agriculture is heavily subsidized by the federal government. That said, neither Bollard nor Zak Weston, a researcher at the Good Food Institute, thinks direct monetary subsidies were the main reason meat was so cheap.

More important are invisible forms of subsidization like not enforcing worker’s rights, exempting factory farms from animal cruelty laws, not requiring companies to engage in environmental cleanup, and not restricting risky practices — like antibiotic overuse — that impose costs on the whole world.

“It’s not the case that plant-based meat is weirdly expensive or labor intensive or something,” Weston previously told me. “The animal protein industry has spent decades wringing incredible efficiencies out of every part of the program. Animal meat gets to externalize a lot of its negatives — externalities like health care, ecological, worker welfare, animal welfare.”

In other words, if the animal meat industry were held accountable for the costs their products and their workings inflict on society, meat would be much more expensive.

Plant-based meat is getting cheaper, but it still doesn’t beat animal meat

Impossible’s 20 percent price cut is large in absolute terms, but price parity is still a long way away.

Nevertheless, industry experts are optimistic.

“We were thinking about cost reductions and getting to the cost structure of commodity ground beef from the very beginning,” David Lee, chief financial officer of Impossible Foods, previously told me. “We knew that if we had the best product at the same cost, then consumers would vote with their stomachs.”

In the past few years, they’ve already made progress. Last year, Impossible Foods slashed prices for restaurants by 15 percent. Now, they’re cutting recommended retail prices by 20 percent. Companies were wary of sharing with me specific figures on their costs, but based on Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Bollard estimates that Beyond’s cost of production has fallen from $4.50/pound in mid-2019 to $3.50/pound in mid-2020.
At a few outlets, such as Dunkin’, Beyond Meat’s Sausage Sandwich sells for the exact same price as the meat sausage sandwich. Beyond Meat executive Charles Muth says that Beyond’s products do much better when they’re listed at the same price as meat.

“The thing we like to say here,” Muth said last year, “is we’re changing the way consumers and shoppers think about what they eat. We don’t want pricing to be a barrier when they’re considering that. We’d like to take pricing out of that conversation as best as we can.”

There’s no single brilliant secret to making a mass-manufactured product cheaper. Instead, experts told me, it’s a matter of relentlessly making every element of the supply chain, the manufacturing process, and the distribution process work slightly better.

When a company is big enough, it can make ingredient purchases at scale, get expensive equipment that’s only worthwhile if it’ll be used to make an enormous number of products, have distribution centers in lots of different parts of the world to minimize transportation costs, and negotiate better deals for its supplies. There’s the potential for a virtuous cycle where lower costs recruit more consumers, who make further cost savings possible.

It’s those savings from scale that drove Impossible Foods’ latest price cuts. “Over the last year, we’ve more than doubled our production,” Woodside said. “The more that we are selling, the better utilization we have of our manufacturing lines, the better prices we get from our supplies, the more suppliers we can bring into the plant-based ecosystem.”

And while the ultimate goal of every plant-based foods expert I’ve spoken to is price parity with animal meat, price cuts make a big difference even before they reach that point. Cheaper plant-based meat means options for more consumers and more restaurants. It also means less demand for animal products at a time when prices are high, animal welfare is ignored, and Congress is investigating coronavirus outbreaks at slaughterhouses. There’s a long road ahead, but a 20 percent price cut is a substantial step forward.

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[zax] Beyond Meat, Inc. (BYND) 189.70 +30.97 (+19.51%) Beyond Meat soars on plant-bas...

zax — 1/26/2021 12:16:15 PM

Beyond Meat, Inc. (BYND)
189.70 +30.97 (+19.51%)

Beyond Meat soars on plant-based deal with PepsiCo

Shares of Beyond Meat jumped on Tuesday morning after the company announcing it was forming a joint venture to produce and market plant-based foods with PepsiCo.

[zax] Taco Bell partnering with Beyond Meat to create plant-based protein marketwatch...

zax — 1/14/2021 11:43:45 AM

Taco Bell partnering with Beyond Meat to create plant-based protein

marketwatch.com

Taco Bell announced Thursday that it has partnered with Beyond Meat Inc. to create a plant-based protein that will begin testing in the next year.

Taco Bell announced Thursday that it has partnered with Beyond Meat Inc. BYND, 7.67% to create a plant-based protein that will begin testing in the next year.

This is the brand’s first steps into the world of plant-based meats. Other big fast-food names including fellow Yum Brands Inc. YUM, 2.06% chain KFC and McDonald’s Corp. MCD, -0.55%, which is expected to launch the McPlant in 2021.

Beyond Meat has partnered with and popped up on menus across the culinary spectrum.

This week, the company announced that plant-based Beyond Breakfast Sausage will be offered as part of a free breakfast promotion at Gregorys Coffee in New York City, Love Burger Shack in Dallas, Craftsman & Wolves in San Francisco, and PLNT Burger in Washington, D.C. among other places.

Beyond Meat shares jumped 7% in early Thursday trading after the Taco Bell announcement.

... marketwatch.com

[Glenn Petersen] I tried the world's first no-kill, lab-grown chicken burger Exclusive: At a ‘te...

Glenn Petersen — 12/4/2020 12:42:54 PM

I tried the world's first no-kill, lab-grown chicken burger

Exclusive: At a ‘test restaurant’ in Israel, the meat is grown in vats behind a glass screen. Could it be a taste of the future?

Oliver Holmes in Ness Zion, Israel
The Guardian
Fri 4 Dec 2020 05.34 EST

A cultivated chicken burger made by SuperMeat. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
-----------------------

A PhD in genetics might seem like an unusual requirement for the role of head chef. It makes more sense when the man running the kitchen is not just in charge of frying your chicken burger – he created the meat himself.

“This burger takes something between two to three days to grow,” says Tomer Halevy as he chops red onions, iceberg lettuce and avocado. He proceeds to batter what appears to be a strip of raw chicken before dipping it in breadcrumbs.

Halevy uses the word “grow” because chickens do not need to be slaughtered en masse to produce this type of meat. Cells taken from “source” chickens are cultured in a laboratory, creating potentially endless supplies of muscle and fat tissue. Some cells were removed from eggs, meaning the meat is from birds that were never even born.

Tomer Halevy. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/
----------------------------

The GuardianThe result is the signature dish of a new venture in Israel, the Chicken, the world’s first cultured meat restaurant experience. Still closed to the public owing to coronavirus restrictions, the eatery near Tel Aviv opened its doors to the Guardian for the first private visit by a journalist.

Advocates for the technology argue that if cultured meat can become affordable it will be revolutionary, and not just in its potential to end, or at least significantly cut back, the meat trade. Cultured meat requires no antibiotics or drugs.

Critically, one study suggested it could potentially be produced with 96% lower greenhouse gas emissions and 99% less land – although some animal rights activists argue it perpetuates an unhealthy obsession with eating animals.

Chicken made in SuperMeat’s vats. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
------------------------

At the Chicken, bottles of red wine line the walls, black stools surround circular tables, and the warm glow of hanging bulbs lights the restaurant. The entire back wall is made of glass. Behind it is the production facility where lab-coated scientists wander around between large metal vats. It is petri-dish-to-table service.

“The meat was made on the other side of the glass. That’s true local production of meat,” jokes Ido Savir, CEO of the restaurant’s parent company, SuperMeat.

The breaded patty is deep-fried in oil, before being placed on a sweet brioche bun, flavoured by wasabi and chilli mayonnaise, with a side of sweet potato chips. Similar to many chicken burgers, it breaks and flakes when pulled apart and is extremely tender. It tastes, at least to this reporter, like a chicken burger.

Ido Savir. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
--------------------------------

Halevy, who also holds the role of head of product at SuperMeat, explains that muscle cells naturally contract when they are grown, making the fibres that result in the flakes of the burger that you would expect.

While Halevy says he could make a recreation of a chicken breast – with longer fibres and a dryer, denser bite – one was not offered, and others in the industry have said a fillet is much harder to create outside the bird.

For now, like others in the nascent industry, the start-up is focused on minced chicken. It is aiming to sell to meat companies that often reprocess chicken anyway, for example, into patties and nuggets.

Oliver Holmes tries the burger at the Chicken. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
------------------------

Unlike reared poultry, this meat is made bespoke. It can be significantly altered in the process, depending on how it is encouraged to grow (in any shape) and what it is used in the “feed” – the water, sugar, amino acid, protein and vitamin bath the meat grows in.

This can lead to surprising possibilities. “We can have something that is between a breast and a thigh,” says Halevy. Meat from animals that are endangered could be cultured without harming them, he adds.

Under the right conditions, every 12 hours the number of cells will double, Halevy says: “If you harvest half the meat on one day, you will get the same amount the next day.”

Preparing a burger. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
----------------------

Similar to other patties, such as the McChicken, the burger is not just meat but heavily supplemented with other ingredients to add texture and flavour. Roughly 50% is plant-based proteins, with added seasonings.

And like the chicken it serves, the restaurant is not fully fledged. There is still no regulation around cultured meat in Israel, meaning SuperMeat cannot charge customers. However, it intends to invite members of the public to try its dishes, to create a buzz. A waiver agreeing to “voluntarily assume any and all risks” must also be signed.

Savir says the aim is to take cultured meat from a scientific “dream” to reality, adding he believes it will be one or two years before he can sell it.

Deep-frying a burger. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
-------------

“This is our platform to have the first engagement,” he says. As well as the public, potential clients from food companies wanting to expand into cultured meat will be invited.

The industry was given a significant boost this week when Singapore became the first state to approve the sale of cultured meat for a “chicken bites” product, which is made using similar techniques. The US-based company that makes the nuggets, Eat Just, said they would be selling to an unnamed restaurant in Singapore.

Savir says the production cost of his chicken burger is $35, which seems high but is dramatically less than it was a few years ago. In 2013, a Dutch pharmacologist, Mark Post, made history by eating the first lab-grown beef burger. It cost about £225,000.

SuperMeat anticipates cultivated meat will get cheaper as the industry grows, possibly reaching cost parity with farmed meat in six to seven years. Reducing the price of the “feed” is vital, Savir says, which accounts for about 70% of costs, similar to conventional meat.

Even if people were to reject it, cultured meat advocates say it could be used for other purposes. In the US, dogs and cats are estimated to eat around a quarter of all meat. Perhaps the biggest hurdle, however, is the “yuck” factor. For many, the idea of lab-grown flesh remains unenticing, or even blasphemous.

“We’re not interfering. We’re just doing it in a different way,” says Savir. “Ice made in a freezer is not interfering with God – it’s using technology to do it more efficiently.”

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[Glenn Petersen] Singapore Approves a Lab-Grown Meat Product, a Global First The approval for a ...

Glenn Petersen — 12/2/2020 11:48:00 AM

Singapore Approves a Lab-Grown Meat Product, a Global First

The approval for a U.S. start-up’s “cultured chicken” product is a small victory for the nascent laboratory meat industry. Less clear is whether other countries will follow Singapore’s lead.

By Mike Ives
New York Times
Dec. 2, 2020, 8:49 a.m. ET

A handout photograph showing a dish made with lab-grown chicken developed by Eat Just. In Singapore, it’s cleared as a chicken-nugget ingredient. Credit...Eat Just Inc, via Reuters
----------------------

HONG KONG — First, meat came from farms and forests. Then, it came from factories. More recently, entrepreneurs have been making it from plants.

Some have wondered whether there’s a more advanced approach: Could meat be grown in a laboratory, from existing cells? That effort has faced multiple challenges, from skepticism over something that comes from a lab to questions about what governments might think.

The nascent laboratory meat industry won a small victory Wednesday on that last point, as an American start-up became the first to win government approval — in this case, an announcement by the city state of Singapore — to sell the fruit of its labs to the public in the form of “cultured chicken.”

The company, Eat Just, is based in San Francisco and describes its product as “real, high-quality meat created directly from animal cells for safe human consumption.” Singapore’s Food Agency said on Wednesday that it had approved the product for sale as an ingredient in chicken nuggets.

“This is a historic moment in the food system,” Eat Just’s chief executive, Josh Tetrick, said by telephone on Wednesday. “We’ve been eating meat for thousands of years, and every time we’ve eaten meat we’ve had to kill an animal — until now.”

Singapore’s move is “the world’s first regulatory approval for a cultivated meat product,” said Elaine Siu, the managing director of the Good Food Institute Asia Pacific, a nonprofit organization that promotes cultivated meat and plant-based substitutes for animal products.

“Anyone in this field would know that this is the world’s first because everyone has been waiting — and trying to lobby and fight for it — for the past few years,” added Ms. Siu, whose nonprofit is affiliated with a group with the same name in Washington.

Singapore’s move is “the world’s first regulatory approval for a cultivated meat product,” said Elaine Siu, the managing director of the Good Food Institute Asia Pacific.Credit...Ore Huiying for The New York Times
----------------------

Singapore’s Food Agency said on Wednesday that it approved the nuggets after Eat Just submitted a safety assessment to the agency’s “novel food” working group, whose seven members are outside experts on food science, toxicology, nutrition, epidemiology and other fields. The agency includes “cultured or cell-based meat grown under controlled conditions” under its definition of novel foods, along with some species of algae, fungi and insects.

“We’re not aware of other countries that have given approval for cultured meat products so far,” Ginny Tan, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in an email.

Mr. Tetrick said that an unnamed Singapore restaurant would begin selling the product “soon enough to begin making a reservation,” but he declined to provide any further details. The company has previously said that it would cost $50 to make a single nugget. It now says on its website that the nuggets will be available at “price parity for premium chicken you’d enjoy at a restaurant.”

Eat Just already sells an egg-like product that it makes from mung beans, Mr. Tetrick said. The product is sold in the United States and China, he said, and the company plans to expand to South Korea early next year.

Mr. Tetrick said he hoped that Singapore’s decision to approve his company’s “GOOD Meat” chicken nuggets would spur regulators in the United States and countries in Western Europe to move faster to regulate lab-grown meat.

“It’s not good for what we’re trying to do to make the food system better if Singapore’s the only one that has this approval,” he said.

A handout photograph of Eat Just’s chief executive, Josh Tetrick. “This is a historic moment in the food system,” he said by telephone on Wednesday. Credit...Eat Just Inc, via Reuters
-----------------------------

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration’s approval is not required for most new ingredients, including imitation meat developed by vegan food brands. Companies can hire consultants to run tests, and they have no obligation to inform the agency of their findings, a process known as self-affirmation.

Ms. Siu of the Good Food Institute said that to her knowledge, no regulator in the world had said that a cultured-meat product could go straight to market. “I think from a business perspective you would want to have the regulator’s blessing,” she added.

The meat business has long faced criticism from animal-rights activists who argue that eating meat is inhumane. The industry has been attracting more scrutiny in recent years for its impact on climate change.

Livestock accounts for around 14.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions each year — roughly equivalent to the emissions from all the cars, trucks, airplanes and ships combined. Per gram of protein, cattle have more of an impact than pork, chicken or egg production, largely because they belch up methane, a potent planet-warming gas.

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[Glenn Petersen] You're right. Ana Silva, CPA, MBA - Chief Financial Officer - Daiya Foods Inc |...

Glenn Petersen — 11/24/2020 1:44:47 PM

You're right.

Ana Silva, CPA, MBA - Chief Financial Officer - Daiya Foods Inc | LinkedIn

A serious hire for Very.

[ClearSky] It's a woman, right? Or maybe I'm not properly caffeinated yet. Daiya is a dom...

ClearSky — 11/24/2020 12:57:06 PM

It's a woman, right? Or maybe I'm not properly caffeinated yet. Daiya is a dominant brand so with five years there, she should bring some significant on the ground experience and contacts, I would think.

Daiya's website:
The industry leader in plant-based foods. Available at more than 25000 grocery stores across North America and internationally.

The CEO of Very looks pretty young so I was concerned about the ability of the team to execute. This former CFO/ hardcore numbers person seems like an ideal addition.

[Glenn Petersen] The new guy has great credentials. There are more players in this space than I o...

Glenn Petersen — 11/24/2020 12:37:36 PM

The new guy has great credentials. There are more players in this space than I originally thought.

[ClearSky] Just found this thread recently when searching for info on this Very Good Food c...

ClearSky — 11/24/2020 12:02:50 PM

Just found this thread recently when searching for info on this Very Good Food company.

News today--the former CFO of Daiya--a dominant vegan cheese brand --is joining the team. Can't hurt. :)

finance.yahoo.com

[Glenn Petersen] Interesting company with a great trade name (The Very Good Butchers). Also, a gr...

Glenn Petersen — 11/20/2020 12:41:52 PM

Interesting company with a great trade name (The Very Good Butchers). Also, a great run this year. An IPO at $.25 per share (I couldn't confirm the actual price) to $4.19 today.

Probably not a candidate for Natural Order, though. In the 15 years that I have been following SPACs I can recall only one occasion when a SPAC acquired a company that was already public.

Thanks for bringing VRYYF to my attention.