Plant — based meat: What’s a startup to do?
“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else” — Winston Churchill
“You can always count on Americans to eat plant-based meat— after it tastes like meat” — someone famous (soon)
Summary
- While Covid-19 captured the headlines in 2020 and 2021 a plant food revolution has been brewing — consumers are curious about plant-based meat and intend to increase their consumption of plant-based food
- By giving consumers the meaty flavors they expect, rather than expecting them to sacrifice on taste, plant-based meat companies have succeeded where lentil burgers and vegan burgers have failed
- Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods dominate the headlines and the market; but high growth and low loyalty provide a window for startups with the right playbook
Step 1: Decide to accept your mission
While the 20th Century was full of strange advertising that told you what to think or do (remember “The Best A Man Can Get”¹ or “Once you pop, you can’t stop”² or “Put a tiger in your tank”³), most businesses in the last two decades have been mission focused. E.g. Google talks about “organizing the world’s information”⁴ not about being “the OG of monetizing intent”.
This is because social responsibility has become important to the young consumer. When it comes to food, more than 70% of consumers under 34 believe that social responsibility is Extremely/Very Important.
Everyone knows that the mission is forward looking and you won’t be able to live up to it for a long time. But they also have to know that you’ll die trying to make it happen — authenticity is more important than accuracy.
Pick a mission, articulate it well, stay true to it.
Step 2: Set up for rapid innovation
If you are a chicken farmer you grow every chicken the same, whether it’s for Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) or for a McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets or for a chicken parmesan (yes there are different varieties of chickens but that’s not the point). The same applies for cow and hog farmers.
Plant-based meat is not the same. The requirements for each customer and each dish are different, especially as you go from ground meat to solid pieces. This is why Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat started with ground beef and sausages because it was easier than recreating the tissue of a steak. This is also why plant-based chicken did not take off earlier even though Beyond Meat sold a frozen chicken product — they had not perfected the texture.
So when Beyond tied up with KFC they had to spend 6 months coming up with chicken that worked for KFC⁶. Or when Beyond launched ground pork in China, it was designed specifically to replicate the flavor profile of pork in China⁷.
Each meat, each geography, each dish will require R&D and innovation — be ready for it.
Step 3: Focus first on taste above everything
What about health? What about price? What about saving the planet?
No — focus on taste. For years people have been trying to convince Americans to eat more plants with little success (it’s a different story for Europeans⁸).
“America would appear to be losing its appetite for British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver …Food Revolution has hit the skids in Los Angeles after 75 school districts rebuffed his pleas to give their canteens a healthy makeover.”⁹
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” — Michael Pollan¹⁰
“Mark Bittman has a golden rule for eating well: Eat more plants, less junk and fewer animal products”¹¹
Many people turned vegan over the years for various reasons but the majority of folks remain stubbornly carnivorous. They do not want to be told what they can and cannot eat. They liked what they eat, and health, animal cruelty, global warming are trumped by taste. This is where the real revolution has been. A Kroger study found, 93% of people who bought Beyond Burger had other animal proteins in their cart⁶.
“Beyond Fried Chicken certainly is as guilty, salty, chewy, herbaceous, and umami-loaded of an experience as the KFC you know.” ⁶
“Without taste, there’s no repeat purchase.”¹² — Dasha Shor (food analyst)
Taste is the only thing that changes buying behavior — get it right.
Step 4: Help people lose weight
Losing weight could be the killer app of plant-based meat
“specifically in China, one of the reasons for people to buy plant-based meat, actually the biggest reason, is the wish to lose weight.” — Mirte Gosker, acting MD at the Good Food Institute Asia Pacific¹³
Today plant-based beef does not deliver on this. While it can claim a big reduction in trans fat and cholesterol, saturated fats, sodium and calories are not significantly different. Bottomline — it’s significantly better for the planet (see Step 6) but not significantly better for you. If there’s a great way for a startup to differentiate itself from the pack, it’s to help people lose weight.
People will pay anything to lose weight — help them.
Step 5: Bring pricing down below regular meat
If you have completed Steps 1–4, chances are you are starting to see traction and volumes are going up. What was initially a small bespoke production process can then be scaled up.
While industrialized meat production has become very efficient over time, there’s no way for it to match the cost of production of plant based meat. Roughly twenty-five times more energy is required to produce one calorie of beef than to produce one calorie of corn for human consumption¹⁴ and that will eventually be reflected in the cost of production of plant-based meat.
Given that taste (tackled in Step 3) and cost are the two most important factors in the adoption of plant-based meat⁵, solving them will ensure greater volume, starting a virtuous cycle of lower cost and more adoption.
Step 6: Get specific on how you are saving the planet
There are many studies laying out how much better plant-based meat is for the environment, from water consumption to greenhouse gas emission. This is a well accepted fact by consumers and at least in the beginning you should not spend time and effort on a well-accepted theme.
However, once you do scale up, it’s critical to be rigorous and accurate in quantifying all the good that the consumer is doing by supporting you. Like a luxury good, it’s not just about the attributes of the product, it’s how it makes you feel.
Collect and share the numbers to make people feel good about saving the planet.
Conclusion
Those who felt strongly about saving the planet, animal cruelty or health have already moved to a plant-based diet and remain the minority.
The rest don’t want to be guilt-tripped or shamed into getting healthier or saving the planet by eating plant-based meat. They want food that they are used to, at a reasonable price — make them happy. In the process you’ll save lives and save the planet in six easy steps.
References
- https://gillette.com/en-us/about/the-best-men-can-be
- 1996 — “Once You Pop, You Can’t Stop”
- Exxon Mobil: Our History
- Google Blog: Organizing the world’s information, where does it all come from?
- Jefferies — Lower Pricing the Adoption Accelerator: A Dive into Plant-Based Food — April 9th, 2021
- KFC’s Beyond Meat chicken is a miracle — January 29th, 2020
- Stephens — Beyond Meat’s China facility to speed up growth — April 7th, 2021
- Stephens — Initiating Coverage Beyond Meat — March 18th, 2021
- U.S. loses appetite for Jamie Oliver as 75 LA school districts turn away his Food Revolution show
- How to Eat: Diet secrets from Michael Pollan (and your great-grandma)
- Why Mark Bittman wants you to be a part-time vegan
- Nothing to squawk at: Plant-based ‘chicken’ is pretty delicious — and on the verge of a major breakthrough — The Boston Globe — April 13th, 2021
- Creating pork from jackfruit: How this whole-plant start-up is taking on Asia’s multibillion-dollar meat industry — April 7th, 2021
- The Oil: List of Foods by Environmental Impact and Energy Efficiency
