Is Beyond Meat a flop?
Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: Is Beyond Meat a flop?
It seemed like a revolutionary product, one that would turn the entire food industry upside down. Emphasis on seemed, because the hype around vegan meat that looks just like the real thing is already over. At least, if we are to believe business magazine Bloomberg, which published an extensive article about it.
Beyond Meat Inc. was founded in 2009 by Ethan Brown, successfully: by 2013, the company's value was already estimated at 1.3 billion dollars. Their unique selling point was the burger that ‘bled’ like real burgers, but was completely vegan.
The world became a fan of Beyond Meat
Many businessmen saw potential in this; Bill Gates was eager to invest, for example. Documentaries like Game Changers on Netflix ensured that the attention for vegan food grew even larger, and we were bombarded with studies telling us how healthy vegan eating was — especially compared to eating meat. The vegan alternatives became a massive hype, even among meat lovers. After all, the burgers from Beyond Meat were hardly distinguishable from real ones, and thus also healthier — they were flying off the shelves.
Until last year: Beyond Meat has only made losses in the last quarter. They had to lay off as much as twenty percent of their employees and several projects were put on hold, such as the vegan hot dog that was planned. The highly publicized collaborations with fast-food chains like KFC, Pizza Hut, and McDonald's also never got off the ground; no item received a permanent place on the menus, and with that, Beyond Meat had to take a significant financial hit.
Why don’t we want Beyond Meat anymore?
It happens more often that something is a hype and then fades away. But why has that also happened with Beyond Meat? After all, vegans are still around. And that is precisely the ‘problem’: vegetarians and vegans are about the only consumers that remain. The omnivores, the key target group, are no longer as interested as before and are increasingly buying the meat variant.
It could also be that the whole ‘vegan food is healthier’ idea is not as prevalent as it used to be. According to research, half of the American population thought in 2020 that vegan food was healthier, but that is now only 38 percent. According to founder Ethan Brown, the meat industry is also a major culprit: ‘They are doing their utmost to suggest that our products are produced in an unhealthy way or that they are full of chemicals.’
What now?
Beyond Meat seems to be doing everything to make their burger popular again: in 2022, they entered into a collaboration with Kim Kardashian, whom they gave the title ‘chief taste consultant.’ But whether that really worked... Nowadays, their value is only one billion dollars, compared to 14 billion at their peak. Beyond Meat will continue to exist, but it has not become the promised revolution that we initially thought. Because nowadays, vegetarians and vegans are quicker to reach for a veggie burger, instead of a burger that ‘bleeds.’
And before you know it, the new hype is already born: cellular meat, of which Bill Gates and Leonardo DiCaprio are already investors. This is meat that is made in laboratories from animal cells. Will this then be the revolutionary product that will turn the meat industry upside down?
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Source: Bloomberg
