Venture: Era of Plant Based
Cindy Ord
With the world becoming more health conscious the idea of being began is becoming more appealing to many. Companies like Beyond Meat, Morning Star and Impossible Foods are starting to take the market by storm and consumers are starting to buy in. These new companies have just begun to own some of the market share in brand name grocery stores and could be a home brand names in a few years.
Only a year ago the U.S. plant-based retail market was worth $4.5 billion and sales rate growing at 8.5% compared to total U.S. food sales. The plant-based meat category is worth more than $800 million giving major room for growth and proving that there are some real possibilities when it comes to entering the market.
Why the Push?
Why suddenly, we see this push for meatless products and veganism? Major parts of the population have known that high-volume farming is not good for the animals and these new revelations are leading to questionable practices by many meat farms.
Considering that the eco-friendly aspect of plant-based food manufacturing is going to give an ease of mind to many consumers. The University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems in Ann Arbor Mich. stated that a plant-based burger generates 90% less greenhouse gases, 99% less impact on water scarcity and 93% less impact on land than a quarter pound of American beef.
Producing these newer plant-based burgers requires significantly less water and generates substantially les greenhouse emissions compared to your classic beef burgers. This is crucial as the world is constantly growing and the way we are going with meat cows will not be sustainable. If humans want to consume as much meat as they currently are they will need to look to new ways of preparing the foods. Plant-based “meats” is one solution to the problem, it will for people to still have some enjoyment of that “bleeding” meat and the taste. Even though it may not be real meat it will give the consumer that feeling of consuming real meat and will also be a beneficiary for the environment.
In 2013, Whole foods gave the plant-based meat start-up Beyond Meat its first opportunity by selling its vegan “chicken” strips at many Whole Foods locations across the country. Not only did this get the product a good showing but high level billionaire investors like Bill Gates and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone were major players in make sure that the Beyond Meat hade enough funding.
John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods stated that, “We launched Beyond Meat. We were their launching pad. In fact, I think all of their new products have been introduced by Whole Foods.” Given the Whole Foods demographic is the appropriate crowd to tend to as the consumers tend to be more conscious of what they are eating and are also willing to spend more money on their food.
Growth
6 years later we see massive growth as the Beyond Meat had the best IPO in 2019 surging as much as 163% on the day of its market debut, giving this plant-based meat substitute a market value of $3.77 billion. Its opening shares started at $25 a share and skyrocketed to a near $200 and is now settling around $125.
This is due to the acceptance of the American consumer as they have become very sell aware of their diet. They are doing this by cutting down meat consumption and going to companies like Beyond Meat that have these mimic like meat products.
Now Beyond Meat is looking to grow and gain its momentum that it had back in 2019, the company has secured a great number of distribution deals in supermarket chains and in the restaurant segment. The company has also launched a direct to consumer e-commerce site that sells in bulk allowing for another method of being able to move the product from distributor to consumer.
This method of e-commerce is bypassing the retail outlets and is going to allow Beyond Meat to sell directly to consumers. It will also allow the consumers to buy in bulk and offer some products that have yet to be offered in store. While staying on board with being environmentally friendly they will use UPS insulted boxes shipping with their carbon-neutral shipping. Every step of the way this company is able to stick with the idea of the environment in mind which is not very common in this day and age as many companies would rather just chase the dollar than make sure the environment is taken care of. Beyond Meat is not only making money but also being environmentally conscious at the same time, this may be the reason for their success.
The potential for the market is vast as this is a new market that has only started a couple years ago, the opportunity for growth in plant-derived imitation meats currently has no ceiling. As many competitors have begun to enter the field such as Impossible Burger, Morning Star and Before the Butcher they will need to find a more appealing way to market the product as many of the consumers see the product as unappealing and something they would not want to ingest.
Overall, whether it is red meat or plant based it leads to the consumer making a difficult decision as red meat has a worse impact on the environment and the plant based product is highly processed and not as good for you. Either way it is a difficult decision to make and make one question if it is worth to even be pursuing a product like this at all. Time after time the human race will attempt to adapt to the certain situations as they do not want to give something up but need to realize that somethings cannot be imitated.