I'm a meat eater, but am a big fan of fake meats - to the point where I prefer them in some situations.
Overall I'm not a huge fan of Beyond Meat. While it does feel closer in taste to beef than impossible burgers, I heavily prefer the taste of impossible burgers to beyond. Impossible burgers have a stronger umami taste and tend to add to the experience. Beyond kinda just tastes like lower end beef to me. This means Beyond is facing a Coke vs Pepsi situation here - effectively halving their market.
From a price standpoint, they're more expensive than beef is. While economically this makes sense due to heavy beef subsidies around the world (the US spends $38 billion in subsidies - about $114 per person), it's still a heavy expense for consumers. This means despite being cheaper to make, they're still the more expensive option. This means they're a premium product, not an economic option.
When these are the factors at play, it really cuts down the market size. You're really only targeting people who prefer your version, are willing to pay a premium for a sub-par version of a burger while not choosing plenty of the other food options out there. IMO these plant based meats are really doomed to fail unless we stop subsidizing the beef industry. If they become an economically viable choice, they become an option for many more people. Right now they're too niche.
The irony is that there is no reason these plant based alternatives should be priced higher than meat. The raw ingredients are dirt cheap.
You can get pound of TVP or soy protein is like $3-4; and certainly less at wholesale prices. It comes dehydrated, so back of the napkin I'd guess the cost for a company producing fake meat products is like $1/lb or less.
I paid $8.50 at a gas station for 2.47 oz of "Noble Jerky." Ingredients: soy protein, sugar, black bean paste, spices.
I imagine the profit margins for these products approaches that of soft drinks.
I don't understand why the cost of processing can't achieve significant economies of scale when the company is supplying food at the national level. Can someone explain that to me?
Sometimes, economies of scale don't just come automatically with scale. You actually have to make economies of scale happen when you invent new processes - this often means creating new machines or new methods that can be done by untrained people.
The process for creating these fake meats is complicated and long, so there are certainly a few novel steps in there. I'm guessing that a few key steps do not scale well today and have significant technological barriers to scaling. I have no idea what they could possibly be.
So you seem to know what's complex on this products. Share your knowledge. I claim that this products are not complex or not more complex as meat based products
1. Raw materials are cheap
2. Expensive end product
3. Company is losing money
The most straightforward explanation is that the processing is expensive in some way, unless I’m missing something here. I feel like the burden of proof should be on you to establish that the straightforward explanation is not accurate beyond just a claim.
R&D is not a total black box. Management sets a budget, "Scientists you are allocated $XXX this year for reagents + equipment." Sure there are plenty of unexpected gotchas (equipment X broke, unexpectedly announced equipment Y is a must-buy, etc), but more or less there should be some ability to forecast expenses. If the company is in the red, cut that number down.
All conjecture, but as a former bench scientist (spending money, not making budgets), it felt like our burn rate was reasonably constant.
I have no idea what goes into making these plant-based meats, but I vaguely remember that for Impossible Foods specifically, that they had to do a lot of experimentation and genetic engineering of a yeast to make their product. I think that's part of the reason why they have to charge so much.
I would love to have harder numbers on their product. I want to eat less meat and the Impossible Burger feels a totally adequate substitute to me, but the price has greatly limited my conversion.
TVP is so damned excellent. That reminds me, I really need to write up the recipes I've come up with using them and post them somewhere. Magic cheap protein with an awesome flavour if you rehydrate it with vegan beef/chicken stock and season it well and cook it correctly.
It's even excellent just chucked into some instant ramen (after frying it) with some spring onions!
Would def want to see some of those! I've been doing TVP and beef stock as my backup meal for years and it's amazingly good for the price. 500g for like €3 that'll last absolutely ages coupled with one of those stock cup things (think they're like 4 for 90 cent now).
Originally only tried it due to a serious lack of fridge/freezer space.
I find the Beyond product has a strange artificial odor to it. Like it's trying to recreate the smell of fully cooked meat product, but before it's even cooked. It's odd in the way that artificial smoke can be weird. I bought a package of Beyond patties at Costco (I think it was like 20) and had a hard time getting through them after the first 4-5. The Impossible equivalent tended to just make my kitchen smell like a decent meal instead of some kind of weird laboratory experiment.
The problem with both of them is I can get a sack of burgers from Costco, like 50 of them, for less than I'd pay for 20 of the fake ones. and they'll taste and smell the right way and be usable in more recipes.
That US subsidy, $114 per person, if removed and offset by higher prices at the supermarket, would amount to under $10 more a month per person in grocery costs. I can see there being a reduction of consumption at the scale of the industry in the US, but generally speaking I don't think the industry would notice it all that much. The subsidies are almost certainly not the reason that meat is cheaper than beyond burgers.
$10 a person is naive math, sure, there would be reduced demand which means that some of that cost would be bourne by other purchasers to keep industry revenue stable, and there would be a reduction in production which further compounds this. But it's not a doubling in cost, I think the true number would be between 20 and 30 dollars per person (10-20% of their monthly food budget) that continues eating as much meat, per month, and close to that percentage in production decline. A big deal, but not a complete upheaval in the meat industry.
The subsidies aren't really about keeping meat costs down for consumers so that meat producers can remain profitable. They're more about manipulating the global meat market to compete against other producers and ensure domestic food security.
I'm sure that if the subsidy went away, McDonalds would reformulate the big mac so that it's only $5.50. It's gross, but that's what fast food companies do.
> While it does feel closer in taste to beef than impossible burgers, I heavily prefer the taste of impossible burgers to beyond. Impossible burgers have a stronger umami taste and tend to add to the experience.
Interesting. I've always felt the opposite: Impossible closer to beef, Beyond much tastier.
But I haven't eaten a real burger in a couple decades.
> (the US spends $38 billion in subsidies - about $114 per person)
I think that number is basically made up. It comes from a chain of references by activists and lobbyists (against meat and dairy subsidies) who are basically playing a game of broken telephone with statistics.
AIER cites a Columbia SIPA article, which cites the book Meatonomics. Meatonomics is written by a lawyer who advocates against meat and dairy and seems to have synthesized the number by adding numbers from several sources. He cites an article by an anti-meat/dairy law firm which estimates dairy subsidies at $19 billion. (Meatononics includes dairy subsidies in the $38 billion figure.)
But those dairy subsidies aren't from payments to dairy farmers. They're looking at indirect subsidies, the largest of which is food stamps and other nutritional assistance programs. They estimate that Americans spend about 11% of their food budget on dairy products and based on that they estimate the amount of food stamp money that goes to dairy farmers.
tl;dr: The number is a rough estimate based largely on the government giving poor people food stamps and people choosing to spend some of that on meat and dairy. The numbers are also from advocacy groups, not peer reviewed journals.
Overall I'm not a huge fan of Beyond Meat. While it does feel closer in taste to beef than impossible burgers, I heavily prefer the taste of impossible burgers to beyond. Impossible burgers have a stronger umami taste and tend to add to the experience. Beyond kinda just tastes like lower end beef to me. This means Beyond is facing a Coke vs Pepsi situation here - effectively halving their market.
From a price standpoint, they're more expensive than beef is. While economically this makes sense due to heavy beef subsidies around the world (the US spends $38 billion in subsidies - about $114 per person), it's still a heavy expense for consumers. This means despite being cheaper to make, they're still the more expensive option. This means they're a premium product, not an economic option.
When these are the factors at play, it really cuts down the market size. You're really only targeting people who prefer your version, are willing to pay a premium for a sub-par version of a burger while not choosing plenty of the other food options out there. IMO these plant based meats are really doomed to fail unless we stop subsidizing the beef industry. If they become an economically viable choice, they become an option for many more people. Right now they're too niche.