Beyond Meat Is On A Mission To Make Plant-Based Meat The Affordable Choice

Beyond Meat's newest vegan product, Beyond Beef, can replace ground beef in dishes including meatballs.

Credit: Beyond Meat

Beyond Meat founder Ethan Brown missed his brand’s first Natural Products Expo West show in 2010 because he was busy mixing up product in a rental kitchen far from Anaheim, California.

“The product was a big hit at the show, after we brought it out by truck from Missouri,” Brown said.

The plant-based meat business has expanded dramatically in the nine years since that first show, and Beyond Meat has become a leading brand with a growing product line and plans to go public.

Fifty-five percent of the biggest U.S. restaurant chains now offer at least one plant-based entrée, according to a recent report from the Good Food Institute, and for many that dish takes the form of a vegan burger from brands like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. Beyond Meat’s products are now sold in about 35,000 restaurants and grocery stores in more than 20 countries.

Brown made it to Expo West this year, in time to introduce the brand’s newest product, a ground-meat style version of its plant-based beef. The product has been the goal since the company launched its first offerings, a lineup that includes vegan chicken strips and a the beefy plant-based Beyond Burger.

Beyond Beef

Credit: Beyond Meat

“We focus maniacally on understanding meat and rebuilding it from plants, so consumers will be able to have more rather than less of their red meat dishes,” Brown said.

The launch last week of Beyond Beef is the result of years of research and development into sourcing new types of plant-based protein and turning it into a product designed to provide even the most avid meat lovers with the flavor and texture they expect from ground beef, Brown said.

The product is made from a mixture of proteins from plants including peas, mung beans and brown rice, which help give it a more beef-like texture.

“It’s easy to get a bunch of plant protein and mash it together and give it to the consumer, but if you want to really tap into that familiar experience, you have to focus on the texture of the protein itself. There are different structures of protein as they bite into it,” he said.

Beyond Beef was developed with a more neutral taste profile than the Beyond Burger, to make it work in meatballs, tacos and all the other dishes that are traditionally made with ground beef.

“It’s about trial and error,” Brown said. “There are thousands of molecules that make meat taste like meat, and we’re getting better at knowing which molecules are driving which flavors.”

The company has also been studying the overall functionality of protein in the human body and the benefits of plant-based over animal-based proteins, Brown said.

A variety of plant proteins is key to the company’s mission to create plant-based meats that are less expensive than traditional meats, and  Beyond Meat aims to develop up to 30 different plant-based protein options to further that goal. It’s exploring a plethora of sources such as lupin, mustard seed and sunflower seed.

“Each come with their own characteristics, it’s really fascinating to me,” Brown said. “The plant kingdom is replete with protein, once we think of it as a human food source and not a feed source for animals.”

Having a diverse lineup of protein sources will also help further the company’s global growth goals, as being able to produce and sell food closer to available plant-based protein sources will make it more cost-effective and make the products more affordable, he said.

Other vegan brands including Lightlife and Tofurky have also developed ground-beef style products, but late last year Beyond Meat became the first plant-based meat-maker to announce IPO plans.

“We have an ambition to be part of the generation that separates meat from animals,” Brown said. “You don’t do that by thinking small, you don’t do that by having a couple chefs and food scientists.”

Raising cash in an IPO will fund the next steps in that journey, he said.

“There’s no reason this shouldn’t be cheaper than meat, and to get there we need to make investments in the supply chain.”