Member-only story
Plant-Based Meat is In Trouble
The pandemic created a bubble that fake meat may not be able to survive
Here’s a piece of news that’s curiously absent from the news cycle: one of the two darlings of the plant-based meat world, Beyond Meat, is streaking toward bankruptcy.
It’s hard to believe. Beyond Meat went public just three years ago, securing partnerships with Taco Bell, Subway, KFC, and Dunkin Brands, among others, with shares in the company skyrocketing some 450% within the first nine months.
Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown boldly claimed he’d shut down the meat industry within 15 years. His company was on its own stratospheric trajectory, securing partnerships with Starbucks and Burger King (among other chains), and flirting with an IPO or SPAC merger of their own that would value the company at $10B or more. The space was so hot that large meat integrators like Tyson started making their plays in the space as Beyond and Impossible (and any number of smaller competitors) made their way into tens of thousands of outlets, and the sky appeared to be the limit.
There was one holdout, however, that probably should have been cause for concern from the very beginning: McDonald’s. The golden arches kept a level head on imitation meat, concerned about both the enormous cost of menu changes and, importantly, the long-term viability plant based meat.
Their judgment proved prescient.
Back Down the Mountain
The trouble for Beyond began when the worst of the pandemic eased, vaccines became widely available, and people started venturing out of their homes again. Post-pandemic sales took a nosedive and then ran face-first into inflation. Fake meat was already far more expensive than real meat, and the sudden/enormous rise in consumer prices made the price premium something that a lot of people weren’t willing to pay for the sake of a smaller agriculture footprint.
Fast forward a few months, and Beyond is now sitting on over a billion dollars in debt, a quarter million dollars in inventory, and a stock price in freefall. A $1,000 investment at Beyond’s May 2019 IPO was worth more than $4,500 the following February. Today the stock is down 92% from its all-time high, Beyond’s balance sheet is showing shareholder equity as…
