The business winning the fight for climate change without protesting
Winning over animal-meat lovers with plant-meat
The scariest thought for a writer could be: “what if no one likes what I write”.
The scariest thought for a performer could be: “what if no one comes to watch my show”.
The scariest thought for a business owner is not that no one would ever buy their product but what if everyone is against their product?
What would you do if the whole world was against you? Would you fight or disappear?
Climate activists are fighting this fight. Climate change is known to mankind since the early 19th century. By the late 1940s, scientists had shown evidence of greenhouse gas emissions and their effect.
The battle for climate change and a healthier planet is being fought for 80 years now.
There is now 5.25 trillion macro and micro pieces of plastic in our ocean & 46,000 pieces in every square mile of ocean, weighing up to 269,000 tonnes, as of 2020. Nearly 50% of total carbon emissions have been added in the last 20 years between 1995-2020.
Every day around 8 million pieces of plastic makes their way into our oceans.
Among others, the livestock industry is responsible for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions. 65% of that emission is contributed by raising cattle for beef.
It’s a battle far from start, but why are we losing the battle to climate change?
By understanding how a business is making its way into the refrigerators of animal-based meat households and providing an alternative with plant-based meat, we will learn what could be done differently to influence and inspire people to fight for a healthier planet.
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Through this article, we will talk about :
A. A short note on climate change and why sustainable changes are important more than ever. (above)
B. Arguments in favour of animal meat lovers(against plant meat). Winning the perception argument for plant meat and how to sell.
C. Rise of Beyond Meat and learnings along the way.
B. I) The Market: Arguments in favour of animal-meat lovers (against Plant-Meat)
1. The number of vegetarians in the United States has been going down and it ranges between 5–8% according to this source.
2. There is no compelling evidence or studies that show that reducing consumption of red meat could benefit an individual.
Personal opinion plug:
1. The nutritional studies are largely observational.
2. It took years to prove smoking is fatal. The livestock lobby is not much different than tobacco lobby.
3. Protein and bodybuilding are synonymous, bodybuilding has been associated with animal meat for thousands of years.
The United States accounts for the highest beef consumption in the world, 27.3 billion pounds in 2019 and it has remained almost consistent since 2002. The transition of getting protein from a different meat source is monumental for people.
4.Herbivores(plant eaters) are perceived as meek and feeble hippies whereas carnivores(meat-eaters) are perceived to be strong and powerful.
In fact, even Twitter cofounder Biz Stone who is himself a vegetarian but doesn’t like to preach about it said this before meeting up with Ethan Brown, Founder of Beyond Meat in 2011:
‘‘Oh boy, some kind of hippie guy who is going to preach about how mean eating animals is”
It is not uncanny because it has evolved as a stereotype. In fact, red meat during the 1960s was a status symbol in various countries. Wagyu beef is still one of the most expensive meats in the world. It sells for $300/lb.
I bet you can imagine men in Brioni eating Kobe steak and Wagyu tenderloin right now.
The above points were made to understand the competition and perception that the sustainable market is facing.
How do you think a plant-based meat company could compete with a product synonymous with the product itself.
B. II) Winning the Perception Argument**
Differentiate: Provide Alternative, not Substitution
Don’t ask anyone to change because everyone hates it.
That is the premise of the argument based on which we can point out strategies to compete and win against the impossible market.
If I ask you not to think of green hair, what are you thinking?
It’s not unusual to start thinking about something when told not to. The psychological theory which justifies this behaviour is called reactance. It stems from our desire to be free. The “not to think/do” raises a feeling of being locked up, which we desire to escape at all costs.
When I say “don’t eat red meat”, even with reasons backed by medical studies, you might end up eating more.
Telling people how the process of producing meat from cows looks like hasn’t helped too. Don’t watch this video.
How do we sell a product which people stand up so much against by standing with the competition?
Offer your product as an alternative, not as a substitute.
According to Beyond meat CEO Ethan Brown: “This is meat, it comes from a plant. We don’t talk about not eating meat. The idea is not to build an upper hand, telling people not to eat what they love.What is a good idea is, allowing people to eat more what they love”.
Rather, Beyond Meat provides an alternative to eat which is actually quite different but it gives the audience a choice.
How could this work? People don’t hate plant-based meat. They just don’t like being told: “to eat plant-based meat and quit eating animal meat”.
Proof of Work
“Purchase data from one of the nation’s largest conventional retailers showed that more than 90% of consumers who purchased the Beyond Burger also purchased animal protein”.
It means that 90% of consumers buying plant-based meat are not vegetarian. If the company would have made the mistake of launching revolutions to fight animal-meat eaters, it wouldn’t have been able to penetrate the market. Although it stands a chance to win over the battle based on people’s personal experience of trying out the alternative voluntarily(pushed through marketing, branding & collaborations of course)
Another Plant-based meat company Impossible Foods chief communications officer Rachel Konrad tells SELF that over 95% of people who order their burger regularly consume animal products (i.e., aren’t vegan) and that most are not strictly vegetarian either.
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C. Rise of Beyond Meat
The generation gap & planet health
Millennials and Gen-Z have an empathetic approach towards climate change and planet health.
The purchase decisions made by the tech-savvy internet generation is highly influenced by the values of the brands. The brands cannot preach and win consumers anymore. It would have to walk the talk unless they are looking to lose consumers over false promises.
I haven’t seen any other opportunity whereby focusing on one thing — building meat directly from plants — you could powerfully impact four major problem areas: climate, natural resources, human health, and animal welfare. Here was a chance to change the world.
- Ethan Brown, CEO Beyond Meat at NPR podcast
Agile Approach
The Agile approach helps an entrepreneur understand the market, mindset of the audience and the requirements to create a need for the product in the market.
Ethan Brown, the founder of Beyond Meat was not always a vegan but something changed early on. In his late 20s, he wanted to create a plant-based Mcdonald’s. The personal connection of having pigs at the farm and the experience of working for climate change through fuel cells in clean-tech prompted Ethan to begin his journey.
Ethan started a business where he was importing soy textured meat from Taiwan through Baltimore and selling it at whole foods in the mid-Atlantic area. He gave himself 60 days to pay for the soy meat because that’s the number of days before which the port authority starts adding fines until the pickup. It helped Ethan create an urgency to his own process to create a business. Neat.
Although, the soy-textured meat was not ready to hit the market.
Power of Academia & Innovating from Fundamentals
Academia has been overlooked since the dawn of the internet age in building startups. We are trying to find all our answers in articles and case studies. Building a business has never been simple, but building an innovative company, venturing into the impossible market is not feasible without research and academia.
The most innovative companies rely heavily on academia and R&D. Even Tesla derived its energy source(batteries) from a research lab in Canada comprising of scientists and researchers.
For Beyond Meat, It all started with the fundamentals, you don’t need animals to produce meat.
All you need is 5 elements: Amino acids, lipids(fats), carbohydrates, trace minerals and water.
Ethan Brown read the research of two professors from the University of Missouri who were taking plan based protein, running them through a system and making muscle from it but it wasn’t ready for the market.
Ethan went through colossal struggles from selling his house, commuting hours every day, putting everything he owned on the line for developing a product which later came to be known as Beyond Meat. (2009–2012)
The Meaty IPO
The initial public offering at $25 a share raising at least $240 million at a valuation slightly shy of $1.5 billion, Beyond Meat went public in 2019. By the end of the day, It soared at 163% above its IPO price, making it the best performing first-day IPO in nearly two decades.
Collaboration & Retail
Beyond Meat owes a lot of its success to its collaborators. Not only Wholefoods but fast-food chain restaurants like Carl’s Jr, Dunkin, Tim Hortons, Del Taco, TGI Fridays etc.
The third wave of fast-food restaurants enabled the brand to directly reach the consumer leveraging the brand value and faith consumers had in the restaurants.
In April 2020, Beyond Meat debuted at Starbucks, which sells the beyond meat’s plant-based beef in lasagna, pasta and a spicy wrap.
KFC is also testing a Beyond Meat chicken nugget in its United States market.
Rise During Pandemic
Brown said that by June 2020, 4.9% of U.S. households had tried Beyond Meat products, up from 3.5% in January 2020. More importantly, half of those who bought Beyond products bought them again, up from 45% in January.
International retail sales for Beyond Meat were up 167%. Beyond Meat is now sold in 84 countries, up from 51 a year ago.
Final Note
The rise of Beyond Meat shows that “people’s opinion cannot be changed but it can be influenced”.