How come they are not able to make a profit?
They have more and more competitors, ok, but surely the competitors are not rushing to also lose money, it seems that there is profit to be made. Why were they not able to optimise their costs over the years?
"the price gap between more-expensive meat alternatives and the real thing kept widening since 2022, to $4.20 per pound in 2024"
That's quite surprising, what could be the reasons?
They are not able to make a profit because vegetarians are in the category of what we call "conscious eaters". This category includes people who take their diet seriously, look at the ingredient labels, and try to avoid highly processed foods. Of course it's not only vegetarians, people on carnivore diets and other healthy diets are also conscious eaters, but what unites the entire segment is an aversion to highly processed factory foods, of which Beyond Meat is the poster-child.
So the real market for Beyond Meat would be "casual eaters" -- people who don't look at the label too much, but then this market is going to be sensitive to taste and price, which are Beyond Meat's weaknesses.
Another issue could be that vegans or vegetarians, or meat-avoiders who want to treat themselves with fast food simply prefer other vendors.
They have zero moat.
And also, when taste is a weakness for a definition of "casual eaters", they have simply failed at their core value proposition.
And for the "conscious" eaters, I'd also imagine that people are not dumb and realize the anount of money they have put into marketing and habe to put into trying to pay out stakeholders.
On the European market at least, there are more popular alternatives and myself I only ever bought BM when it was on discount. It was not better than alternatives (Like Meat, Rügenwalder).
Are competitors doing well? It's really a bit of a weird product category - not really appealing to vegetarians or meat eaters. Who are they marketing it to?
For an international perspective, I can tell you that their competitors are doing very well in my corner of Europe, but the competitions quality is 10x-100x that of Beyond.
People buy competitors products because they are simply legitimately fine tasting products on their own, no vegetarian vs meat marketing required.
Beyond just has shit product, even if they genuinely were the first to develop the technology.
I guess I just don't get it. Obviously there's a decent sized market for vegetarian convenience food, but the meat-based branding, and attempts to copy texture/flavor of meat products would seem a turn off for that market. Good flavors and mouth feel (not tofu!) are important, but why explicitly try to copy meat unless meat eaters are the market you are targeting?
It'd make more sense to me to have different products/brands/advertising for different market segments. For the meat eaters the marketing would be "healthy/cheap, tastes just like beef/chicken" (which seems to be what Beyond Meat are going for), and for the vegetarians "delicious flavors, plant based, high in protein" (not "fake beef").
Imagine you liked something, then realized that thing was bad and you didn't want to do it anymore. Then somebody offered you an alternative without the ethical problems.
I ate meat for like 30 years, then as I learned more about the realities of the meat industry in the US (suffering of animals, development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, pollution of air and water, exploitation and harm to workers, etc) I decided I couldn't buy meat anymore. I like having burgers and sausages and such, and Beyond meat gives me something that tastes good, is easy to cook, fits into a healthy diet.
> Good flavors and mouth feel (not tofu!) are important
as one of those vegetarians who isn't particularly compelled by anything intentionally imitating meat, this is always somewhat funny to me. tofu already has good flavor and mouthfeel if prepared well, and presumably the rest of this alleged market segment is as capable of preparing tofu adequately as i am personally. so even if beyond was to pivot to (also) being beyond tofu, i fail to see how that would capture appreciably more of the market.
i could be wrong, but it's always seemed to me that most of the apparent demand for something better than tofu is not in fact coming from inside the house.
I love tofu too but mostly buy pre-prepared ones, open and bite it cold (yummy !) My current favorites are the "dried" Taifun like their Japanese Style.
>not really appealing to vegetarians or meat eaters
Why not? I'm a vegetarian/vegan for a long while now (I started during covid) and I enjoy fake meat burger or as protein in my meal once in a while. Same goes or my girlfriend. I assume most (ethical) vegetarians are in the same boat. I am a former meat eater, I enjoy the taste of meat.
FWIW vegan meat substitutes are popular and getting even more popular here (EU country). For example all burger places and many regular restaurants have something similar on the menu. I avoid beyond though, it's always the most expensive option, without quality to justify it.
Vegetarian and vegan menu options are extremely common here in the US too, but I'd say not so much these meat substitute products at fast food places. One of the big chains (Burger King? McDonalds?) had a Beyond burger when it first came out, but otherwise you need to avoid the big chains and may find a veggieburger on the menu, just called that - a veggie patty of some nature, not pretending to be meat. You can buy Quorn etc products in all the supermarkets.
Yes, but if you need to have all that infrastructure anyway it no longer makes sense to compare the cost of solar+batteries with the cost of fossil fuels because you actually need to have both.
If you compare the total cost of solar with just the fuel cost of fossil fuels (ignoring its CapEx and non-fuel OpEx) that swings the equation a lot.
Just charging your car when electricity is cheap and avoiding times when it is scarce would solve most of the issues, provided there is a dynamic pricing system in place.
"Seven kilometres away, there was only a 30 per cent reduction in the intensity."
That seems extremely surprising, being able to raise the current temperature by several degrees over kilometers, are datacenters put in regions with no wind at all? And hot air is supposed to escape by itself.
15 times more larvae compared to a colony eating only artificial pollen substitutes made from protein flour, sugars, and oils, which does not contain all the necessary nutrients.
You can use the chargemap card which is virtually accepted everywhere but they add their own fees which can be ridiculous, sometimes it can even double the price of electricity.
"When asked to choose between whether the federal government should provide “help for American workers who lose their jobs to AI” or create “incentives for American tech companies to keep innovating so that America outcompetes the rest of the world in developing AI, even if it allows tech companies to profit while eliminating jobs in the US,” the public overwhelmingly favored workers. Nearly 60% of all respondents"
What kind of biased poll is that? I'm surprised only 60% agreed with that.
A lot of polling is quite terrible, and the questions are designed to get the desired answers. It doesn't mean that polling itself is invalid, but it's often warped to be invalid by idealists.
"the price gap between more-expensive meat alternatives and the real thing kept widening since 2022, to $4.20 per pound in 2024" That's quite surprising, what could be the reasons?
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