Once high-flying start up Beyond Meat crashed in the US market. Could Europe offer a reset?
Once high-flying start up Beyond Meat crashed in the US market. Could Europe offer a reset?
The plant-based meat industry is in a bad place. Sales in the US fell last year as the pandemic-era enthusiasm for vegan burgers and sausages continued to wane. Beyond Meat, once the darling of the plant-based boom and the first one of its cohort to go public, in 2019, has become a cautionary tale about the tough road ahead for similar companies.
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Europe has been one of the brighter spots for Beyond over the past couple of years. In 2023, the company’s international sales grew while sales in the US sharply declined. In the UK, McDonald’s has sold McPlant burgers with Beyond Meat patties since fall 2021, while a similar partnership in the US didn’t get beyond the trial stage.
One of Europe’s largest supermarket chains, Lidl, has committed to reporting how its sales of protein are divided between plant-based, eggs, fish, poultry, and red and processed meat. It has also permanently cut the prices of its plant-based proteins to match the equivalent animal proteins in its stores in Belgium, Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Hungary. Jumbo Supermarkets, which operates in the Netherlands and Belgium, and the UK’s Co-operative Group, have both pledged to price-match their own-brand plant products to their meat equivalents.
“What we know about Europe is that demand is there,” says Carlotte Lucas, head of industry at Good Food Institute Europe.
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