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BEYOND MEAT: CHANGING CONSUMERS’ MEAT PREFERENCE 1

Vibu Vimalathasan and Karam Putros wrote this case under the supervision of Professor Dante M. Pirouz solely to provide material
for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The
authors may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to protect confidentiality.

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Copyright © 2015, Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation Version: 2018-09-24

Beyond Meat, a producer of plant-based meat substitutes, was founded by Ethan Brown and Brent Taylor
in 2009 in Los Angeles, California. The company’s aim was to change the world and try to slow down
average meat consumption for the well-being of humans and animals. Beyond Meat had many high-
profile investors, including Bill Gates and Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams. 2

Beyond Meat’s vision was for consumers to enjoy a meat-like taste and texture in their favourite dishes
while avoiding many chemicals that were used in processed meat and reducing the number of animals
killed every year for their meat. The company wanted to reduce global meat consumption by 25 per cent
by 2020. While this seemed to be a huge goal, Beyond Meat was striving to educate consumers about the
superior benefits that eating vegan meat alternatives would provide to not only the consumers, but also to
the environment they live in and the animals they live around. 3

The big questions for Beyond Meat were: How could the company market a product that was still in
development? How could consumer behaviour and tastes regarding eating meat be changed?

COMPETITION

A key strength of Beyond Meat was that it offered by far one of the more appealing innovations to the meat
alternative, the vegan industry. There had been many vegan meat alternatives for quite some time now, but
based on consumer reviews, 4 the taste and texture of Beyond Meat’s products were almost like the real
thing. Other products, such as Quorn and Gardein, could not meet the standards of Beyond Meat, whose
chicken strips, for example, looked, felt and tasted closer to real meat, especially since they contained

1
This case has been written on the basis of published sources only. Consequently, the interpretation and perspectives
presented in this case are not necessarily those of Beyond Meats or any of its employees.
2
Brad Stone, “Venture Capital Sees Promise in Lab-Created Eco-Foods,” Bloomberg Business, January 24, 2013,
www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-01-24/venture-capital-sees-promise-in-lab-created-eco-foods, accessed January 25,
2015.
3
Farhad Manjoo, “Beyond Meat’s Fake Chicken Tastes So Real That It Will Freak You Out,” Slate, January 20, 2015,
www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/07/beyond_meat_fake_chicken_that_tastes_so_real_it_will_freak_you_
out_.2.html, accessed January 25, 2015.
4
Brad Stone, op .cit.

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reduced sodium, an important feature for the company’s target market of health-conscious people. The
organization’s strategy was also interesting: it pushed stores to stock its meat along the real meat counter
instead of with vegetarian options such as tofu. In an interview in Slate, Brown stated that he wanted
consumers to think of the product as protein, regardless of whether or not it came from an animal or a plant.
Future goals for management included reducing prices once production ramped up to prices lower than
actual meat and to expand into India and China so that much more of the world’s market share would satisfy
their meat cravings with this vegan alternative. Brown was confident that, someday, modern society would
accept his innovations as it had accepted so many other technological changes. 5

GOING VEGAN

The main benefits of vegan products were the absence of the antibiotics, hormones, genetically modified
organisms (GMOs), trans fats and cholesterol, among many other additives, that were normally found in the
real meat products that so many people consume everyday. 6 These chemicals played a huge part in
developing illnesses such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and obesity. In addition, Beyond Meat suggested
many other interesting benefits of cutting meat out of consumers’ diets. For instance, studies concluded that
people on vegetarian diets had much better moods than people whose diets included meat and fish since
they contained many fatty acids, particularly omega 6, that when consumed in large amounts could cause
depression or bipolar disorder. 7 Eating more vegetarian meals also improved hormonal health as a result of
cutting out animal proteins, which contained many unsafe hormones. Additionally, the same studies
concluded that reducing animal meat consumption could improve body odours and sexual performance. The
main benefit for most consumers was that eating healthy foods and less meat could prolong one’s life:
vegetarians had much lower incidences of heart diseases, cancers and other life-threatening illnesses.8 The
company claimed to save more than 1.5 million chickens per year, and People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals gave Beyond Meat its company of the year award in 2013. 9

COMPANY BACKGROUND

Brown received a Masters of Business Administration from Columbia University and a master of public
policy from the University of Maryland; he was mainly inspired by his dad’s virtues as a farmer and his
childhood experiences with farm animals.10 He developed a promising career in the private and public
energy sector, where he held leadership positions including at Ballard Power Systems, where he reported
directly to the president. Taylor was also fuelled by his passion for agriculture and food; he held several
positions as a partner for a vegetable seed technology start-up and represented investors and operators in
international markets such as India and Turkey. Taylor graduated from the University of California at Los
Angeles with Bachlor of Arts degrees in International Economics and Political Science and received his

5
Farhad Manjoo, “Beyond Meat’s Fake Chicken Tastes So Real That It Will Freak You Out,” Slate, January 20, 2015,
www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/07/beyond_meat_fake_chicken_that_tastes_so_real_it_will_freak_you_
out_.2.html, accessed January 25, 2015.
6
Rachel Tepper, “Beyond Meat’s Chicken-less Chicken Strips Aren’t Fooling Anyone,” The Huffington Post, January 20,
2015, www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/beyond-meats-chicken-strips_n_3094296.html, accessed January 25, 2015.
7
Beyond Meat, “5 Surprising Health Benefits of Eating Less Meat,” http://beyondmeat.com/blog/view/5-surprising-health-
benefits-of-eating-less-meat, accessed April 9, 2015.
8
Ibid.
9
Jane Black, “Beyond Meat,” Fast Company, February 10, 2014, www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-
companies/2014/beyond-meat, accessed January 25, 2015.
10
Beyond Meat, http://beyondmeat.com/about, accessed April 9, 2015.

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Masters Business Administration with honours from the Wharton School of Business at the University of
Pennsylvania. At Wharton, his independent focus was on agribusiness investments in emerging markets. 11

According to its website, Beyond Meat was backed by private equity, venture capital and an angel
investor. It used non-GMO soy and pea proteins for its beef crumble, chicken strips and new prototype,
the “Beast Burger.” Being a producer of foods, its key competitors were Kraft Foods, Garden Protein
International, Kellogg Company, Tofutti Brands and many others.12

Because vegan meat was much easier and required less energy to produce, contained no saturated fats and
saved animals, Beyond Meat’s production process was rather simple. The meat was made by forming a
powdered protein — soy for chicken strips and pea protein for beef — into a liquid paste, which then was
heated, extruded through a machine and finally cooled. According to Brown, the key was to get the
heating/cooling sequence right and then apply the right pressure through the extrusion.13

The animal meat industry was worth approximately $177 billion dollars,14 and Brown hoped to take a
chunk of that within 50 years by penetrating the market with meat alternatives. 15 He performed a great
marketing initiative when he went to a New York Mets baseball game to let athletes taste test the new
beast burgers, which were known for enhancing performance as well. Claiming it had “as much protein as
beef, more omega-3s than salmon and more antioxidants than blueberries,” he used these famous athletes
to try to convince meat-loving Americans to make the change to vegetarian meat. Beyond Meat also paid
for ads in Citi Field and presented sliders to fans outside the stadium before the game. 16

As meat prices were continually increasing in the United States, the total consumption of meat began to
decline, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Even though there was a huge demand for
vegetarian options, the market was still relatively small. Total U.S. sales of frozen meat substitutes in
2013 was $394 million dollars, an increase of 5 per cent over 2012 sales.17

Beyond Meat was indeed leading the new generation of food producers, competing alongside another
company known for its vegetarian Gardein brand chicken, Garden Protein International. In 2013, Beyond
Meat started selling its newest product, the Beef-free Crumble, an approximation of cooked ground beef
based on pea protein. The company’s products were priced higher than average chicken and beef products
but were still lower than chicken strips and tenders made from real meat.18

The largest consumer market for Beyond Meats was the younger generation, which was more health and
environmentally conscious and, ultimately, the driving force behind using plant protein for food source.
Could the company reach beyond this demographic to increase sales of its products? Would the food
tastes of Americans change quickly enough to ensure that growing profits would attract more investors?
These were the issues facing Beyond Meats in 2014.

11
Beyond Meat, http://beyondmeat.com/brent-taylor/, accessed January 23, 2015.
12
PrivCo, “Beyond Meat,” January 23, 2015, www.privco.com/private-company/beyond-meat, accessed April 23, 2015.
13
Manjoo, op. cit.
14
All currency in U.S. dollars unless specified otherwise.
15
Manjoo, op. cit.
16
Sarah Nassauer, “Meatless Burgers Make Their MLB Pitch,” Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2015,
www.wsj.com/articles/meatless-burgers-make-their-mlb-pitch-1403736799, accessed April 23, 2015.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.

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