Plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop
Strange choice of headline given the content, but I&#x27;m guessing they went link-bait-y to drive clicks.<p>Nonetheless, I don&#x27;t know that any of this is unexpected.  They&#x27;re doing about as well as I would have thought they would.  Honestly, they have a tricky market in the first place: (a) Vegans that I know[0] don&#x27;t <i>want</i> a product that makes them &quot;think they&#x27;re eating meat[1]&quot; and (b) they haven&#x27;t marketed sufficiently enough to &quot;me&quot;.<p>By &quot;me&quot;, I mean, the guy who&#x27;s only going to buy the meat-free burger if and only if I can&#x27;t tell the difference between real&#x2F;fake.  I&#x27;m also unwilling to buy a fake &quot;raw ground beef&quot; product if I have to substantially change the way I cook it in order to use it.<p>That gets you through the &quot;I&#x27;ll try it&quot; gate -- and I ate an Impossible Whopper.  I didn&#x27;t side-by-side it, but I went in expecting I&#x27;d be able to tell the difference and <i>really wanted to</i> but I had to concede that it was exactly the &quot;kind-of-shitty-but-you-still-crave-it&quot; Whopper.  And that says a lot -- it&#x27;s a <i>weird</i> flavor and texture (which was slightly different, but it was either unimportant or slightly better).<p>But then there&#x27;s the second reason -- if it tastes the same, why am I not eating the regular Whopper?  I am not in any way invested in &quot;Animal Rights&quot;, I do not have a political or other bone to pick with the meat industry, I don&#x27;t know enough about the effects of the meat industry, specifically, on climate change so as far as I can tell, this product needs to be one or more of the following: (a) a little (or a lot) cheaper than meat, (b) healthier than meat equivalent to the additional cost, (c) shelf-stable or has an otherwise much longer refrigerator&#x2F;freezer life than meat.<p>I found out at Burger King that &quot;it&#x27;s more expensive&quot; and &quot;tastes the same&quot;.  I bought it because I read about the company and &quot;I wanted to see if it tasted like a Whopper.&quot;  On one hand, they <i>nailed</i> marketing it early on.  There&#x27;s <i>no</i> way I would have tried this.  I was vegetarian and swore off all forms of plant-based ground beef after throwing up my share of Boca Burgers.  Had I not read a bit about the science behind it and <i>&quot;the blood&quot;</i>, I wouldn&#x27;t have been curious enough.<p>Having now satisfied that curiosity and having <i>even had a good experience</i>, I have <i>never</i> purchased another Impossible Whopper, nor have I even thought about purchasing another plant-based product.  I <i>suspect</i> that they may be better for my heart, but they haven&#x27;t told me[2].  I <i>suspect</i> it&#x27;s quite a &quot;process&quot; to make and wonder how many ingredients &quot;I can&#x27;t pronounce and don&#x27;t understand the origin of&quot; that the product may have.  These are the &quot;gut-instinct&quot; judgements that I made with no knowledge, not so much as picking the product up off of the shelf the hundreds of times I&#x27;ve passed it because they haven&#x27;t given me a good enough reason to get past the price.<p>Not everybody in this space is failing &quot;me&quot;.  I probably bought Morningstar Farm&#x27;s &quot;fake chicken patties&quot; for my family every grocery trip for 10 years.  The reason was <i>easy</i>: they were far more consistent and tasted better than processed chicken patties.  I only stopped because my kids stopped enjoying chicken patties (buns were going bad too quickly).<p>And despite the bumps in the road, I don&#x27;t think any of the bigger brands are really failing ... they need to adjust their messaging a bit, maybe, if they want to extend their market.  Or maybe this <i>is</i> the totality of the market for &quot;plant-based meat&quot; at this price point.<p>[0] I don&#x27;t know why this phrase is starting to sound like &quot;I have (insert minority) friends&quot; but ... I was (lacto&#x2F;ovo) vegetarian for a year in my 20s (having nothing to do with animal rights); many friends were vegan.<p>[1] This topic often came up when discussing Boca Burgers and other veggie burgers; universally they preferred mushroom&#x2F;eggplant-based patties because they don&#x27;t taste anything like meat.<p>[2] OK, so this <i>may</i> be my fault.  Maybe they&#x27;re not reaching me or my family.  I&#x27;ve found that living 15 years without Cable Television nor watching <i>any</i> broadcast at home (I stream <i>everything</i> and do not watch sports ... not even the Olympics), having Adblock <i>everywhere</i> and the like means my exposure to ads has resulted in <i>major</i> gaps (gasps of &quot;you&#x27;ve never heard of <i>X</i>&quot; ... and I&#x27;ll say, the spray-dish-soap was something I wish I had in my life a few years ago, but all in all it&#x27;s a big plus).  But nobody <i>talks</i> about those aspects of the product, either.