On this episode of Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast, cohosts Diane Brady, executive editorial director of the Fortune CEO Initiative and Fortune Live Media, and editorial director Kristin Stoller talk to Ethan Brown, CEO and founder of Beyond Meat. They talk about the criticism alternative meat has faced, how Beyond Meat has threatened the meat and pharmaceutical industries, and the power of turning to history for inspiration.
Listen to the episode or read the transcript below.
Ethan Brown: The origin of life is such that there’s a common software system, and there’s a common set of hardware for both plants and animals. So that’s the secret. We can take the protein directly from the plant and form it in the form of muscle that is in animals. So all we’re doing is taking that protein directly from plants and bypassing the need for an animal, because we have technology today to do that. That’s it. There’s no scary chemicals. There’s nothing in it that’s of concern. What is concerning is that it’s different from the status quo, and that’s what we need to fight.
Diane Brady: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Leadership Next, the podcast about the people…
Kristin Stoller: … and trends…
Brady: …that are shaping the future of business. I’m Diane Brady.
Stoller: And I’m Kristin Stoller.
Brady: This week, Kristen, we are talking to Ethan Brown and going “Beyond Meat.”
Stoller: Yes, he is the CEO and founder, a dual role, of Beyond Meat. Now I have a question for you, Diane. I know you’re not a vegetarian or a vegan.
Brady: No, I’m not.
Stoller: Okay, did you try the Beyond Meat? Have you tried the burger? Have you tried any other products?
Brady: I’m from a family of vegetarians, so let me just right-size my vegetarian history. When I lived in Kenya, I took my 15-year-old sister to the carnivore restaurant, and it was basically—everything you’d seen on safari, she proceeded to see on her plate. She became a lifelong vegetarian after that. That’s been a couple of decades at this point. So I have many vegetarians in my family. I say that because Impossible Foods, its competitor, and Beyond Meat, have been staples in my house. I did try the latest products.
Stoller: What’d you think?
Brady: You know, I’m sounding like I’m traveling the world with, you know, repressed or fake memories here, but it reminded me—the chicken reminded me of a dish that could best be described as rat in China. And rat…
Stoller: Oh, boy.
Brady: …by the way is a very delicious, super tender chicken. It was delicious. It was not as reminiscent of chicken, perhaps, as some might think, but delicious nevertheless.
Stoller: Okay, see, I had the opposite reaction, and maybe I’m undercooking my chicken. But my best friend, Andrew, who is a vegetarian, came over last night to try it with me, and we made taco bowls out of the chicken and—the faux-chicken or the alternative chicken, as they would probably prefer I used—and I thought it was really good. It was—I thought it tasted like chicken.
Brady: Well, what you eat—so this is the dilemma, I think, that both—any of these categories, whether it’s lab-grown meat, which is a whole other category, or if it’s this plant-based meat, which is what Beyond Meat is all about, is they’ve had this selling proposition of: It’s better for the planet. Absolutely true.
Stoller: Yep.
Brady: It tastes good. I think that’s true, too.
Stoller: It does taste good.
Brady: It’s now maybe price-competitive as the price of meat has gone up.
Stoller: Yeah, it’s a little expensive, I’d say.
Brady: It’s a little expensive.
Stoller: Yeah.
Brady: But yet if anything, their popularity has waned, and I think one reason is that, thanks—whether it’s to Big Meat or any other force, this sense it’s not that healthy. There’s lots of chemicals. And that is something that they’ve had to grapple with and the whole category has had to grapple with this idea of, are these products better for you when you actually look at the sodium, the cholesterol, everything else.
Stoller: It’s a good question. And I also want to flag—so in 2023, you and I were at a conference in Ohio.
Brady: Yes.
Stoller: We both interviewed the CEO of Impossible Foods, Peter McGuinness…
Brady: Separately.
Stoller: Separately.
Brady: Because one interview isn’t good enough. Absolutely right.
Stoller: Yes, yeah, we both have to do it. And he told me at the time—he said, the animal industry is very coordinated. They’re the ones who are throwing out words like fake, like faux, like processed. And he said at the time, we need to all come together in the alternative meat industry. We have to not be a victim, is what he told me.
Brady: We’re sounding like real Debbie Downers.
Stoller: We are.
Brady: Wah-wah. Listeners, I recommend trying the food, but you’re right. It’s almost been an existential crisis, and there’s no question that both Ethan Brown and Peter McGuinness have been on this campaign to try to validate the category.
Stoller: For years.
Brady: The stock price has been struggling. But there’s no question. There is this general sense we have to do something, that animal consumption is going up, and that is not sustainable for the planet.
Stoller: Yep, absolutely. Well, I’m curious to hear what Ethan has to say. So after the break, we’ll be back with Ethan.
Brady: Generative AI has been a transformative force in the business landscape for the last 18 months. According to the latest Fortune Deloitte CEO survey, more than half of CEOs are experimenting with generative AI in their own daily activities and, of course, trying to spread it throughout their organizations. I’m joined by Jason Girzadas, the CEO of Deloitte U.S., which is the longtime sponsor of this podcast. Jason, good to see you.
Jason Girzadas: Hi, Diane. It’s great to be with you.
Brady: How are businesses integrating AI into their organizations? Where do you see the most substantial benefits?
Girzadas: I think it’s true, as you say, that every organization wants to capitalize on the benefits of AI, particularly generative AI. The benefits have been largely around efficiencies to date and looking for ways to automate routine tasks. The promise is there for more insight-driven use cases and innovation use cases. That’s the next stage. We’re seeing organizations looking to move from proofs of concept and pilots to see these technologies and models put in place in true operational uses at scale.
Brady: When you think about how much change there’s been in the last 18 months, really curious: How do you think it’s going to evolve in the next 18 months? 36 months?
Girzadas: I think we’re actually needing to change our timing horizon. By all indications, we’re more in six-month intervals. And I think that’s exciting, but also a challenge. Enterprises aren’t accustomed to working in that type of cadence and with that type of pace. And so the winners, if you will, will be those that can assimilate this technology that quickly, which I think is putting real strain on organizations’ ability to adapt that quickly. This is a perfect instance where leadership has to be in sync to assimilate technology that quickly. I think as a CEO, it’s important that we lead by example. So I’ve been through all the training. I’ve been through all the productivity tools that we have available within our organization. But then more broadly, we’ve embarked upon a significant investment to deploy this across all we do.
Brady: I’m feeling the urgency, Jason. Thanks for joining us.
Girzadas: Well, thank you, Diane.
Brady: So Ethan, thank you for joining us.
Brown: Well, it’s a real pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Brady: I’ve had Beyond Steak and Beyond Chicken in the last two days. Actually, I have vegetarians in my household, so I was telling Kristen…
Stoller: Yeah, but I had it, and I’m a meat eater, and the chicken, I really could not taste the difference.
Brady: Well, I was gonna say, you guys both look full of energy.
Brady: Do we? Yeah, there you go.
Stoller: That and the coffee.
Brady: Well, you know, it’s interesting, because I also watched the video that is up now on—tell me about the genesis of that, because it almost feels like you and your category have been under siege, you know, with regard to how you make the product, how healthy it is. Why now?
Brown: Sure, so it’s an important piece for us. And the video that you’re referencing—something called Planting Change. And what we tried to accomplish in that was to explain our journey and particularly where we are right now in this moment of time. And so to back up for a minute, I started the company in 2009. And it was around the basic idea that you can create products directly from plants that are in the form of meat that improve human health, but also are helpful to the earth. And there’s a lot of goodness in that. But as we became more popular, we obviously created some tension and opposition within the incumbent industries. And it’s interesting—those incumbent industries are not just what you would think. So we knew the meat industry would be concerned, but we didn’t pick up on the fact that the pharma industry also would have an issue of what we’re doing. And it wasn’t necessarily…
Brady: Big Pharma is after you?
Brown: It’s really interesting. So it wasn’t because of the human health side of the pharma industry. It was the sale of antibiotics into livestock. That’s a very significant part of the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, about 80% of medically important antibiotics go to animals. And so we wanted to respond to that because they were publishing and doing Super Bowl ads and doing a lot of online activity, a lot of misinformation on social media that characterized our products as highly processed and full of chemicals. And neither of those are true, and so we needed to set the record straight. It wasn’t like it was an annoyance. It became a huge set of obstacles for us and very significant headwinds for the entire category. As a leader of the category, we wanted to step forward and explain what’s going on.
Stoller: And Ethan, I want to address some of those misconceptions, like you do in the video. But I think another big one besides they’re processed, they’re full of chemicals, is that a lot of people actually believe that they’re unhealthy or that beef burgers are actually healthier than a Beyond. Can you talk about that?
Brown: Sure, and it’s a particularly interesting moment in history. You know, there’s always been this kind of tug and pull between incumbent industries and challengers, and there’s been things that have [been] said throughout history that aren’t true. But today, it seems like a particularly fertile environment for misinformation, and personality now has become more important than scientific expertise, right? And so you have people who are podcasters, you have people who are influencers on social…
[Unintelligible]
Brady: Yeah, like ourselves. Here we are. Influencing.
Brown: …on social media. Now you guys don’t look like carni-bros to me. So I was referencing those, okay, so you have folks, though, that have very large followers. And there there’s a principal called the Edward Teller principle, and he was one of the folks that was very impactful on the hydrogen bomb. And because he was so good, in atomic energy, they sort of gave him other responsibilities. I think at one point he’s involved in federal education and things of that nature. And so this phrase where you’re sort of promoted outside the bounds of your expertise, right, occurs. So a lot of times you see that, where someone is weighing in on things that they really don’t know anything about.
Brady: I think that’s called the Peter Principle as well.
Brown: Exactly yes, getting to your point of being—sort of outgrowing your actual expertise. And so what you see on social media and on podcasts are people who don’t have a scientific background but making statements with tremendous force and clarity, right? And so you think, okay, this must be true, right? And that happened a lot in this space, right? And so people began to think our products weren’t healthy. But if you go back and look at science, it is indisputable. And so we’ve worked for the last over now five years with Stanford School of Medicine, and they’re not gonna do us any favors. This is completely driven by their research agenda. And they put our products to the test. And they did an analysis where they took a group of people and for eight weeks they gave them Beyond Meat, and then they had a one-week washout period, which just to say they put in a normal diet during that period, and then went back to an animal-protein diet for eight weeks. Just during the eight-week period where people were consuming Beyond Meat, they saw a significant drop in LDL cholesterol.
Brady:.. Like the whole Blue Zone experience. Like Super Size Me in reverse.
Brown: Exactly right, exactly right. They then did—they looked at something called TMAO, which is a compound in the gut closely associated with heart disease. That also dropped statistically significant levels. So what you’re seeing is, just in eight weeks of changing nothing else in your diet but swapping out animal meat for Beyond Meat, you see this tremendous improvement. And then so we saw that, I’ve seen it in my own life. I have a very quick anecdotal story. My son’s an athlete, and he plays college basketball, and before the season, they test all the players to make sure they don’t have heart conditions or anything like that. They had no idea he was associated with Beyond Meat at the hospital system where he was tested. They called the head coach and said to him, “Why is this kid’s blood work so different than the rest of the team?” And it wasn’t because he eats Beyond Meat. It’s because he’s plant-based. But he’s able to stay plant based because of Beyond Meat, because he wants to have burgers and chicken just like every other kid. And so what we’re doing is enabling people to make healthful choice in their lives. Now that’s a threat to an industry, and so you’re going to hear a lot of misinformation.
Brady: So I want to pause a second because we’ve gone—we’re talking about, you know, we went from beyond chicken tenders, which were quite yummy. We’re talking about the hydrogen bomb and Big Pharma, and, you know, there’s something a bit poignant about the nature of this discussion, having to have it. I mean, there have been vegetarians for as long as humans have been around. In fact, arguably, of course, that was the genesis. We were foraging for nuts and berries before we were—maybe not. I don’t know where we were back then, but having lived in India, I know there were a lot of vegetarians in many parts of the world. What makes you so threatening is that you put the word “meat” on something. You could have just said delicious pea protein patty. Why’d you have to call it meat?
Brown: You know, what’s so interesting about that is in France—so we sell to McDonald’s in France, and we’re doing quite well there with McDonald’s. And interesting enough, the government just passed regulations that within 18 months, we have to remove the word meat from our label, right? And so you see the consumer wanting it, but then you see this pushback, which is coming from industry. I think the reason that we were more threatening maybe than other efforts across the years was we were gathering so much interest. And I think we became a victim of our own success, in the sense that we’re not that big, we don’t have a lot of revenue. But because the IPO and we got celebrities behind us, it felt like this was some sort of storm coming, and [unintelligible]. It’s a little like McNamara and Domino Theory. Let’s just squash it out before it goes anywhere, right? And so we’ve…
Brady: You’re the communist in this scenario.
Brown: Well, maybe that’d be another label we could get.
Brady: I mean, it’s just, you know, one of the things I’m struck is the act of eating burgers is sort of a decadent fun, I’m going to say frat boys and [unintelligible], but the kind of genesis of the pushback, and then there’s something about the way that Beyond and its category have become almost, you know, medicinal in their approach by—because you’ve been forced into this corner of talking about the health, you know, value, as opposed to taste, nutrition fund new products, have a party, be sure to bring your Beyond fritters. I mean, do you feel a little wistful that you’re now on this campaign that feels more like the modern-day version of Big Tobacco than, you know, “We have a new delicious taste combination. Can’t wait for you to try it?”
Brown: Yeah, and we did a lot of research on this, and that is a very good point. It wasn’t—so we had this meteoric rise, and then what we started to see was consumers pulling back from the category. And it wasn’t necessarily around taste, it was around fear. And there’s a terrific book that was written in the ’90s called Merchants of Doubt, and it just explains this effort. And it was really around anti-tobacco legislation, that the tobacco industry had hired a bunch of scientists to sort of cast doubt on the findings. They did the same thing with climate. And so here you don’t have to convince a consumer there’s something wrong with the product. You just have to put enough doubt in their minds. And they were masterful at that. And so we had to go after that question of, are these healthy or not? Because that’s what was pulling people away. I mean, you see so many people who really enjoy the taste of our products, but it was that question about, is it healthy? And so that’s when we had to fix, and so we got…
Stoller: Ethan, one thing I want to point out is that I thought it was so interesting what you just said, where you said: We’re not that big, and we don’t have much revenue. I have yet to see a CEO come on this podcast and say that openly and with a smile. So, you know, I’m wondering, and you talk about, you know, your stock declining after this whole campaign, were you reaching out to, you know, across the aisle, to Impossible and others to say, “Hey, this is a group problem we should fix?” Because you went inward, and you didn’t go outward, attack them. Talk about how you worked with other people in your industry.
Brown: Yeah. So we do. We talk quite a bit across the industry. I do think, though, it was our own personal decision as a leadership team and as a board to really focus on this question of: How do we lead the category in terms of simpler ingredients, cleaner ingredients? And even though all the health work I just mentioned with Stanford occurred with our old products, so they drove great health results, it didn’t matter, right? It was what’s in it. Are there words in there that people can’t pronounce, or anything of that nature? So we went after those. We said, we’re going to pull that stuff out, make sure that it’s super clean, super healthy. We can’t dictate what the other companies do, but that was our approach. And I think, you know, for me, there is—I love these themes of, you know, iron sharpens iron, or the, you know, the toughest wins make the strongest branches. How do you take adversity and become stronger as a group or as an individual? How do you take your weakness and turn it into your greatest strength? And those throughout history, throughout literature, those themes are the most exciting themes.
Brady: Are you there yet?
Brown: Not yet. Not yet, not yet.
Brady: You know, it’s interesting, since—let’s talk about the zeitgeist, and the zeitgeist being the political environment, first of all, right, like, it’s, you know, big trucks, whatever, red hats. We’re here during Earth Month. And, of course, there’s not a lot being said about it. It’s almost like you’re now woke. So there’s that, right? There’s that kind of issue of, has the zeitgeist shifted? And then the second element I’d add is Ozempic, where, you know, there’s now this sense, hey, I’m going to eat a burger, inject myself, and I’m good to go. You look pained, for those who are listening to this. Ethan Brown is looking pained right now. Why is that?
Brown: Well, I think the, you know, where we are as a culture is obviously very dangerous. And you know, as a father and as a leader of a business in the United States, I want to see us come together as a country. You know, I think what we’re doing is very hopeful. It allows people to heal their bodies. It allows us to help heal the earth, and the climate could not be in greater contest to that right now. And so, you know, it’s just a difficult period that we have to get through. A lot of it has to do with people feeling unrest and trying to find ways to communicate that. But I will say this: that our process of developing protein for the center plate directly from plants can heal the human body in a way that’s really significant, we have studies that show that, but really importantly, it allows each consumer to take a really impactful step toward climate. And this is not my work. This is the work of others. But if you look at someone like Matthew Hayek at NYU, or Oswald Schmitz at Yale, they’ve done models that show this. That if you are able to reduce the amount of livestock on the Earth’s surface—let’s say, just to make this easy from a math perspective, you were to reduce it to zero. You could take an enormous amount of methane that’s being loaded into the environment off the table. Second thing: If you take that 30% of all global land that’s devoted to livestock, and you allow nature to come back…
Brady: Biodiversity.
Brown: Yes, allow all that beautiful nature to come back. That would take enough carbon out of the atmosphere that, together with the methane reduction, you could meet the entire U.N. requirements to keep the climate below 1.5 to two degrees Celsius warmer. So you could stop this runaway train that we’re on just by changing your diet as a consumer.
Stoller: I think that, you know, consumers are obviously motivated by price, right? And money is a big thing. And I know a big question in the consumer’s mind has been, “Oh, I want to try Beyond, but it’s maybe so expensive.” But now we see meat prices are actually rising. Has that been helping you at all?
Brown: It will. You’ll see—so the herds are down in cattle. And, you know, that’s being driven by drought and so you’ll see more of that. I mean, you look at the fall of civilizations, you look at Chaco here in the United States, and others. Extreme weather, does it, you know? And so we will see that, right? And you saw the Dust Bowl like there’s all these things that happen that for all our technology and all of our capabilities, we can’t stop those things, right? So there’s just a terrific piece on 60 Minutes, which people should watch on the bird flu, right?
Stoller: I was just about to ask about that. Did that help?
Brown: Over time it will, but we have these systems in place that are not sustainable, and they will self-destruct. What Beyond Meat’s job is, is to get profitable as quick as we can, right, become a sustainable business quick as you can, and be here as the consumer gets out of this phase of tallow, beef tallow, and, you know, thinking that it’s great to eat a ton of meat. The rise in meat consumption was just covered by the New York Times, right? So you’ll see this, there’ll be more heart attacks, there’ll be greater [unintelligible] of cancer, there’ll be more climate change, right? So let’s help when the consumer gets out of this malaise we’re in, let’s be there for them, and that’s what we plan to do.
Brady: So as you’re talking, I’m reminded that you’re a student of history, as am I. I was going to say, you know, I was going to mention, you know, fiddling while Rome burns, but that’s a student of mythology, I believe, so different case. But let’s talk about the genesis of what brought you to this point. I mean, I will say, from my own personal experience, my first job was at the UN Environment Program in Nairobi, and one of the articles I wrote was raising wildlife as a way to preserve wildlife so that was around the time of the Montreal protocols—it was a few years after that. But, you know, there was a certain momentum back then for the sense of people could come together. What inspired you to start this company? Because I sense it wasn’t that you were seeking Michelin Star status and the yummiest food on the block. There must have been some sense of almost moral responsibility.
Brown: That’s a great, great question, and it’s funny, our backgrounds are very similar in some sense. So I grew up—my father’s a professor, and he’s a professor emeritus now at McGill, but when I was growing up, he was at the University of Maryland, and he would have a group called the Green Ribbon Society at our house, and it was—he’d have lectures and students come over and the lectures would be given. And there was a gentleman from the World Bank who was the chief environmental officer at the World Bank, or advisor. His name was Robert Goodland, and he came and spoke about something not related to what I do or to climate, but he was so impressive as a human being to me. He’s a big, sort of authoritative speaker. And later he wrote a paper on the role of livestock and climate change. And because I knew him and knew of his work, I really paid attention to it. Around that same time, I was in the fuel cell sector, hydrogen fuel cells, and so I was spending a lot of time at Department of Energy and at conferences related to that subject. And we were spending billions of dollars on lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells and solar cells. And then people go out and have steak for dinner. I was like, ah, there’s something wrong here, right? There’s another thing that people like me aren’t working on, and I bet you I could go do something interesting there. And so I left my work in the hydrogen space and went to found Beyond Meat. But it was a kind of simple observation that the origin of life is such that there’s a common software system, and there’s a common set of hardware for both plants and animals. And the software system is DNA. We all have the double helix, right? And the hardware system is, you know, what you learn in eighth grade, you know, chemistry. It’s a, you know, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen…
Brady: You’re doing chemistry in eighth grade?
Brown: Whatever, whatever, whatever, environmental…
Brady: I know. I’m sorry. I digress. As you were saying.
Brown: But so all of these building blocks are the same in plants as they are in animals. Okay. So that’s the secret. We can take the protein directly from the plant and form it in the form of muscle that is in animals, right? And so here’s something that’s absolutely fascinating. You saw in that little movie—there’s a farmer. He’s touching a nodule in the root system of a plant. What’s so important about that nodule, which he doesn’t say, is that’s taking nitrogen out of the air. There’s bacteria in a microbiome in that nodule that’s converting it into ammonia and then from there into amino acids, and from there into protein. We’re taking that protein, and we’re turning it into meat. Now, the same process is happening in the animal’s gut, right? So if you take, let’s say you’re a Lakota Indian and—you’re a Lakota native, and you’re out there on the plains in the 1600s, and you need to convert all that grass into protein. You’re going to use the buffalo to do it because the buffalo in their digestive system has a microbiome. In that microbiome is bacteria. They’re taking the cellulose and the other materials from that grass and converting it into protein. So all we’re doing is taking that protein directly from plants and bypassing the need for an animal, because we have technology today to do that. That’s it. There’s no scary chemicals. There’s nothing in it that’s of concern. What is concerning is that it’s different from the status quo, and that’s what we need to fight.
Brady: That makes sense.
Stoller: Now I’m curious, how often do you eat Beyond Meat? Because I know I probably shouldn’t have a burger every single day, but talk about your food routine?
Brown: Yeah, so I think other than my son, I probably eat more Beyond Meat than anyone in the world. And you know, it’s only two grams of saturated fat per burger, and that saturated fat is coming from avocado oil. And so 75% less saturated fat than an animal protein burger, right? And so I have as much as I want, right? The daily value is so low, then you have things like chicken and Beyond steak, it’s de minimis amounts of saturated fat, which is what I’m most concerned about. And so I eat it as much as I want.
Brady: You know, one of the things about when you marry technology and food, and don’t take this the wrong way, but one word that comes to mind for me is Soylent, right? It’s almost [like] I could picture these tech bros saying, “You know what? Food is fuel, and I just want enough calories.” I’m thinking of, you know, the Brian Johnsons of the world who want to live forever. So I’m not—again, I—but that human instinct toward delight and taste and fun and food being togetherness and a common meal. I mean, how do you think about that? Because I know you’ve worked on taste. That was actually—I do think the taste has improved. I mean, I actually was one of the early pioneers of eating your food and others’ and how—because people, when they’re buying a meal, they’re buying it for a multiplicity of reasons other than health, right? Do you feel like when you look at consumer studies as to how and why people purchase Beyond Meat, how does that factor in, the joy factor and “God, this is yummy,” and, “Can’t wait to have my next party around Beyond Meat?”
Brown: It has to be taste. I mean, taste is king. You have to check that box, and if you don’t, it’s not even a conversation, and so—but what’s interesting is, we’ve done taste tests with—we have this thing called CLTs, which is central location testing—and you have hundreds of people come in to do it, and it’s a blind taste test, and interesting enough on one of the iterations we were doing, we got confused because we were at parity on a taste basis with the animal protein we’re trying to replace. I was like, how is that possible, right, you know? And what was happening was, it doesn’t—like a piece of ground beef that has no seasoning in it doesn’t taste that good. It’s just a canvas for flavor, right? And so for us, we have to make sure that what we’re putting into the product is both very clean and natural, but enhances the taste, right? And so we focus a ton on taste, but we also focus on the fact of how you feel after you eat it. And there’s some exciting things that we’re doing. If you look at a film called Game Changers, right? There’s a scene in there where they study the erectile function of young athletes after eating animal protein and eating plant protein, including Beyond Meat. And they have a better function in that area of their body after eating the plant-based. And so we’re actually…
Brady: That’s why Big Pharma’s after you, it turns out.
Stoller: Not the direction I thought this is gonna go, but interesting. Interesting nonetheless.
Brown: So we are doing a large clinical trial around that. But the key here, and the reason that’s interesting medically, is, I mean, there’s this great sensation—not sensation, sorry. There’s a great—it’s sensationalistic right? But like, at the same time, that’s an early indicator of heart disease, by far. I mean, that small vessel issue is a very—if you have that issue as a male, and you’re in your fifties, you likely need to be concerned about heart disease as well. And so doctors kept telling us—they said okay, well, look, we’re seeing that outcome. We saw the thing in the movie. We’re going to look more into that, but I want you to feel great. I want you to taste—have it taste amazing. But then also know you’re doing something really good for your body. So that fun dinner can be even more fun.
Brady: As a leader, how do you manage in a time when, you know—it’s easy to be a leader when your stock price is going up and everybody’s high-fiving each other, and, you know, you’ve got a lot of celebrities that are promoting you. What’s it like to try and engage, recruit, and motivate talent when you’re under attack and your product, the very essence and business model of what you do, is being challenged? Because one thing I do remember from the movie is that the public perception…
Brown: …Declined.
Brady: … around your product has declined.
Brown: It has. No, it really has. And so you shift into—you know, when you’re winning, everything’s a lot easier, right? But you also pick up things along the way that you shouldn’t be picking up. You have people join who aren’t joining for a reason. You maybe lose a little focus, stuff like that. And so when you’re in a situation like we are, it absolutely is a David and Goliath, and you have to capitalize on that. And you begin thinking about your team as, you know, how do I keep these folks motivated in a really difficult battle? And so you turn to history again, you know. And you look at great feats that have been done throughout time. And you look at, you know, those themes, right? And the themes that I love, or, you know that two sides of coin, courage and desperation, which is, you know, and sometimes you confuse that, right? And there’s a great line by Springsteen on that, and there’s just, there’s so much in that: When everything’s on the line, can you do something spectacular? And I think we’re about to do something spectacular. And I want my team to understand that. And it’s a privilege to be able to lead the company, but it’s also a privilege to be at the company. You don’t get to do this often, you know? I remember watching Carville speak to Clinton’s staffers when Clinton first won. I remember this…
Brady: Is this the war room?
Brown: And he said, yeah, they were all so young. And he said, “Do you realize that I never got to do this when I was this young? I never got to take on and win like this.” And so I think about the people in my company, like, do you realize you get to go up the biggest industry in the world and they want to kill you, and you’re here fighting every day? To me, that is worth doing.
Stoller: This is how I know I’m talking to two history majors, by the way, I love [unintelligible] references.
Brady: The Corn Laws, 1865. Go ahead.
Stoller: So you’re founder and CEO, which is quite a job. You’ve been doing this for such a long time. Was there ever a moment where you thought, or you are thinking about, you know, I should step back as a CEO, stay founder and let someone else lead?
Brown: Yeah. I mean, at some point that will be the case, for sure. I think right now, while there’s so much that needs to be defined about what we’re doing, you need the founder in place. But absolutely, there is a time when that’s, you know, it’s better left to somebody who is different than me. But you know, I think to talk about how you can get through these periods, one thing that is important is to look at the context of innovation. And I study this a lot, because—I look at whether it was solar or wind or electric cars. And by the way, when we think about information, if you think—I drive an electric car. It’s a great technology. But you don’t have to drive 100,000 miles for that to be a carbon benefit for the world, right? Today, you can have something on the center of your plate, which is an immediate benefit from a carbon perspective, right, and from a methane perspective. And so there’s just so much information out there that it’s easy to latch on to: An electric car is good. Eh, it’s okay. It’s not great, right? But there are other things that are more powerful, but we don’t have the opportunity, because the way information is disseminated now, to get the facts out right. But we do have lessons in history that show us that if you’re persistent, you will win. And a great example of this is the ice industry. And you never would have thought about this, like I didn’t. But if you look at the history of ice, they used to cut ice out of the lakes and rivers around New England, and there’s a guy named Frederick Tudor. And in the 1850s, somebody in 1851 filed a patent out of Florida for something called a basically artificial ice machine. And it was what we have today, is ice. And he was doing it to cool his clinic, which was treating yellow fever in Florida. Now, Frederick Tudor up in Boston heard about this: “I can’t have this. It’s gonna kill my industry.” So he formed an association, and the association got together to fight this. And you know what they did? They said, that’s contaminated. Don’t have it. It killed this guy. It literally—the inventor died, and the industry died. But then something happened, an exogenous event happened. The Civil War happened, and there was a blockade, and you could no longer get the natural ice down into the South. So people from Louisiana imported a couple machines from France that did the same thing. The industry blew up. Okay, turned out—Anheuser-Busch was one of the first major customers to use mechanized ice, right? Turned out that there was contamination, but it was in the rivers of Boston and in the ponds around Boston.
Stoller: Wow.
Brady: Well, here we are potentially on the cusp of another civil war, so, you know, full circle. Well, one thing I do—we were talking about this earlier, and don’t take it as a negative, because I’ve lived in different countries around the world, and you’re talking about evolution, and one of the things about culture is tastes evolve, you know, it’s very local, of course. And rat is a delicacy in China. It’s a delicious, tender chicken—like, you know, taste that was actually a bit reminiscent, to be honest, of Beyond chicken, and I think about the fact—I know, you’re not going to put that in any ad, but, but there’s so many…
Brown: I’m flattered.
Brady: …delicacies. Look, I’m from Scotland, not known for its cuisine, nevertheless. But when you think about the taste and the kind of this almost holy way that we treat the burger, the chicken. I mean, it’s so ubiquitous to the American culture. You go to other cultures, and there is an appreciation for different types of meat. In fact, there are here: venison, et cetera. What do you think it takes to change the culture? Is it going to be climate awareness and a desire to do good, or, when you look at the evolution of our taste buds and even fusion cooking, et cetera, is there some place where you’ve seen traction in areas that maybe suggest there could be a cultural change coming that’s not related to whatever big food tells us is good?
Brown: Yeah, it’s a great question. So you do see pockets in the world where things are moving more quickly than others? And an example of that, and it’s, you know, depending on any given quarter it’s not always the case, but if you look at France, for example—so we do a lot of business with McDonald’s in Europe. And in France, now that 10% of the nuggets that are sold we believe are beyond nuggets in McDonald’s in France. And that’s a big market for France.
Brady: But they don’t tell people it’s…
Brown: …No, they do, they do. They do. Yeah.
Stoller: It just can’t be called meat soon, right?
Brown: Right, exactly. We got about 18 months to take meat out of the title. But—so you see earlier adoption in some countries, [unintelligible] in the Netherlands, you see it in the U.K., I’m not sure, you know, not everywhere, but there’s enough early adoption going on in Europe, and that’s over climate. That’s 100% climate and animal rights. And it’s interesting, you say about rat. So I was in China meeting with a—and I just find this interesting—meeting with a member of the Chinese government, and he was asking me, like, why I became vegan. And, you know, from a kid, I’ve been thinking about this stuff. I said, well, trying to—the best example, we have a farm, and when I was growing up, I went there a lot, and we had dairy cattle. And I remember just saying, kind of trying to explain to him that I didn’t see the difference between my dog and a pig in terms of being a sentient being. I couldn’t, I didn’t finish the sentence. He goes, Oh, you mean the taste?
Brady: Yeah, no, they eat dog in China. It’s just another meat source.
Stoller: Well, I also feel like being vegan or vegetarian is such a U.S.-based thing, like when I travel abroad—I just got back from Japan, there’s not many options…
Brown: …Yeah.
Stoller: …when you’re vegan or vegetarian abroad.
Brady: Although India they call you non-veg.
Stoller: True, true.
Brown: But the point I’m making is so I’m reading a [unintelligible] book right now on the history of horses. And you know, over a billion people in the world still eat horse.
Brady: Yeah. Many live in France. No, I’m kidding.
Brown: We have this very strange relationship with animals, right, where we cut some and we cuddle others, right? But the biology wouldn’t suggest that, right? And so one, there’s two thinkers that really made a huge impression on me. On this one was a guy named Albert Schweitzer, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 and he developed a theory called Reverence for Life. And he said, I see in every species the will to live that is the same as my own. And so therefore, sort of it’s the universalization of the Golden Rule, which I’m gonna do unto others as I want unto me. So he stopped, you know, harming animals, right? But then you hear Darwin, and my view is the world should have changed in November of 1859, where the…
Brady: On the Origin of Species?
Brown: Exactly, right? The fact that you knew what I was talking about is actually interesting, yeah. And so what he was saying there was: There’s no absolute differences between humans and animals, there are degrees of difference, but there’s no break where you can say, well, that’s so different, right. So his point is that our cries are their cries, their pain is our pain, with the same central nervous system, just different modifications. As a child, I really thought about that. And there were a couple moments that I had throughout my life where that became super clear to me. Speaking about rodents: I was in our farm once, and I had to pick, this was when I was an adult, I had to pick a mouse out of the dog bowl. So pulling the mouse out—the paw was devoid of any fur, and I could see it was a human hand. The design was so similar, right? And so if you start to think about life that way. That we all come from the same place, we all share the same central nervous [system]. Remember, back to the original thing I was saying. Same DNA system, same double helix, right? Same materials: carbon, oxygen, all these things, right? It’s a common family of life. And so we do tend to say, well, the dog I’m going to treat differently than the pig, but there’s no biological reason for that. It’s entirely cultural.
Stoller: So you have—I know you have this new recipe that you’ve come up with since the campaign happened. What else is exciting you that you think is gonna be the next big thing for Beyond?
Brown: Yeah, so, so what you’re referencing was Beyond IV which is, we got all these American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, Clean Label Project endorsements, but also an improvement on taste. That was so important, that it tastes great, right? With Beyond steak, same thing. Amazing taste. American Heart Association—all these things you can really do where you’re healing your body and helping to heal the Earth. I’m really excited about this EBITDA positive goal we set. It might be boring to a lot of people, but…
Brady: …Earnings before…
Brown: Yeah. So it takes us away from the need to have external capital, right? And, you know, to me it’s the overarching and most important goal in our business. We’ll drive this business to that by the second quarter, sorry, by the second half of 2026. And, you know, by the end of that year, you’ll see us operating the business on an EBITDA-positive basis that requires us to continue to improve our margins, continue to reduce our OpEx. And so we brought OpEx way down year over year. We’re bringing it down even further. And you know, that’s going to be a great day for us. And I think the second piece is the restructuring of our balance sheet. We are getting—this is very public facts, I’m not telling anything that’s not public—but we have been in discussions on that. And, you know, I think we will see, one way or the other, a resolution on our balance sheet that will also free us from some of our past. So that’s almost just like a new day. I’m very excited about those things.
Brady: Let me bring it back to the positive. On the marketing front, you mentioned earlier, the influencers, the celebrities who really rallied around the brand initially. What do you think about that now, again, in terms of, obviously there’s the American Heart Association in Stanford, and we’re in an era now where that group doesn’t necessarily speak to people. And ou’re not trying to reach all people, right? You’re trying to build, build a core audience. But what else do you think about the role of the influencer? If you could wave a wand—you’ve told me who you don’t want, right? Like, let’s get rid of the Big Food, Big Pharma, those that have been against you and spreading, you know, misinformation, as you’ve said. Who do you want to be for you? Like, what if you were to think of the momentum? Because that’s really what drives and goes viral and gets people to want to eat the product. Would it be, you know, some big company kind of saying, “I’m going to blow you guys out of the water”? What is it that is going to take you to the next level there?
Brown: So when I was starting the business, I reached out to—it was a couple years after—I reached out to a guy named Jeff Manning, who was the marketing part of the California Milk Board, and he had hired a firm to create…
Brady: …the milk mustache people?
Brown: Yes. So he hired that firm to do the Got Milk campaign. And I said, “Can you do this for my business?” Because in my case, it’s true. You eat our products, your—my son and my daughter are both very healthy people that grew up eating our products. My son’s six-foot-five. You know, you grow. It’s really great protein, right? And so I said, if we can tell kids that it’s really important to get this clean protein, their blood levels, all of their bodies functioning in a really clean way, that’ll help bring people on board. So we went and signed up all of these athletes [and] it worked. Because guys like Chris Paul were saying, who’s an NBA player, he’s saying, “I’m forgetting to ice after practice because my inflammation levels are down.” But what I need you to do, you got to take steps. So the first step for us was, let’s counter the misinformation by getting stronger. Like, let’s go ahead and just…
Brady: …Djokovic, remember when he went gluten-free? All of a sudden there, everyone’s like, “I’m gluten-free too.”
Brown: Yeah, so Kenny “The Jet” Smith is a guy that I know a little bit. He’s like: You got to get Charles Barkley. I’m like, wow, that’s a tough one, you know. But there are people out there, athletes particularly, that can help us communicate our message in a way that I think is really genuine because it works. And then we have this program, which is about to be released, which is taking normal people who happen to have a following, they’re not celebrities, and putting them through a 30-day program, and we’re about to release those results and they’re amazing.
Stoller: Have you noticed a different demographic eating, consuming Beyond Meat than in the past? Is it younger people? Older people?
Brown: Yeah, young people. When we go to universities, we tend to get a lot of interest. So that really inspires me. And they’re looking for hope, they’re looking for—they don’t necessarily think that factory farming is a way to go, and most people don’t, but—one thing that’s interesting is that technology, for the first time, is taking people back to the farm in a way that it hasn’t, because you can see on your handheld how your food is being made. They don’t like that, right? And so there is a sort of, again, David versus Goliath counterculture nature to what we’re doing, and kids seem to think that’s interesting. Now…
Brady: …IRL…
Brown: Yeah, so we just have to make sure that we get the right information to them. But you see younger people coming in. I like that a lot.
Stoller: I love that.
Brady: Is there anything we haven’t asked you that we should have? I could sit all day talking, you’re like the philosopher king.
Stoller: Now I’m hungry and have a love of history.
Brady: Look, I think about this—here’s one thing I feel a bit wistful about. I do think there’s a return of the rise of the human, the human-centered experience, but history and having that knowledge of our past, obviously it’s still there. I don’t want to get falsely nostalgic, but the way in which you’re connecting the dots to moments in history where you draw inspiration. That does feel a little more rare these days. I don’t know if you feel that yourself, or if it’s just this is the way you’ve always lived your life, and that’s the kind of people you attract around you.
Brown: I think because these are darker times, I think you have the opportunity to bring out stronger themes. And I think that this notion that there’s such goodness in what we’re doing, we need to be louder about it and shine a light that’s stronger about it. And, just taking the example of the soil, with that nitrogen being brought out of the atmosphere into the soil and regenerating the soil, the same time that you’re clearing the arteries in your body as you consume lower saturated fat products, the same time you’re sparing animals the discomfort of being slaughtered and held in captivity, there’s so much goodness in it. Let’s not let information take that away from people. Misinformation take that away from people. Let’s let people take control of their own lives by making the choices that are better for themselves and better for our planet. To me, that’s so inspiring, and it’s such a confused and difficult period. People are worried about tariffs that are just kind of manufactured. They’re worried about our border. They’re worried about all these things, but you can take control of some of them, and you can take control of what you put on your plate and that is what I think we stand for and who we are.
Stoller: Well, thank you Ethan. We appreciate it.
Brown: I appreciate being on the show.
Brady: Off to eat more Beyond.
Brown: Thank you guys.
Brady: Leadership Next is produced and edited by Ceylan Ersoy.
Stoller: Our executive producer is Adam Banicki. Our theme is by Jason Snell.
Brady: Our studio producer is Natasha Ortiz.
Stoller: Leadership Next is a production of Fortune Media.
Brady: I’m Diane Brady.
Stoller: And I’m Kristin Stoller.
Leadership Next episodes are produced by Fortune‘s editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel. Nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.
