Beyond Meat

The companies on this list are mobilizing the creative tools of capitalism to help solve social problems.

<p>Giving up meat and dairy is one of the <a href="https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Accepted%20Manuscript.pdf"><u>single biggest ways</u></a> that consumers can reduce their impact on planet Earth. So it’s no wonder that plant-based meat alternatives now comprise an $8.8 billion market. Beyond Meat, established in 2009, has been one of the leaders in the “meatless meat” revolution—with its latest Beyond IV formulation now found in 39,000 U.S. restaurants and 29,000 grocers, and in more than 60 countries worldwide. Its products racked up $343 million in sales in 60 countries in 2023.</p>

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Get insights into Beyond Meat including business profile, stock information, news, and rankings from Fortune.

Beyond Meat (BYND): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Beyond Meat | Fortune

Beyond Meat (BYND): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

Emma Burleigh

Sustainable meat companies say their biggest challenge is attracting investors: ‘People are clutching their money more than they did before’

/2024/10/10/sustainable-meat-alternatives-funding-struggles/

Brian Kateman

Beyond Meat wants to be healthier—and CEO Ethan Brown seems convinced he can hack the trade-off between nutrition and taste

/2024/09/10/beyond-meat-wants-healthier-ceo-ethan-brown-seems-hack-impossible-trade-off-nutrition-taste/

Chris Morris

Beyond Meat rolls out a new product not intended to replicate beef, pork, or poultry

/2024/07/23/beyond-meat-new-product-sun-sausage/

Dee-Ann Durbin

The Associated Press

Panda Express brings back plant-based meat becaus customers were ‘begging’ for it—a week after McDonald’s killed its alt-meat burger

/2024/07/03/panda-express-plant-based-meat-mcdonalds/

Amanda Gerut

Tyson Foods CFO suspended on DWI charges 2 years after he went to sleep in the wrong house: ‘This may be the end of the line’

/2024/06/13/tyson-foods-cfo-suspended-dwi-charges/

Irina Ivanova

Plant-based meat's fatal flaw makes it the latest victim of the everything bubble: ‘Worse-tasting products that aren't healthier than the real thing’

https://fortune.com/2024/02/17/why-plant-based-meat-decline-peak-everything-bubble/?itm_source=parsely-api

New Florida resident Jeff Bezos pumped $60 million into making lab-grown meat taste better. Ron DeSantis just banned it from the state

https://fortune.com/2024/05/03/florida-jeff-bezos-lab-meat-desantis-ban-mcbee-calah/?itm_source=parsely-api

Sustainable meat companies say their biggest challenge is attracting investors: 'People are clutching their money more than they did before'

https://fortune.com/2024/10/10/sustainable-meat-alternatives-funding-struggles/?itm_source=parsely-api

Ethan Brown, founder and CEO of Beyond Meat, isn’t just trying to disrupt the meat industry—he’s challenging the cultural, political, and economic systems that uphold it. In this episode of Leadership Next, Brown speaks with Fortune’s Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller about the uphill battle of building a plant-based food company in a world dominated by Big Meat. 

He shares why he believes alternative proteins are key to addressing the climate crisis, what the latest research says about the health benefits of going plant-based, and how legacy food giants—and even the pharmaceutical industry—are pushing back. From regulatory hurdles in Europe to cultural resistance in the U.S., Brown offers a candid look at what it takes to lead a mission-driven food innovation company in an increasingly polarized marketplace. 

Redefining Meat With Ethan Brown: The Battle Beyond the Burger 

Photo Courtesy of Beyond Meat; Graphic by Fortune

Leadership

The Beyond Meat CEO opens up about challenging billion-dollar industries, the science behind plant protein, and the climate impact of what’s on our plate 

Ethan Brown, Founder, President and CEO, Beyond Meat
Josh Hix, Chief Executive Officer, Season Ashley Tyrner, Founder and CEO, FarmboxRx Moderator: Jennifer Fields, FORTUNE

Brainstorm Health 2023 - Food As Medicine: Eating Your Way To Good Health 

Conferences

Ethan Brown, Beyond Meat
Josh Hix, FarmboxRx 
Jennifer Fields, FORTUNE

Food As Medicine: Eating Your Way To Good Health 

Coming up another important topic. A few months ago, the White House held a long overdue event. The first conference on hunger, nutrition and health in more than 50 years, the focus was on ending hunger, increasing healthy eating and cutting diet related diseases like diabetes and obesity and high blood pressure. We've heard a lot about some of these topics throughout the course of the day. There's little doubt that eating rights can affect health outcomes pretty much every doctor we see now talks about the importance of eating well. But what does that mean? This notion of food as medicine is an increasingly important topic? And we are going to learn a bit more about it today. So let's drill down on this idea with three entrepreneurs and innovators who are working to revolutionize access to food as well as what we put on the dinner table. We've got Ethan Brown, the founder, president and CEO of Beyond Meat. We've got Josh Hicks, the CEO and founder of Season Health, where we are also an investor and uh Ashley Turner, who is the founder and CEO of Farm Box R X. They will be joined by Fortune Zone Jennifer Fields for a conversation on how we can all eat our way to better health. Please join me in welcoming them onto the stage. Thank you all so much. I'm gonna jump right in. Um Josh, I'm gonna throw out the first question to you. Food is medicine is a relatively new movement. What have you learned so far about its effectiveness at reducing chronic disease? Wow. I feel like this knowledge has been around for a very, very long time in various forms. People love to quote the food be medicine a bit. And I think in more recent decades, there's a lot of clinical evidence that food works to manage and reverse chronic disease. I think what's new in this space is the payment rails, the broader cultural awareness of these issues and probably, sadly the prevalence of the issues themselves, but there's no doubt that it works. And Ashley, you were recently quoted saying where you live down to your zip code can tell you better than anything what your health is going to be. Um I know you have first hand experience of living in a food desert, which is something that affects millions of people across the country who just don't have access to food. Can you tell us a little bit more about the connection between where you live and your health? Yeah. So really um talk about my back story. Um If we back up 13 years ago, I was a single mom, pregnant with my now 12 year old daughter living on food stamps in a rural food desert trying to live healthy on a food stamp budget is incredibly difficult enough. But living, you know, in a rural area, not having transportation is even more difficult. It's really where this idea came from. And something I'm very excited about outside of food is medicine is really population health data building because yes, down to our zip code can really determine what our health outcomes are going to be. And Ethan, I want to turn to you because beyond Meat has been the subject of some studies, Stanford did a study on the benefit of plant based meat. Um You're also doing some partnerships with the American Cancer Society. Um When we're thinking about food as medicine, plant based diets, obviously, um factor into that. Can you tell us a little bit more about the shift away from meat? Sure. So I think it's, you know, very clear to the to to the medical community that there's a very high correlation between the Western diet and the role that animal protein consumption plays and whether it's heart disease, diabetes or cancer or all these disease epidemics that we're facing and that are particularly prevalent within underserved communities. Um And so what we're trying to do it beyond meat is to rebuild meat directly from plants. So we take all the core parts of meat, the amino acid lipids, trace minerals, vitamins and water, but construct them in a way that's going to serve human health and also serve the environment. And by doing that, we can take out the things in meat that are problematic. And so we feel that there's tremendous advances that can be made in human health by doing that. So we've teamed with Stanford. We have a five year program with Stanford. It's an unrestricted gift so they can do all the research they want, we can't control the outcome, but they've done some pretty amazing studies at the beginning and they're continuing to do it today. The first one was the swap meat study where they had participants consume animal protein twice a day for eight weeks. They needed a one week wash out here and they went to be beyond meat twice a day for an eight week period. Then went back to animal protein just during that eight week period. They saw a drop in LDL cholesterol, both clinically and statistically significant drop, which is the bad cholesterol. They also saw a drop in something called T M O which is a compound that forms in the gut, which is very closely associated with heart disease and certain cancers. And so this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much that can be accomplished by going toward a plant based diet. Now, the challenge is we need to make sure that people are educated about that and understand the benefits and there's a lot of noise out there that's being promulgated by people who are maybe in the incumbent industry. And we need to look past that and help people see the benefits of plant based meat and plant based eating. So when we think about um moving in this direction, um whether it's plant based uh food or just creating uh reducing our food deserts, the the issue really comes down to accessibility. How do we make this more accessible to the, to the entire country? Um It's clear that better diets can improve health outcomes. But how can companies make this food more available? Ashley? You wanna start? Yeah. So I think a big piece of that is around data um especially as we talk around, you know what this conference is about for health care, right? Because it's just been recent in 2020 that C MS changed regulation allowing food and produce to be offered as a benefit under S S BC I. So that's one big piece of what farm box R X is doing is giving this data back to C MS and C M M. Um To show how you can move the needle on other health health outcomes. Um So if we take what we're doing to help give accessibility, you have to remember that if people don't have accessibility as in a location, a store delivery service, that's one element. There's also the affordability. If they can't afford to buy the healthy food, you know, it doesn't matter if they have access. So really, you know, fueling this movement with data around how giving food to members that are on Medicare. Medicaid can move the needle of other health outcomes. We have proven to have out of 268 members that participated in our original white paper with Molina Healthcare of New Mexico. Um We were able to prove 100% rate of return of the health risk appraisal. Anybody in this audience that's in the health care world on the payer side knows that that's normally 30 or 40%. We move the needle by 22% of members in our program going to get their diabetic eye exam going and getting their mammogram by 10% more, we reduced by 9% unnecessary er, admits. Um because at the end of the month, if individuals run out of snapping E BT dollars, they're notorious for going and just entering the emergency room to just get a meal. And so when you talk about that accessibility piece, it's also around affordability and bringing it forward within health care. That data makes sense beyond just the clinical side, right? Because it's an immediate roi if you can prove that you can move the needle on other hetu or stars measures other than the ridiculously obvious that if you eat healthier, you're going to be healthier. And Josh, do you have thoughts you wanna add to that? Yeah. I would just add that on the affordability piece. I think this is this is where we're starting to see the payment models and a lot of the the broader consumer side of the world start to converge, which is exciting. So we facilitate both food benefits within plans, existing and new benefits that are put in place to drive clinical outcomes and dietician care, put those things together, partner with plans and drive R O I around a handful of disease states and have some early but nascent conversations around preventative care as well. And I think that's a, a sadly separate conversation from chronic disease management where there's hard dollar R O I today, but on the issue of affordability, uh I completely agree, I think accessibility has largely been solved. Uh Sometimes that seems a bit more controversial than it should be between the major grocery stores. There's 99% zip code delivery coverage in the United States. You add in various food delivery companies and there is nowhere in the lower 48 that you can't get fresh food delivered. It's affordability. That's the question and at least, and, and it's definitely a journey to get, you know, everyone covered. But starting at the high acuity end of the spectrum, there is a hard dollar sub six month provable R O I case to do this. And we're starting to see payers pay for it, which is great because it means that we can solve the sort of twin issues of accessibility and affordability and all of a sudden there, you know, one of the things we say behind closed doors to some of our payer partners is there really is no excuse for food deserts anymore. Like that should not be an excuse. Everyone can get food delivered. We can tailor the food to cultural and other preferences and we can make it affordable for people and like that exists right at this very moment and there's no reason to be talking about food deserts anymore. If you're doing it, it's, you know, probably for some other reason. So I'm thinking about um oh also I'm gonna ask questions or open it up to the audience to ask questions shortly. Uh So think about your questions and um someone will be around with a microphone. But Ethan, I want to ask you another question thinking about the benefits of the plant based diet. The American diet is so the opposite of the plant based diet. How do we get more Americans to embrace this idea? Right. So we look at our history as a company as going from being very successful within the early adopters, folks that are predisposed to, to try uh plant based meats and have a motivation to do so. Uh But then you kind of rise through that in this kind of classic literature of technology disruption, you hit a wall as you try to get across the chasm into the mainstream. And that's really where we are right now. And we view three levers as being necessary to get across to the mainstream. And the first is really to continue to communicate the taste and the deliciousness of our products. The second is to clarify this health issue. You know, it is unassailable that if you're going to have a piece of meat, you should consume plant based meat from a health perspective. So when I eat meat, I eat plant based meat. That's the way to think about this. Not think about it. In terms of, you know, I'm gonna have this over a kale salad. You should continue to have your salads, you continue to have your chickpeas. But when you consume meat, the better health choice is plant based meat and we need to communicate that to everybody and make sure they understand that last and the most important one is price. We are economic animals as we, as we continue to scale our business and we continue to scale the supply chain. We're able to get direct materials down in costs. We're able to benefit from overhead absorption through greater scale. We will be able to underprice animal protein. And then you will see dramatic adoption throughout the United States to answer the question of accessibility, we will become accessible throughout every community once we underprice protein and that will happen, I set a goal four years ago. Now to in five years, we able to underprice, at least in one category animal protein. And so we're going to do that. And once we're getting into that economic motivation, you'll see a much wider spread adoption of plant based meat. I wanna open it up to questions. If not, I'll keep such a great job that I know nobody has a question. There's one over here. Hello, my name's Alex and I'm with uh I had a question regarding how you communicate about processing that's included in plant based meats because we spend all our time as health care professionals telling our uh patients and population not to eat processed foods, but plant pays meat foods are highly processed. So how do you think about that? Now, thank you. Did you were you planted in the audience? Uh That's a great question. Um So first is to get clear on language. So a process is a series of steps toward a desired outcome. That's the dictionary definition process. So it's not a bad thing, right? It's something that you have to do, right? To create something, right? And so 98% or so of the of the meat that most consumers are having in the United States goes through a factory farm process, right? And so the comparison is not between the idyllic thing you see on the package, but it's on the actual process that occurs for the animal protein industry. Now, we are so proud of our process and I hate it when I say this, but I'm going to say it. Take a road trip to Missouri. Don't fly to the carbon. Take a road trip. When you get there, knock on the door of our facilities, you can come in and we'll give you a tour. You don't have to call in advance because we love our process. We're proud of it. It's a great process, but I asked you to do that at a meat facility. They won't let you in. So our process is this, take our steak, for example, the beans are grown mostly in the Midwest, some in Canada and it's a fava bean. What's great about fava beans? They're nitrogen fixing. So they're bringing nitrogen into the soil. So the farmer is actually making more money because he doesn't have to use fertilizer. So we get the fava beans and the supplier does this for us and they're milk. We separate through an air chamber, the proteins, the different particle size and a starch. No chemicals are used. Then that protein is given to us. We run it through heating, cooling and pressure. Have you ever had Cheerios? You probably have, you get pasta, you probably have. That's the machine we use. That's the process. We're basically taking protein in a plant that looks like this and we're breaking the bonds and resetting them like this, which is the structure of meat and that's heating, cooling and pressure. That's it. You separate the protein from the starch, you run it through heating and cooling and pressure to reset the protein and we mix it some flavor. Take our steak product, for example, 21 g of protein. 62% less saturated fat, terrific product Time magazine on the cover, I think it is a delicious steak. A healthier steak. Turn it over. Look at the ingredients. Water vito weekly beans, press canola oil. Very simple, salt and natural flavors. Then there's like 1% of like pomegranate, onion garlic. I think there's like juice coloring, things like that. That's it. There's nothing artificial, there's not a single chemical. So we have to separate marketing and propaganda from fact. And if you're in business of telling people what to eat, you should know the facts. This is not ultra processed food. It's a very simple process and a better process than industrial meat that's put on your plate. We have another question back here. Hi, Alicia with special Olympics. We know that what we eat is so related to uh our, our generations are the intergenerational effects of obesity are so well known. Um And we even talked about social justice today is related and you and this is um you all also have referenced this. I'm wondering in your work, how do you address uh Children and changing children's eating habits as the next generation and so forth. So for us, uh I'll start for us, we engage the parent or the foster parent through health literacy that goes out in every single box. Right. So, it doesn't matter if you don't, you don't have accessibility affordability. You've also got to have health literacy because maybe they don't know how to cook with what's coming to them. So, you know, we'll do programs where we engage the parent or foster parent to engage the child um in, in different things. Maybe it's cooking, um, maybe it's, you know, also educating them to, uh at the end of the day, we identify as a food as engagement company rather than just food as medicine. Uh because it doesn't matter if, if you don't engage somebody in what's coming to them and they don't know what to do with it, then you can send food all day meals all day. It doesn't matter. So you got to engage, I think the parent or the caregiver or the child. Yeah, I would, I would just add to that. I joke with my team. I built a consumer food business before this and learned a lot of things that I think are like, painfully obvious. Uh including if you ask the patient, whether that's the child, the parent, whoever to act to eat differently than the rest of the household, it, it falls apart. I mean, it lasts somewhere between zero meals and like maybe a week. Uh And so for us, it's largely about using software, which I think, you know, this is also relatively well covered but there's a very obvious use for filtering across the infinite amount of food content out there. I mean, the internet is sort of just like cats and food content and you can find recipes that work for people based on all the things that really matter upstream of their clinical condition, their culture, their budget, what their spouse likes, what the kids like, what they ate yesterday and last week. And you know, and also by the way, their clinical condition and filtering through all that is relatively straightforward, it's just time intensive. Anybody could sit down on a Sunday and build a meal plan, just hardly anybody does. So our approach is to do the obvious thing which is help the entire household, whomever is there, use the benefits. And most of these benefits are structured in a way that they can so that whoever the patient is, will actually follow the clinical guidance and get the outcome. And in some ways, you know, the child in these settings is often uh sort of brought along, you know, on the journey in a good way. But there's not a very direct peer driven model that I'm aware of to address the kids directly. We're out of time. I'm gonna have to stop this there. But thank you so much for, for joining us.

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