Frugal consumers have plant-based sector focused on better price, taste, texture
The plant-based protein industry is focused on improving the price, taste and texture of its products as it weathers a period of consumer wariness brought on by the rising cost of living.
That's according to industry experts, including Bill Greuel, chief executive of Protein Industries Canada, a not-for-profit that receives funding from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada to invest in plantbased food and ingredient manufacturing.
There's a lot of work being done in Canada to improve things like the meltability of plant-based cheese and the texture of plantbased meat, said Greuel in an interview at Plant Forward in Toronto, a conference focused on the plant-based food sector.
“Canada's making great strides,” Greuel said, calling price, taste and texture the “Holy Trinity of consumer needs.”
Inflation and higher interest rates have made consumers more sensitive to price differences, he said, and therefore less willing to try plant-based meat alternatives.
In addition to innovating on the taste and texture side, the industry needs to build up its manufacturing and processing capacity in Canada to help address the price differences between plant-based meat and its conventional counterparts, said Greuel.
“Our belief is that if we create scale in ingredient manufacturing, that's going to provide more options to food manufacturers, more options to consumers,” he said.
“And that's our path to relieving some of the inflationary pressures in the plant-based food side, is scaling up ingredient manufacturing in the country.”
The economic outlook for the plant-based protein industry was the subject of a presentation at the conference on Wednesday by two speakers from Ernst and Young.
Huzaifa Akhtar, economic advisory vice-president, and Mauricio Zelaya, partner and national economics leader, told conference-goers that businesses in the industry are working on multiple fronts to stay ahead of the curve.
This includes improving existing products and looking into new ones, said Akhtar.