Plant-based burger firms are pecking at chicken market
Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods found success with realistic plant-based burgers. Now, they’re hoping to replicate that in the fast-growing but crowded market for plantbased chicken nuggets.
Beyond Meat said this week that its new tenders, made from fava beans, will go on sale in U.S. groceries in October. Walmart, JewelOsco and Harris Teeter will be among the first to offer them.
Impossible Foods began selling its soy-based nuggets this month at Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons and other groceries. They’ll be in 10,000 stores by later this year.
The rival startups, both based in California, helped redefine what plant-based burgers could be. Beyond burgers were the first to be sold in grocery aisles next to conventional meat in 2016; Impossible burgers joined them a few years later.
But this time, Beyond and Impossible will be stacked in freezers already bursting with plant-based chicken options. More than 50 brands of plantbased nuggets, tenders and cutlets are already on sale in U.S. stores, according to the Good Food Institute, which tracks plant-based brands.
Some, like Morningstar Farms and Quorn, have made plant-based meat for decades. But Beyond and Impossible have also spawned a host of imitators making realistic products marketed to omnivores, not just vegans and vegetarians. Fifteen percent of those 50 brands were new to the U.S. market in 2020, like Nuggs, from New York startup Simulate, and California’s Daring Foods.
They’re all trying to grab a slice of the plantbased market, which is still dwarfed by the conventional meat market but growing fast. U.S. sales of frozen, plant-based chicken tenders and nuggets jumped 29% to $112 million in the 52 weeks ending Aug. 28, according to Nielsen IQ. Sales of conventional frozen tenders and nuggets rose 17% to $1.1 billion in the same period.
Globally, retail sales of meat substitutes are expected to grow 2% to 4.6 million metric tons between 2021 and 2022, according to the market research firm Euromonitor. Processed animal meat sales are expected to stay flat in the same period, at 18.9 million metric tons.
Meat or no meat, breaded nuggets aren’t exactly a health food. One serving of Beyond’s chicken tenders has 12 grams of fat, 450 milligrams of sodium, 11 grams of protein and 210 calories. Impossible’s nuggets have 10 grams of fat, 320 milligrams of sodium, 10 grams of protein and 200 calories.
By comparison, a similar size serving of Pilgrim’s chicken nuggets contains 14 grams of fat, 10 grams of protein, 460 milligrams of sodium and 220 calories.
Unlike the new fava beanbased tenders, Beyond’s burgers are made with pea protein. Beyond President and CEO Ethan Brown said the company has spent more than a decade researching various protein sources and their attributes and doesn’t want to limit itself to just one.
Dariush Ajami, Beyond’s chief innovation officer, said mimicking the fibrous texture and fat distribution in chicken was the biggest challenge with the new tenders. The company is still far from perfecting a plant-based chicken breast or a marbled steak, but has 200 scientists and engineers working on it, he said.
“The goal is to reduce that gap between our product and animal meat,” he said.
There’s also a price gap. Beyond Meat’s suggested retail price for an 8-ounce package is $4.99, while Impossible’s 13.5-ounce package costs $7.99. Tyson Foods sells a 2-pound bag of chicken nuggets at Walmart for $5.76.