How Beyond Meat sank from a $14B plant-based protein powerhouse to a penny stock

bbookofjoe about 18 hours ago 21 commentsRead Article on marketwatch.com

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Discussion (21 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

pingou•about 16 hours ago

How come they are not able to make a profit? They have more and more competitors, ok, but surely the competitors are not rushing to also lose money, it seems that there is profit to be made. Why were they not able to optimise their costs over the years?

"the price gap between more-expensive meat alternatives and the real thing kept widening since 2022, to $4.20 per pound in 2024" That's quite surprising, what could be the reasons?

carefree-bob•about 10 hours ago

They are not able to make a profit because vegetarians are in the category of what we call "conscious eaters". This category includes people who take their diet seriously, look at the ingredient labels, and try to avoid highly processed foods. Of course it's not only vegetarians, people on carnivore diets and other healthy diets are also conscious eaters, but what unites the entire segment is an aversion to highly processed factory foods, of which Beyond Meat is the poster-child.

So the real market for Beyond Meat would be "casual eaters" -- people who don't look at the label too much, but then this market is going to be sensitive to taste and price, which are Beyond Meat's weaknesses.

So basically problems with product-market fit.

HarHarVeryFunny•about 15 hours ago

Are competitors doing well? It's really a bit of a weird product category - not really appealing to vegetarians or meat eaters. Who are they marketing it to?

bombcar•about 15 hours ago

People who eat meat but feel bad about it, apparently.

This is an extremely loud online group but apparently barely exists in real life.

europeanNyan•about 12 hours ago

So, like most extremely loud online groups then?

FabCH•about 15 hours ago

For an international perspective, I can tell you that their competitors are doing very well in my corner of Europe, but the competitions quality is 10x-100x that of Beyond.

People buy competitors products because they are simply legitimately fine tasting products on their own, no vegetarian vs meat marketing required.

Beyond just has shit product, even if they genuinely were the first to develop the technology.

HarHarVeryFunny•about 14 hours ago

I guess I just don't get it. Obviously there's a decent sized market for vegetarian convenience food, but the meat-based branding, and attempts to copy texture/flavor of meat products would seem a turn off for that market. Good flavors and mouth feel (not tofu!) are important, but why explicitly try to copy meat unless meat eaters are the market you are targeting?

It'd make more sense to me to have different products/brands/advertising for different market segments. For the meat eaters the marketing would be "healthy/cheap, tastes just like beef/chicken" (which seems to be what Beyond Meat are going for), and for the vegetarians "delicious flavors, plant based, high in protein" (not "fake beef").

localuser13•about 11 hours ago

>not really appealing to vegetarians or meat eaters

Why not? I'm a vegetarian/vegan for a long while now (I started during covid) and I enjoy fake meat burger or as protein in my meal once in a while. Same goes or my girlfriend. I assume most (ethical) vegetarians are in the same boat. I am a former meat eater, I enjoy the taste of meat.

FWIW vegan meat substitutes are popular and getting even more popular here (EU country). For example all burger places and many regular restaurants have something similar on the menu. I avoid beyond though, it's always the most expensive option, without quality to justify it.

HarHarVeryFunny•about 11 hours ago

Vegetarian and vegan menu options are extremely common here in the US too, but I'd say not so much these meat substitute products at fast food places. One of the big chains (Burger King? McDonalds?) had a Beyond burger when it first came out, but otherwise you need to avoid the big chains and may find a veggieburger on the menu, just called that - a veggie patty of some nature, not pretending to be meat. You can buy Quorn etc products in all the supermarkets.

Throaway199999•about 9 hours ago

Its really only useful as a fast food, which is not healthy, and if you're gonna eat unhealthy why not just eat meat.

HardwareLust•about 7 hours ago

I just never liked their products because none of them tasted very good. Impossible products are much more palatable imo, especially their burgers.

SllX•about 7 hours ago

I tried it a few different times a few different places about 7 or 8 years ago, and it wasn’t bad when prepared by the right hands… but after that I never ate again.

At the end of the day, given a choice between meat and not meat, I’m never choosing not meat. On the other side, what vegetarians who are actually dedicated to the cause are going out and seeking something that’s just like meat? There’s a niche, sure, but it’s a niche.

chinabot•about 13 hours ago

Shame, I only tried one once and it tasted quite nice, too expensive though. I guess I was in the minority.

bookofjoe•about 18 hours ago

https://archive.ph/w4Gn6

deterministic•about 5 hours ago

Beyond Meat might be the most ultra-processed “food” I’ve ever come across.

It's actually really simple to eat healthily: Cook yourself using real (non-processed) food. The kind of food that doesn't need a label.

sellmesoap•about 16 hours ago

From the archive.pH link: > company’s current cash position will last four about six more quarters.

Is that the type of mistake an LLM makes?

dlcarrier•about 11 hours ago

No, that's the type of mistake a human makes.

LLMs write by picking which next word best correlates to a response from the prompt, so they tend to follow grammar extremely well but make logical mistakes.

Humans write by forming their thoughts into word sounds, then transcribing them, but a single pronunciation can have multiple spellings, depending on the context, but the context is somewhat abstracted by that point, so humans regularly write homophones or malapropisms of the appropriate word.

metalman•about 15 hours ago

disgusto revoltient was and is money trying to sell waste to get more money useing hype nobody wants to eat bugs and slime but that does not stop the money from trying to force it down peoples throats. try harder?, it will become illegal to market this as meat, or meat alternative, etc, and will be forced to label as vegetable protien, of which there are thousands of varieties all ready.