- Location
- Northumberland
Well, who knows. The share prices of these companies tanking suggests to me that the market for these products is small and it’s already super-saturated. Despite the huge amounts spent on advertising and all the media hype, I believe most folks would rather eat actual meat rather than a highly processed alternative. Beyond Meat etc don’t appear to be making money (or at least not enough to stop investors running for the exit), but beyond the greenwash hype they can see the potential for absolutely massive profits (Raw Product in at one end of the factory, cost a few hundred a tonne, finished ‘Product’ out the other end with a retail price of several thousand /t). The cost of processing must be sky high to make up the difference!But are the vegan options cheaper to produce ? the prices they sell for suggest otherwise, yes the raw ingredients are less costly, but there's then the industrial process required to turn them into something that resembles meat
I’m not naive enough to believe that companies jumping on the ‘no meat’ bandwagon are doing it out of seriously held moral convictions, or that they believe their own planet-friendly animal-friendly spin. They’re in it for the money!
I suspect there are also other factors at work to promote these products. I suspect that the margin being made by supermarkets on meat are not as big as they would like; probably smaller now than a year ago. I suspect they will negotiate deals with manufacturers to give fake meat shelf space, such that the supermarket makes more from those shelves than the actual meat shelves (so the markup must be huge given the slow turnover!) Also, another thing in favour of fake meat is that it doesn’t go off very quickly unlike the real stuff, which is probably just as well given the slow turnover