this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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There is demand for plant-based meat... at a lower price point than real meat. It will never be a viable category at a premium price. These attempts to make it a prestige product have doomed it from the start. People who will not accept or change for moral reasons won't do so for STYLE reasons either - it HAS to be a pocketbook consideration.
I think their plan was to market to wealthy vegans and to run on novelty until they figured out how to make their product at a lower price.
Yeah, I agree. And it's working out exactly as I expected.
The thing is, it would already be a much lower price point if we didn't massively subsidize meat production and allow insane levels of animal and human rights abuses in the meat industry. Beef should cost like $100 a pound or more.
Yeah from a business perspective it's still kind of their fault that they didn't realise they can't compete with an industry which totally externalises it's environmental impact and it's subsided by the taxpayer, but ultimately we should blame the laws for this.
You're not wrong. The meat industry plays dirty. But Beyond Meat could've done more to turn the playing field in their favor too - lobbying for carbon credits or for subsidies of their own for climate action back when we had an administration that valued that. Instead they partnered with fast food restaurants trying to push themselves as a lifestyle brand.