I always wondered who their demographic was. The core early adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually like the taste of plants are never going to make a lab made ultra processed salt bomb their daily driver (never mind issues surrounding industrial agriculture). Health-conscious folks would take one look at the ingredient list and bail because of the heavy processing and industrial fillers. You've got bodybuilders and athletes skipping it because it lacks the micronutrient density and bioavailability of real animal protein. Everyday folks aren't exactly lining up to pay a "green premium" for something that tastes almost like a burger but costs more and offers less. It feels like they built a product for a tiny, hyper-specific niche: people who desperately crave the experience of a fast-food patty but have an ideological dealbreaker with meat, while being well off enough that finances aren't carefully managed and loose enough in their convictions that a burger-joint is still ok. It always seemed like an odd propsition to me, even if cool in some ways.
This is such a weird comment.<p>Why do you think that "ethical vegans" like the "taste of plants" any more than anyone else? The whole point of being an ethical vegan/vegetarian is to not consume animals, not because you don't like the taste.<p>Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers. Sure, they're not perfect from a health food point of view, but they're lower in sodium and saturated fat than your average hamburger patty. So from a health conscious point of view, it's a decent substitute.<p>Then there are the people who just want to reduce their meat consumption overall. Maybe they're not vegan or vegetarian, but they're trying to watch their saturated fat intake, or reduce their carbon impact, or they suffer from gout and are trying to reduce the amount of meat they eat to ease that.<p>Sometimes you just want to go out with your friends for a burger, and the Beyond patty can make a better substitute than a black bean or mushroom patty that used to be common.<p>And at most restaurants, I've never noticed a "premium" for it, it usually costs the same as a beef patty; it just provides another option, for the days I want to skip meat. I have, for a long time, done a low meat diet; I don't avoid it entirely, but I try not to eat it at every meal. It provides a nice alternative for that.<p>Is it a bit of a niche market? Sure. But, not every product needs to be for everyone.
"they're lower in sodium and saturated fat than your average hamburger patty"<p>If you buy a Beyond patty, it has way more sodium than ground beef you'd buy at a grocerty store. Comparing it with a fast food burger isn't really fair.
I'm a bit of a fence sitter so I might actually be their target market. Very athletic, a bit health concious but not crazy about it in regards to diet. If I am eating out, usually my macros are not a big part of decision making. If there is a meatless option that might actually be good for a bit of a fibre boost, considering all the other protein I am intaking.<p>It's important to remember also that not athletic individuals are high achieving bodybuilders with super strict macro diets. Most other sports only require a moderate attention to diet, especially at an amateur level. Bodybuilding is very diet focused, rather than strength and skill focused.
> And at most restaurants, I've never noticed a "premium" for it<p>I just did a quick search on Uber Eats in NYC. Every Beyond Burger I found was between $3-5 more than a regular burger. That’s the reason I stopped eating them, I actually quite like the texture and flavor. I just don’t like the price.
I never buy beyond/impossible at restaurants because of this.<p>I often have some at home and instead of having two red meat burgers have one and one of these, occasionally when they go on sale at Costco I’ll buy a bunch.<p>I am not vegan or vegetarian but do seek ways to reduce my red meat intake which years ago was grilling ribeyes 4-5 nights a week. I was unreasonably unhealthy and having alternate options helped balance my health out over the long run. I like both beyond burgers and impossible. I wish they were cheaper than hamburger meat, when I compare to buying hamburger meat in bulk it’s still more expensive at this point
Beyond Burger ingredients:<p>Yellow Pea Protein, Avocado Oil, Natural Flavors, Brown Rice Protein, Red Lentil Protein, 2% or less of Methylcellulose, Potato Starch, Pea Starch, Potassium Lactate (to preserve freshness), Faba Bean Protein, Apple Extract, Pomegranate Concentrate, Potassium Salt, Spice, Vinegar, Vegetable Juice Color (with Beet).<p>Except for Vinegar, every one of these is an industrially processed/extracted/refined ingredient that humans never ate until within the last ~50 years.<p>We have no way to even know if many of these are safe let alone healthy.<p>I don't know of any evidence that these things are a decent substitute for meat and salt which humans have been eating for our entire history. And for those who actually believe animal fat and salt are unhealthy one could make burgers with lean meat and less or no salt.
There is no reason to believe that the foods humans have historically eaten are safer/healthier than "industrially processed/extracted/refined" food simply because we have historically eaten them. Evolution does not select for avoiding the health problems facing modern-day humans such as cancer or heart disease.
Human only eat food great-great-great father eat. It good food. Make human strong. Only good food. Any other food? Scary. Not know how to pronounce name. Make feel insecure about poor scientific understand. Very scared. Not healthy for human. Must avoid new thing because not understand and don't want look like dumb asshole to other human.
As someone who is very cautious about health and nutrition and spent 4 years studying Chemistry at a good university, my takeaway at the time of graduation was more aligned with your caricature as a better prior and heuristic for judging consumable foods.<p>I remember being told anecdotally that there were cases where the kinetic isotope effect could affect biochemistry, that was how sensitive our systems are and that industrial synthesis will definitely produce different isotopic ratios to natural synthesis as a fun fact to stay humble about how much we actually understand the human body.<p>My conviction on this subject has continued to strengthen with articles like [1] on emulsifiers recently become common knowledge.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/c5y548258q9o" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/c5y548258q9o</a>
I‘m eating plant based meats regularly but I guess we all know how e.g. trans fats, high fructose corn sirup and probably more were once considered safe and are certainly not anymore
This is a hell of a straw man. The body is very well adapted to natural foods, and is efficient at using nutrients supplied in natural ways.<p>Engineered ingredients may or may not be equivalent, but they often remove nutrients that existed in whole foods, then attempt to add nutrients back in through industrial processing. But we still don’t know the full affects of that delivery method, but we do know that it can negatively impact the gut microbiome.<p>There’s enough evidence out there to be highly skeptical of ultra processed ingredients<p><a href="https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/ultraprocessed-foods-bad-for-you" rel="nofollow">https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/ultraprocessed-foods-bad-f...</a><p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-025-01218-5" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-025-01218-5</a><p>I don’t think those links prove definitively that UPF is a direct cause of disease, but they show strong evidence that there are problems with UPF and we should probably eat more whole ingredients
> I don't know of any evidence that these things are a decent substitute for meat and salt which humans have been eating for our entire history.<p>I‘m pretty sure humans eat potato, rice, peas etc. since a pretty long time.<p>I‘m also pretty sure that the meat our ancestors ate is a lit different from the meat we have now coming from animals optimized for meat production and fed with whatever produces the most meat and costs the least (mad cow disease anyone?).Not to mention the amount of meat we eat today compared to back then.<p>The problem with processed food isn’t that it is processed but that it makes it easy to consume too much
FYI most beyond burgers have more in sodium not less and beyond uses coconut oil which is still fairly high in saturated fat.<p>If those 2 things are your barometer for healthy… it’s not a clear win.
Nah, it <i>definitely</i> costs extra at restaurants.
> Health conscious folks would definitely choose these over hamburgers.<p>I seriously doubt that health-conscious people would pick hyper-processed plants that are meant to resemble meat over plain meat+bread+vegetables that make up a non-fast-food hamburger.
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> The core early adopters, the ethical vegans, who actually like the taste of plants are never going to make a lab made ultra processed salt bomb their daily driver<p>Why not? I think there's a false conflation of veganism and health food (and gluten-free, though that's not relevant in this discussion). I love burgers, and fried chicken, and crappy chicken nuggets, but I don't want more animals to have to suffer for my sake than is necessary. I disagree on how hyper-specific that niche is.<p>IMO the core problem is that meat is so heavily subsidized that it's hard for them to compete.
> IMO the core problem is that meat is so heavily subsidized that it's hard for them to compete.<p>This is the real problem. Without all the government subsidies, a pound of ground beef would be closer to $30-$40 today instead of the $8-$10/lb it is now. $38 billion dollars in the US each year to subsidize meat and dairy, but only $17 million goes to fruit and vegetable farmers. It's completely backwards, especially considering the climate impact on meat and dairy farming.
>Without all the government subsidies, a pound of ground beef would be closer to $30-$40 today instead of the $8-$10/lb it is now<p>Source? That seems implausibly high.<p>Using your $38B/year subsidy figure gets us $112/year in subsidies per American. There's no way you can get $30 unsubsidized price from that unless you think the average American only eats beef once a week.
That doesn't really make sense, though, as rice — one of the main ingredients in the aforementioned product — receives the highest subsidy rate in the USA. A Beyond Meat burger should be cheaper than a meat burger thanks to subsidies.
Im calling BS on the $30-$40 a pound beef because ive raised my own cows for personal consumption and even if I paid myself $20 an hour for every second I spent with my cows, and assumed my alfalfa field usage could produce an expensive cash crop without fertilizer, and completely ignored the opportunity loss of only caring for 1-2 cows instead of 30+, that is still a cost WAY above what my beef costs.
I believe it. Every summer we buy goat or lamb imported from Australia/New Zealand. It's usually less than $15/lb. Those two countries barely provide any subsidies for their farmers, and the meat is cheaper than my local farmers, even with their strict biosecurity regulations.
Australian citizen here.<p>There are massive tax, fuel, land tax, health care subsidies for our farmers.<p>Even doctors who cater to the remote areas where farmers dwell get extra payments from our governments.<p><a href="https://www.health.gov.au/topics/rural-health-workforce/classifications/rrma" rel="nofollow">https://www.health.gov.au/topics/rural-health-workforce/clas...</a>
Without taking a side, you've skipped every step past the field here. Transportation, butchering, packaging, and grocery store shelves, with profit margins, health / sanitation checks, and shrinkage at every step
I still have to transport and pay for butchering and packaging myself which is done in a certified facility with sanitation checks. Oh sure grocery stores have to make a profit, but they also get better deals than I do for both transportation and butchering because they deal in bulk.
Don't forget the massive costs of lobbying governments to weaken regulations and reduce inspections and also the costs of bribing meat inspectors, and the legal expenses and lawyer fees required to defend themselves from lawsuits surrounding their illegal activities, then also the millions in fines they have to pay to settle lawsuits they lose about their bribing of meat inspectors or colluding to drive wages down or whatever other illegal thing they got caught doing. You can bet all those costs increase the prices we pay.
We do things at industrial scale because that saves money. If a local butcher could pay a relatively tiny amount for direct cow shipping, save multiple steps, and sell the meat for 60% of the grocery store price, they'd instantly be booming with business.
not sure where the GP lives but in Canada even beef raised for personal consumption needs to meet most of those things you've listed, aside from grocery-related, and as someone who's bought directly from the producer (with 3rd party butchering) the price is not substantially lower than retail; scale likely makes up for a lot of the commercial supply chain costs.
Yeah, it's absolute nonsense. I'm paying $34/kg for direct-to-consumer beef in Australia, a country with some of the lowest agricultural subsidies in the world, including delivery and at a premium markup, during a time that beef prices have hit a historical high due to processor capacity, and I'm getting prime cuts and roasts too, not just mince.
How much did your beef end up costing?
The key difference between the old vegans and the new vegans is hiding in plain sight. It's the Internet. It used to be that vegans went to vegan restaurants and had their own particular tradition of vegan cookery. People didn't just become vegan in isolation like they do today. The acculturated vegans still exist and I think that's who gp is referring to in that statement. The Internet vegans are different but they aren't that numerous — few people even today would make such a change in their life based on something they read online.
Despite being a vegetarian and former vegan, this is not me wading into this debate to defend the figure provided by the OP of the original comment, but this is usually the source for the statistic AFAIK: <a href="https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavingThePlanetSustainableMeatAlternatives.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi...</a><p>Regardless, it goes without saying (from other, more well-sourced research) that the disparity of subsidies and government assistance provided to industries that ultimately exist to produce meat compared to industries that produce fruit/vegetables is fucking absurd.
I'm struggling to understand the point you're trying to make well enough to know how to respond, other than to say vegan cooking traditions continue to exist and existed before the internet (though there were fewer vegans at the time)<p>People did indeed become vegan in isolation before the internet, just as they do today.<p>What exactly is the distinction you're trying to draw between "old vegans" and "new vegans", and how do you see it pertaining to this conversation (especially under a comment pointing out that plant-based burgers struggle to compete with traditional beef because of beef subsidies)?
Yeah, I generally think people make adult diet choices on their own.<p>People regularly cut out meat, alcohol, sugar, dairy, gluten, caffeine, fats, etc. based on things they’ve read, moral considerations, medical recommendations, and personal health observations, not because they’ve joined a community that eschews such things.
Based on my bubble, vegans, vegetarians, and meat eaters that do want to decrease their meat consumption.<p>At this point, in Germany at least, discounter brands like Lidl and Aldi have beaten Beyond Meat at their game though. They produce alternatives that taste as good or better, for significantly less money.
I have been vegan for 12 years. It is not that hard to make vegan burger patties at home. Or you can just cut up a block of tofu and season it to be eaten in a burger. Takes about the same time or less to cook as these Beyond grease fests. Besides there is so many cheaper alternatives these days that I very rarely buy them.<p>We don’t need meat alternatives. Vegan diet is cardiovascularly extremely healthy, seems to protect against most cancers, tastes good and is most importantly ethically and environmentally only viable option at this point. It’s pretty cheap as well, tofu, lentils and veggies are not exactly expensive even without all the gazillion subsidiaries pumped into meat production. [Of course your vegan diet can consist of eating only canned soda and potato chips and that is not healthy nor cheap, but the problem there is that you are a moron, not that you are vegan].<p>So the problem with meat alternatives is that you don’t really need them and if you want burger patties etc. you can make them at home pretty easily or these days buy cheaper alternatives sold in most supermarkets.
Yeah, I never understood what Beyond's core innovation was. Impossible had that whole synthetic heme thing going on. Beyond seemed almost like opportunistic mimicry. But Impossible turned out to be pretty expensive IIRC.
In my opinion as a mostly-vegetarian who used to adore burgers as a kid, the Impossible brand was by far the most realistic (and my beef-loving partner would agree, they made stroganoff with it and loved it)... but the price truly is ridiculous at this point. It started out just barely justifiable, and it's simply too high now.<p>I am more than a little bit outraged that animals who were raised in miserable industrial production facilities to meet an ugly end are having their parts sold for less than a decent alternative simply because of subsidies distorting the market.
If I look at walmart right now, they have Impossible 'ground beef' for $9/lb and real ground beef is more than $7/lb. So the price isn't too high everywhere.
Agree. Impossible is on a different planet in terms of being very very close to the taste of real meat. Unfortunately still premium priced.<p>It’s a pity that Beyond is getting so much attention because they’re not the best ambassadors for meat alternatives. People will try it, and then decide to wait another 5 years before trying again.
I still eat impossible sausage as a substitute for pork and find it pretty dang good. I grew up in appalachia so we know our pork sausage and impossible seasoned well comes close.
Beyond was available well before Impossible was. I used a combination of Beyond and Boca as my primary substitutes for ground beef, until Impossible came along, and now I use almost exclusively Impossible.<p>I don't feel like they have a niche anymore, but there was a time I considered them my top choice, before impossible dethroned them.
Aldi in Germany might be very different for all I know, but I've been vegan or vegetarian my entire adult life and I think every burger alternative besides Beyond/Impossible is quite awful, though I usually don't eat meat alternatives in the first place.
> lacks the [...] bioavailability of real animal protein<p>I never understood this argument: what's the problem with consuming proportionately more to make up for the reduction?<p>I'm not rushing to demand IV tylenol because its oral bioavailability is <i>only</i> 80%-90%, which is around the "loss" we're talking for plant vs animal protein on average. And the ultraprocessing should improve plant's profile here.
Eating raw Miso a few times a month can move one's biome to get more plant protein digested per gram than even from egg whites. So the issue with protein is somewhat overhyped. The main potential shortfalls in the vegan diet are vitamins B-12, D & K.
>what's the problem with consuming proportionately more to make up for the reduction?<p>Because the macros suck. If you’re trying to hit certain protein / carb / fat ratios, eating more of the “protein” means eating a lot more carbs and fat too, which often isn’t the goal.<p>Your analogy is not accurate, it would be more like waking up in pain in the middle of the night after a bad injury, and taking t3s with codeine+ caffeine, and wanting more codeine without wanting the added caffeine.
if you have only fixed-ratio food options, sure, but otherwise, no.<p>> and taking t3s with codeine+ caffeine, and wanting more codeine without wanting the added caffeine.<p>that's what tylenol #4s are for, double the codeine, none the caffeine. Take half a t#4 and half of a regular standard tylenol = T#3 without the codeine.
My vegetarian friends can now go to a restaurant (or better example yet, any event space like sports event or theme park, since having a veggie burger is pretty easy to check a box and satisfy dietary restrictions) and get any of the burger offerings on the menu with a beyond patty. Before that, the vegetarian option of only resort was often much more depressing and unsubstantial.
Reading this somewhat reminds me how the Gluten Free trend led to a lot more options for my friend with celiac.<p>Still, one wonders does “buying a fake burger at the ball park with my friends” translate to actual fandom and further consumption or is it just a a captive consume picking the least-worst option.<p>The impression I’ve gotten is for the latter.
i actually miss black bean burgers being more common. now it seems like all you can find are beyond/impossible burgers at restaurants. i don't mind em once or twice a year but they knock me out more than melatonin so i usually avoid them.
Veganism is a fake health conscious diet. You can eat whatever you like while simultaneously feeling superior about it. Oreos, chips, pizza, fries, candy, soda, etc. why not also highly processed burgers?
I say this after having lived with vegans who literally ate vegan pizza every day.
My wife often quips that on our first stay-at-home date during Covid she made me a fruit bowl for my desert whilst she had ice cream. The fruit was amazing but I (much to my wife’s surprise) also immediately Uber Eats’d a full tub of Vegan Ben & Jerry's.<p>I’ve personally never met another vegan who chose this lifestyle for “diet” reasons. They’ll be out there for sure, but for the folks I know It’s always been about the animals.<p>Just because I choose not to eat animals doesn’t mean I’m choosing to be healthy :) I should focus more on the food that I eat but alas, it’s just not how I roll at the moment.<p>You do get some unintentional health benefits here and there (lower cholesterol in my case) but other trade-offs too for those like me that aren’t as diligent as they should be (lower b-12, iron etc).<p>This is completely unrelated to the question of “can you be healthy as a vegan”. To that I would say absolutely. Is it the reason most people choose to be vegan - my gut would say no (but I’m not claiming this as fact).<p>Goddamn I love me some Oreos.<p>Plus, it’s easier to sit atop a high horse when you’re not eating it ;)
You can be vegan as part of a health conscious diet, but strict veganism is usually motivated by ethics, not health. (That being said obviously there's more market share if you're in the intersection of the venn diagram.)
I'm like technically the exact demographic they should be chasing. Plant based eater who loves the taste of meat and just stopped eating it for ethical reasons. But like, I'm not gonna eat a heavily processed food often for the reasons stated above, and also it's just not great nutritionally compared to Seitan, which also actually just tasted better when prepared right. And it also doesn't stack up compared to high protein / extra firm tofu, which is incredible for cooking when frozen and then defrosted and cooked. And also made of soybeans, one of the cheapest food commodities in the world. So why would I pay 2x or 3x the amount of money for a drastically inferior product? Just when I want an exact burger replica, and once you are plant based for 3 or more years, you just don't really crave that anymore except as maybe a guilty pleasure once or twice a year.<p>So like, sure it's fine, but it is already in a tough competition with other plant based foods.
I haven’t done a comparison of Beyond vs seitan for their nutritional value, but as someone who used to eat a lot more seitan I gleefully moved over to Beyond/Impossible. Seitan is packed full of gluten, which is much harder to digest. Seitan makes me uncomfortably bloated whereas Beyond/Impossible do not. And no, I don’t have a gluten “intolerance” or Celiac.
Seitan has 3x-5x the protein of beyond meat by weight. It sucks that your body processes it less. For me it’s usually a treat, and I’ve never noticed any digestive issues despite having issues with more whole wheat things (beer, more natural whole wheat breads).<p>I’m glad you like the beyond meat though. Good for them to have actual consistent customers for the 2x / year I end up eating it!
Personally I really fucking like meat but having done a couple of weeks in a slaughterhouse, I don't want to eat it. Gives me nightmares. Seriously.<p>This is a good filler product.
There's no reason ethical vegans wouldn't go for ultra-processed foods. Beyond Meat just isn't a great option, it's expensive and not good enough to justify it. The selling point for them seems to be that they taste more like meat than most meat substitutes but as someone who has been vegan for a while that doesn't matter to me (unless I'm trying to match a non-vegan recipe). I get Morningstar Farms products vastly more often than Beyond Meat ones. Beyond and Impossible are maybe like my 4th and 5th most bought meat imitation brands and it's not like those other brands are less salty or processed. Idk why I only ever hear non-vegans mention Beyond and Impossible.
How about these two niches:<p>1. non-vegans eating with vegans <i>at a vegan restaurant</i>, where eating there wasn't their choice (they were <i>craving</i> a burger), and so, being forced to order off this menu, will choose the most burger-like thing on the menu.<p>2. non-vegans eating with vegans at a <i>non-vegan</i> restaurant, where for whatever reason they feel the need to impress / not-offend the vegan by eating vegan food as well. (Think "first date" or "client meeting.")
Beyond Meat aren't unique, there are dozens of brands offering the same product. Tens of millions of people eat these type of products. Any (or most) burger-serving restaurant in Europe will have a Beyond Meat or equivalent on the menu. They're not always advertised as vegan (because of preparation and extras) but these fake burgers are very popular, for many reasons.
That's a really good point. Maybe in part because Beyond had a highly visible IPO they became the poster child for the success or failure of meat alternatives but in reality their story is pretty much just their own story.
At the time it was a unique product. My alternatives reminded me more of basically black-bean patties than beef. Then impossible meat did it better, industry decided there was money in this direction, and now there’s “or equivalent” everywhere.
Fake?<p>In my part of the world, a burger is a type of sandwhich, and the definition doesn't require meat. So it's a burger whether it contains beef, fish, chicken, a vegan patty, a large slice of tomato, or whatever.
What part of the world, and how recently? Sure a burger is a sandwich, likely being a spin off of Hamburg steak.<p>Given all sandwiches, what in your part of the world makes a sandwich a burger? I think for many of us it's a ground patty. If said patty isn't meat, yes we might say that is fake as in an imitation of the original. It's not a negative thing.
> What part of the world, and how recently? Sure a burger is a sandwich, likely being a spin off of Hamburg steak.<p>The 95.8% of the world population that isn't in the US. This is simple to deduce because everywhere else calls "a piece of fried chicken in a burger bun" a "chicken _burger_". Only the US calls it a "chicken sandwich". Some of Canada might now use the latter through US influence - any Canadians here?<p>KFC is a representative example, they call them "KFC chicken sandwich" only in the US, "burgers" effectively everywhere else.
This comment getting downvoted is one of the most "US Defaultism" expressions I've seen on HN. Should've posted it when the US is asleep!
being an ethical vegan does not mean you like the taste of plants (or, at least, that you don't miss the taste of meat). I'm veg and very much miss having access to meat.<p>I'm an occasional buyer of their product, but the issue for me is just the versatility. It's really only a replacement for the most generic ways to prepare a burger/sausage. The moment you try to use the ground beef in, say, a chili recipe, it's a totally mis-matched flavor
I guess for people like me. I eat meat, and I eat burgers. I can't speak for Beyond Meat, but when at restaurants, the Impossible Burger often tastes better than the real beef (likely because the former is pre-seasoned).<p>There are plenty of meat eaters who want to eat these as a way to cut down their meat consumption. They don't want to become vegetarians, though.
There’s plenty of vegetarians due to ethical or cultural reasons that never acquired the taste for traditional plant based foods and are looking for a more substantial, protein heavy alternative.<p>Is it niche? Yes, but vegetarians were always niche.<p>While the late 2010s fixated on “protein” and “macros” - allowing products like Beyond or Soylent to shine.<p>Much of the health discourse around the 2020s has focused on quality of the ingredients and “processed foods”. So naturally Beyond is caught on the crossfire.<p>Is there a future where this stuff is proven to be better for you in the short and long term? I sure hope so. But there’s way too many unknowns right now and it’s expensive to boot.
I feel like fast food is a pretty big market for stuff like this. Burger King in New Zealand has had plant based alternatives to the whopper and chicken burger on the menu for > 1 year now so it must be doing ok. I'm not even vegetarian and I get them sometimes, they're pretty good (especially the chicken one - they changed the recipe a while ago and it's now practically indistinguishable from the real chicken option, although that probably says more about their standard chicken than it does about the meat free option).<p>There's no premium for the plant based versions I don't think (or if there is it's small enough that I never noticed), and I think you're underestimating how many vegans/vegetarians still want junk food.
I actually like Beyond Meat patties, but I eat maybe a half-dozen "fake meat" burgers per year - that's not going to sustain a competitor when Americans eat an average of 3 beef burgers per week.
>I always wondered who their demographic was.<p>Wealthy hippies, vegans, and yuppies.
I agree with this. As a veggie, the texture, taste, smell, color of meat grosses me out. I don't want not-meat that appears to be meat.<p>I want not-meat that is definitely not meat.
Thats the thing... Really really good vegetarian and vegan food tastes amazing and is filling. And unless you're intentionally picking around for meat or meat products, you're not going to notice.<p>A lot of Indian/Brahmin food is exactly that. Its insanely delicious.<p>And we have Beyond Meat and Impossible Meat(is that the name?). Both instead of going "vegetarian done well is superb" went to "sorry its a sad reminder of a hamburger". And thats a problem. Nobody wants to be reminded that this is $10/lb and real hamburger is $5/lb.<p>Ive also had problems with other 'meat substitues'. They're almost always plasticy or fake tasting, or chemically off.<p>Whereas my tofu saag is delicious. And no meet or cheese needed... Although my favorite is saag paneer (cheese). I stay away from the fake-almost-but-not-quite foods.