How a New Wave of Plant-Based Food Brands Plans to Restore Appetite for Faux Meat

When a billboard went up in Madrid earlier this year displaying the word “carne” (Spanish for meat), it triggered a lawsuit. What appeared to be an innocuous ad for burgers led animal meat associations to fight against the company behind the billboard—plant-based food brand Heura Foods—claiming it had no right to call its products “meat.” Meat has become a loaded term, especially in Europe, where consumers eat twice as much as the global average and many culinary traditions center around it. As with Heura, multiple legal battles have erupted over the “meat” label being used on plant-based products, while some politicians who have suggested people eat less meat for the sake of the environment have faced backlash. But a growing number of plant-based food companies are trying to reclaim the concept of “meat” as the category goes mainstream. Doing so is a crucial marketing challenge for the sector, which after recent rapid growth, has seen signs of a slowdown in meat substitutes. Many consumers jumped on the plant-based eating trend for environmental or health reasons, but those principles won’t be enough to achieve long-term change and continue growing, brand leaders say. To woo carnivorous skeptics and win the ideological battle over meat, they will instead have to rely on one key factor: taste. “This is about evolving the way we have foods that we love. We’re not here to destroy the cultural status quo but to renew it,” said Heura co-founder and CEO Marc Coloma. “We’re focused on creating not just alternatives to meat, but successors.” Heura Foods has fought back against animal meat associations through tongue-in-cheek advertising. As Heura’s battles with Spain’s meat industry continue, a judge warned the company that it should avoid using the word “meat” until a sentence is declared. In response to the legal challenges, Heura took over two restaurants in Madrid this summer and gave out 600 free burgers, asking consumers to decide for themselves whether the products were correctly labelled. In August, it launched a tongue-in-cheek social campaign aimed at the animal meat lobbies, offering to “rebrand.” “The debate about meat is not one for the courts but for the palate,” Heura argued in an earlier Instagram post. “The concept of ‘meat’ is very broad… Why is it such a problem to have more options?” The meat conundrum Plant-based food’s environmental credentials, plus the perceived health benefits during a global pandemic, helped fuel the category’s recent growth. In 2021, sales of plant-based meats grew by 19% to $2.4 billion in Europe, while global sales grew by 17% to $5.2 billion in the same period, according to the Good Food Institute. The overall plant-based food and beverage market in Europe is projected to grow by 8.87% over the next five years. Lately, however, there are warning signs that the appetite for alternative proteins may be diminishing. In 2021, sales of plant-based meat in the U.S. fell 0.5%, and U.K. sales also tailed off in the second half of the year. Beyond Meat, a leading meat substitute brand, reported a revenue drop and slashed its sales forecast in 2022. There are also concerns that the cost-of-living crisis will hurt sales of plant-based meats, which tend to be more expensive than animal products. Food has never been so divisive. It’s become more rational and less about pleasure.Vladimir Mićković, Juicy Marbles For the sector to mature, it must find ways of widening its consumer base, said Boston Consulting Group partner Malte Clausen. With this aim, more companies are targeting the growing base of flexitarians—people who primarily adhere to vegetarian or plant-based diets but occasionally eat meat or fish. “The missing piece is changing how these products are currently marketed. The vegan or vegetarian label may be a turn off,” Clausen said. “It will come down to not just who has the better products, but also understanding how to label, talk about them and make them appealing beyond the narrow group of vegetarians and vegans.” Eating with gusto A new wave of plant-based meat brands recognizes this challenge and are thus focusing their marketing messages on the taste and quality of their products, rather than the environmental principles upon which they were founded. “Food has never been so divisive. It’s become more rational and less about pleasure,” said Vladimir Mićković, co-founder and chief brand officer of Juicy Marbles, a producer of plant-based steaks. Mićković launched Juicy Marbles in 2020 after running a plant-based restaurant in Slovenia. Health concerns initially inspired him to give up animal meat, but instead of talking about that motivation, his venture “appealed to this hedonist within us all,” he said. He is bringing that same hedonistic and joyous attitude to the Juicy Marbles brand. Its colorful website and witty language describe the products as “the Salvador Dalí of meats… not a copy, but an original masterpiece.” With a playful tone of voice, Juicy Marbles focuses on 'gusto' in its marketing “One of our values is to bring gusto to everything we do,” Mićković explained. “The world is bombarded with bad messaging, too many opinions and lifestyles. Brands can contribute to these necessary ideological shifts, but we need to be a ray of sunshine and more human.” He continued: “If [the plant-based meat] category wants to go more mainstream, it will have to let go of some of its activism and rationality and be more like a food brand again.” As a maker of plant-based filet mignons and tenderloins, Juicy Marbles is part of a burgeoning area that industry observers say is the future of meatless proteins. "Structured" and more complex meats such as steaks have long been elusive in the category, which started with minced-meat alternatives such as burger patties and nuggets—but some newer brands claim to be able to recreate the taste, flavor profile, juiciness and aroma of animal meat. Trying to get people to eat something just because it's sustainable is not relevant.Eshchar Ben-Shitrit, Redefine Meat Israel-based start-up Redefine Meat is another one. Its aim is in the name. Much like Heura, which wants to be a “successor” to animal products rather than another vegetarian option relegated to the back of the freezer, Redefine Meat markets itself not as an alternative but a “new meat” company. It uses technologies including 3D printing to produce steaks. Redefine Meat avoids any green on its packaging—normally a symbol of environmentalism—and where it sells itself is important, too, said CEO and co-founder Eshchar Ben-Shitrit. The products are sold in Israeli butcher shops, and last year became available in restaurants, hotels and food-service outlets in The Netherlands, Germany, Israel and the U.K.—including fine dining establishments and steakhouses where people would typically go for high-quality meat. Redefine Meat started with outreach to chefs, but now it wants to attract a broader consumer audience with a global campaign launching this autumn by ad agency New Commercial Arts. “Trying to get people to eat something just because it’s sustainable is not relevant. When you say, ‘we have a new, healthy and sustainable product,’ the assumption of consumers is that it’s going to taste bad,” Ben-Shitrit said. “We say something different: this is made for people who love meat.” Plant-Based Food Tops $7.4 Billion in Sales, but Has the Market Hit Peak Fake Meat?