When will plant meat be favored by consumers
Recently, McDonald’s announced that it will start testing plant-based burgers McPlant in specific restaurants nationwide from the beginning of next month. This is another attempt for plant-based meat to enter chain restaurants.
In recent years, plant meat has become a popular track, capital has continued to flow in, and enterprises have increased their layout.
In addition to "old players" such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, world-renowned food manufacturers such as Cargill and Nestlé have also entered the vegetable meat market.
In China, according to statistics from think tanks, from July 2019 to August 2021, China's plant-based food start-up brands have received a total of 48 financings, with a total amount of more than 1.2 billion yuan.
From a global perspective, 40% of food and catering giants have established their own plant meat team.
However, behind the capital enthusiasm and frenzied marketing, it is users who are cold.
In restaurants and online celebrity shops, the order rate of plant-based meat products is low.
Is plant meat a new trend or an IQ tax?
To understand this problem, you must first know what plant meat is.
Plant meat is mainly made from plant protein extracted from grains such as soybeans, peas, wheat, etc., and is made through a series of "simulation" processing procedures. It has a certain texture and taste of animal meat and is a kind of artificial meat.
Studies have shown that compared with real meat, vegetable meat has 70% lower fat content, 65% lower calories, and zero cholesterol.
From this point of view, plant meat does have certain advantages for the "three highs" and other people.
But at present, plant meat accounts for a very low proportion of global meat consumption.
Capital enthusiasm and crazy marketing, but plant meat "applauded but not sold."
There are two main reasons for this: it is not tasty and the price is high.
At the current state of the art, there is still a huge gap between the chewiness, taste and taste of plant meat and real animal meat, and its attractiveness will inevitably be greatly reduced.
In addition, the high price of plant meat has also discouraged many consumers.
Currently on the market, the price of plant meat is generally twice as expensive as that of ordinary animal meat.
Take Starbucks as an example. A vegetable beef roll costs 59 yuan, while a regular beef roll costs 39 yuan.
Plant meat is still a niche food in the market, far from reaching the popular table.
However, in the long run, with the increasing demand for meat products and the popularization of the concept of green and healthy living, plant meat still has a lot of room for development.
But before that, the plant meat industry needs to go through a long process of technological iteration, which needs to continuously improve the taste and taste, greatly reduce production costs, and constantly refresh consumers' perceptions.
When plant meat production technology and products have overwhelming advantages, consumers will naturally change their consumption habits and are more willing to pay for them.
Yu Yang