Plant-based alternative meats are currently a $1 billion market in the U.S., but that number looks like it’s going down.
With the massive marketing efforts of companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods promoting the narrative of plant-based meats having great health and environmental benefits, many big names, from Leonardo DiCaprio to Bill Gates, wanted in on the ground floor. A Bloomberg business article from January 2023 reported that Impossible Foods had raised $183 million in capital before it had sold a single burger. But after years of hyping up plant-based meat as the next big thing, consumer support is starting to wane.
Despite a bump in sales during the pandemic when more consumers turned to plant-based meat because it was the only thing left on the shelf when meat supplies were low, demand for alternative meats has diminished over time. Alt Meat, a publication focused on the alternative meat market from a business and financial point of view, published an analysis of the fake meat markets showing the gradual decline in sales for alternative meats over 2022 and into 2023. Sales of alternative and plant-based products are down 8.9% from this time last year. In terms of the volume of product sold, that’s a drop of 14.4%.
To complete the picture, alternative meat sales have been dropping steadily since the first quarter of 2022 (Table 1).
Aside from the touted health or environmental benefits claimed by alternative meat companies, a talking point that has significantly contributed to the rise of alternative meat products in the first place, with the added pressure of inflation causing shoppers to be more careful with their budgets, the high price point of alternative meats, especially in comparison to real meat, seems to be a key factor in the dropping sales. According to research from the Good Food Institute, plant-based alternative meat prices carry an average 67% price premium compared to real meat (Figure 1). Plant-based alternative beef products carry a 21% price premium over real beef products.
