With consumers eating more food at home and relying on grocery delivery services during the coronavirus pandemic, Beyond Meat today launches an e-commerce site to sell its plant-based meat products directly to customers. The site will have some online items for sale and will serve as a sort of test kitchen for future products, said chief growth officer Charles Muth.
“It allows us to have direct conversations with our consumers and will be useful for consumers who do not live near a supermarket,” Muth said in an interview with The edge.
Faux meat products were a huge seller at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, with sales of products such as Tofurky and Beyond Meat up 264 percent. Sales of alternatives to fresh meat rose 206 percent in the first week of March and were up 279 percent at the end of March 14, according to Nielsen.
But it makes sense for Beyond to strive for new channels to sell their products outside the store; while U.S. grocery sales nearly tripled in the second quarter, the company reported a net loss of $ 10.2 million. And with many restaurants closing to meet social distance guidelines, Beyond spent about $ 6 million in product packaging in the second quarter, selling grocery stores instead of restaurants. However, the company posted $ 100 million in revenue in the second quarter, the first time it has reached that milestone.
Muth said that Beyond has focused its efforts not only on reaching vegetarian and vegan customers, but on the “flexitarist” who wants to eat less meat, whether for health or environmental reasons. “To target that audience, we had to change the approach,” he said; the products must be “saturated” and mimic the experience of eating meat. That differentiation is important, he adds, because the plant meat sector has become more robust in such a short period of time. “There’s so much more competition than just a few years ago.”
The Good Food Institute, a non-profit marketing organization, says between 2017 and 2019, sales of vegetable meat grew 38 percent, with the category worth about $ 939 million.
Beyond Meat’s new site, the company will also gain better customer insight, Muth said. “In the long run, we will use the site to introduce new products,” he said, giving customers the most dedicated space to try new burgers, sausages and other faux meat items and provide feedback.
Products ordered from the Beyond site are packaged in recyclable insulating shipping boxes, via UPS carbon-neutral shipping, the company says.
As for launching a new e-commerce site in today’s challenging economic climate, Muth said it is in line with the company’s business atmosphere. “It allows us to be flexible and fast, because we can recognize when the dynamics of the consumer are changing,” he said. “Every good company wants to find ways to understand what those changes are and what they will look like.”
