I’d say driving prices down was as big a priority and potentially more easily achieved.
Taste might not be there for connoisseurs of the finest steaks, but plenty of bland meat products sell in volume. Alternative proteins can match stuff like nuggets effortlessly, but tend to cost at least twice as much, (as well as being in a different corner of the store alongside products that intentionally taste mostly of peas and beans, which is a potential hurdle no matter how authentic your meat alternative tastes)
I agree—AI estimates we could get cost parity to beef burgers by building a 100,000 tonne dry per year factory that is far larger than anything out there now (~2% of global burgers) (more like paper factory size). But that would cost close to $1B. I’m pretty sure that 2% of consumers would accept current taste of plant based burgers if they were slightly cheaper, but that’s a big investment.
Interesting numbers (although with it being AI, I wonder if it’s derived from substantive research others might have done or if they’re purely arbitrary figures hallucinated to fill the gap).
A single factory making 2% of global burgers sounds like an implausibly large factory, but I don’t see why it would actually need to be that big to achieve cost parity. There isn’t a massive R&D cost (cf cultured meats and some alternative proteins) and most of the ingredients I’m aware of are available in bulk at relatively low cost. Of course there is also a wide disparity between burgers to achieve cost parity with and wholesale and retail prices. Being cheaper than the cheapest brand probably isn’t necessary, being cheaper than the most expensive burgers brands which market themselves based on meat quality (which I think has already been achieved) probably isn’t sufficient
Thanks David! Just noting that I agree that cost is important (my bad that this didn’t come out clearer in the text above). If helpful, in the rubric for the RFP 3 out of 4 areas weigh cost at roughly 20-30% in our assessment (though it’s of course up for debate whether that is the right number or it should be higher). Also, agree that plenty of bland products sell in volume—the problem is that even matching bland products often requires expensive patch jobs like flavour masks to cover off-notes in the base protein—and this often adds costs (hence the off-flavour track in the RFP)
I’d say driving prices down was as big a priority and potentially more easily achieved.
Taste might not be there for connoisseurs of the finest steaks, but plenty of bland meat products sell in volume. Alternative proteins can match stuff like nuggets effortlessly, but tend to cost at least twice as much, (as well as being in a different corner of the store alongside products that intentionally taste mostly of peas and beans, which is a potential hurdle no matter how authentic your meat alternative tastes)
I agree—AI estimates we could get cost parity to beef burgers by building a 100,000 tonne dry per year factory that is far larger than anything out there now (~2% of global burgers) (more like paper factory size). But that would cost close to $1B. I’m pretty sure that 2% of consumers would accept current taste of plant based burgers if they were slightly cheaper, but that’s a big investment.
Interesting numbers (although with it being AI, I wonder if it’s derived from substantive research others might have done or if they’re purely arbitrary figures hallucinated to fill the gap).
A single factory making 2% of global burgers sounds like an implausibly large factory, but I don’t see why it would actually need to be that big to achieve cost parity. There isn’t a massive R&D cost (cf cultured meats and some alternative proteins) and most of the ingredients I’m aware of are available in bulk at relatively low cost. Of course there is also a wide disparity between burgers to achieve cost parity with and wholesale and retail prices. Being cheaper than the cheapest brand probably isn’t necessary, being cheaper than the most expensive burgers brands which market themselves based on meat quality (which I think has already been achieved) probably isn’t sufficient
Thanks David! Just noting that I agree that cost is important (my bad that this didn’t come out clearer in the text above). If helpful, in the rubric for the RFP 3 out of 4 areas weigh cost at roughly 20-30% in our assessment (though it’s of course up for debate whether that is the right number or it should be higher). Also, agree that plenty of bland products sell in volume—the problem is that even matching bland products often requires expensive patch jobs like flavour masks to cover off-notes in the base protein—and this often adds costs (hence the off-flavour track in the RFP)