“Get ready for boredom,” reports Rabobank’s Senior Consumer Foods Analyst, Tom Bailey, because smaller, safer innovations are ahead for disruptive food products like plant-based meat alternatives, precision fermented products, insect products, and fat replacers. Many of these breakthrough products just haven’t thrived the way companies and investors hoped they would.
Rising interest rates, labor shortages, changes in consumer buying habits, and other current challenges have hindered the growth of disrupters and turned attention toward products with profitability potential. So instead of trying to create hype around novel, revolutionary products, companies are making incremental innovations, such as improving product taste and packaging, simplifying the supply chain, and finding ways to cut costs.
Plant-based growth depends on better nutrition, less “meat-mimicking”
In a separate report, JP Frossard, RaboResearch’s Consumer Foods Analyst, specifically highlights a slowdown in sales of plant-based meat alternatives. Though sales have remained steady as consumers seek healthier, more sustainable, and animal-friendly foods, they’re not what they once were. After achieving 47% growth in 2020, the category’s retail dollar sales fell 9% in the first quarter of this year.
Frossard’s report suggests that companies try a different approach to boosting sales and winning over mainstream consumers, one that focuses on the healthfulness of plant-based products, not their ability to match meat’s taste and texture.
Consumers aren’t yet sold on the nutritional value of plant-based products, especially amid concerns about ultraprocessed foods. So cleaning up and simplifying ingredients and turning conversations toward how both plants and meat support a healthy, balanced diet will help drive future success in the plant-based meat space.
