Beyond Meat Is Struggling, and the Plant-Based Meat Industry Worries

But privately held Impossible Foods said demand for its products grew tremendously last year.

“We’re not experiencing anything like what Beyond Meat has reported or some of the other brands in the space,” Keely Sulprizio, a spokeswoman for Impossible Foods, said in an email. “Quite the opposite: We’re seeing hypergrowth, with over 60 percent year-over-year dollar sales growth in retail alone.”

The IRI data show that while volume sales of Impossible ground meat and faux burger patties were down slightly, volumes of other categories, including frozen faux meat and chicken, soared.

“We launched in frozen more recently with a larger family size, and it’s been very popular with both retailers and consumers,” Ms. Sulprizio said.

In a call with Wall Street analysts in early November, Ethan Brown, the founder and chief executive of Beyond Meat, said an increasing number of plant-based meat players were battling for a smaller group of consumers as shoppers traded down to less-expensive animal proteins. As a result, “a shakeout does appear to be underway, and we expect more brands to either retreat or consolidate,” Mr. Brown said. Beyond Meat declined to comment for this article beyond the call with analysts.

While the company hoped to restore growth to its refrigerated products, which have some of the highest profit margins, Mr. Brown noted that it was expanding distribution for many of its frozen products.

“Frozen plant-based chicken is the largest single subcategory in all of plant-based meats and continues to grow at a double-digit pace,” he said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/business/beyond-meat-industry.html