By Lorrie Baumann

Products like the Impossible Burger, which uses soy protein to mimic meat, have turned plant-based foods from a niche alternative into an option that appeals to mainstream consumers, according to Jim Wisner, President of the Wisner Marketing Group, a consultant with more than 30 years of experience in the food and grocery industries who addressed attendees of the Private Label Manufacturers Association’s annual trade show in November, 2019.

He now tracks plant-based foods and the consumers who buy them. “This is only in the last six months that all this has happened,” he said, noting that consumers can now find plant-based meat alternatives among the offerings at fast-food restaurants around the country.

“We had the opportunity to get involved a few years ago, right before Beyond Meat got launched,” he said. “Our assessment at that time was that it was going to become either a very large niche or kind of entry-level mainstream. It, quite frankly, has exceeded all that. People have gotten excited about this.”

Much of today’s interest in the plant-based foods market is in meat alternatives rather than in other plant-based categories such as dairy alternatives, even though the dairy alternatives are still a substantially bigger category, Wisner said. Growing your own protein has become a theme for many consumers who are seeing their plant-based choices in the context of the dietary regimes and the lifestyle that they’ve adopted. “That’s kind of a shift, really,” Wisner said.

The market is currently growing by double digits, and is now at about $4.5 billion, for the total U.S. plant-based market, according to the Good Food Institute, which reported data obtained by SPINS. Dollar sales of plant-based foods grew 11 percent in the past year (ending April 2019) and 31 percent over the past two years. The market for plant-based meats has been projected to be worth about $3 billion by 2024, with some projections substantially larger than that, according to Wisner.

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A few companies are even pursuing strategies for creating “meat” out of air and water. “They can create protein powders that you can make meat analogs out of,” Wisner said. San Francisco Bay-area start-up Air Protein uses a proprietary probiotic process to make protein that can be used to make meatless burgers and more out of the basic elements found in air. This “meat” made with air-based protein is produced without the traditional land, water and weather requirements, according to the company. This marks the first time in history air-based meat has been created. “By transforming elements of the air we breathe into protein, this will revolutionize how we approach food production in the future,” the company said in a November statement to the press. The process to create this new form of protein uses elements found in the air and is combined with water and mineral nutrients. It uses renewable energy and a probiotic production process to convert the elements into a nutrient-rich protein with the same amino acid profile as an animal protein and packed with crucial B vitamins, which are often deficient in a vegan diet. “The statistics are clear. Our current resources are under extreme strain, as evidenced by the burning Amazon due to deforestation and steadily increasing droughts. We need to produce more food with a reduced dependency on land and water resources. Air-based meat addresses these resource issues and more,” said Air Protein Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Lisa Dyson. “The world is embracing plant-based meat, and we believe air-based meat is the next evolution of the sustainably-produced food movement that will serve as one of the solutions to feeding a growing population without putting a strain on natural resources.”

“Somebody’s now going to make food from electricity,” Wisner added. “The science is kind of intriguing. All of these might be very viable technologies going down the road. We don’t know which ones will hold.”

Many of these companies are courting retailers as the “market-takers” for this product category. Kroger was out very fast with its plant-based lines, Safeway has private-label meat alternatives, and Wegman’s has introduced its house brands, Don’t Have a Cow, Don’t Be Chicken and Don’t Be A Piggy, Wisner noted. Other markets also have their own lines. “We have retailers going to market, not after the market is established, but while it’s coming,” Wisner said.

However, while the market as a whole is moving towards clean-label, these products are highly processed, with long ingredient lists. “It has to be highly processed to work,” Wisner said. “You get into this construct that meets a lot of lifestyle kinds of trends that are going on, but at the same time, it walks away from some.”

Wisner noted that these products may or may not be better for consumers, although there are certainly some perceived environmental benefits. “At the end of the day, with one glaring difference,” he said. “They’re pretty much like ground beef – other than for sodium…. That’s a challenge going forward.”