From Yahoo Finance:
Just a few years ago, the rise of plant-based meat seemed inevitable. Major grocery stores and fast food joints started adding these faux meat alternatives to their product mix as consumer demand skyrocketed.
Now the boom has ended. The novelty has faded while the fake meat has taken center stage in the ongoing backlash against corporate “wokeness.”
The sudden reversal of this trend highlights several economic factors that impact consumers and investors alike. Here’s a closer look.
The 'wokeness' backlashWhile the term “woke” first popped up in the Black American community, it had grown into a global phenomenon as a catch-all term for everything relating to awareness of racial and social justice matters.Part of the reason the term is so widely used and loosely defined is that corporate entities have embraced it so thoroughly. Organizations like Whole Foods, Pinterest and Adidas adopted the trend to restructure everything from human resources to marketing campaigns — a phenomenon the Harvard Business Review has dubbed “woke washing.”
Plant-based meat companies are closely associated with this phenomenon. Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods mention “climate change” and “animal welfare” several times on their website and in corporate reports.
The marketing strategy worked initially, driving double-digit annual sales for both companies and major brand partnerships. However, the growing cynicism about woke capitalism has upended this strategy. Recent data from Information Resources Inc., or IRI, suggests that fake meat sales are declining in 2022, while analysis from Deloitte Consulting LLP. indicates that the market may already be saturated in the U.S....
....MUCH MORE
The term woke morphed from the "aware" meaning it had in black communities to loudly trumpeting one's wokeness, along the way giving rise to our epigrammatic description:
"The less virtue, the more signaling."
I blame suburban white women.
We've chronicled our adventures in Beyond Meat since the IPO and in particular for the last year, many of the links are gathered in September 20's "Following On The News That Beyond Meat's COO Is Not Just A Carnivore But A Cannibal.... (BYND)":
This has been a fun one:
Here's the latest on their largest competitor, privately held Impossible Foods, via the San Francisco Chronicle
Impossible Foods to eliminate 6% of staff in second round of layoffs this year
Impossible raised $2+ billion (I think they are up to the "H" or "I" round) from some big-time venture types. Temasek, Bill Gates, Li Ka-shing, Khosla, Google Ventures etc. but in their press releases they highlighted:
Impossible Foods’ existing individual investors include Jay Brown, Common, Kirk Cousins, Paul George, Peter Jackson, Jay-Z, Mindy Kaling, Trevor Noah, Alexis Ohanian, Kal Penn, Katy Perry, Questlove, Ruby Rose, Phil Rosenthal, Jaden Smith, Serena Williams, will.i.am and Zedd.I am unfamiliar with Zedd's investing track record but with a name like "Z" as in zero you'd have to think his IRR isn't that impressive. Stick to music bub.
