We are meat-eaters and have been trying lots of plant-based products. I was never sold as them being health products, but I liked the (presumed) environmental benefits. Plus, I could make a single meal for me and my Vegan friends.
Plant-based meats were supposed to be cheaper. But it never happened. So now we've mostly moved back to normal meat products. (It doesn't help that my vegan friends never stopped thumbing their nose down at the products).
I'm very disappointed in the cost as well. It hasn't come down at all. Not just the fake meat, but even tofu. But the cost isn't the main issue to me anymore, over the years I've come to realize I don't want to support the meat industry where profits rule everything. So I grudgingly pay the higher price of Beyond Meat.
And to be honest, it's not that much more expensive, for my particular budget. Two Beyond Meat burgers cost € 3.93, and two beef burgers cost € 2.75.
Exactly. Most burger chains don't use high quality meat for their burgers. You go to McDonald's, Burger King, or whatever and you are getting a greasy grey slab of ground "meat" (let's not think to long about where that comes from) that is 1) very thin 2) a bit rubbery 3) not that tasty 4) has some filler content in addition to meat and fat. To cover that up, most burger chains use lots of sauce, salt, and spices. It's called fast food for a reason. You eat it and you walk away mildly disappointed with the whole experience. Not that hard to compete with with a vegan option of any kind. It will taste different, and probably better by any objective standard. But when the baseline is kind of bland and boring to begin with, the benchmark for good enough isn't that high.
The beyond burger is actually fine for that segment. I've had a few. They are alright. But I don't crave a beyond burger any more than I do a big mac. It's just bland fast food to me. I'll munch it away if I'm hungry and there's nothing else but it's not particularly good or excellent.
It's miles apart from a good quality premium burger that is made of ground meat from a good cut of meat. You grill it medium, medium rare. Grease dripping all over the place when you eat it, etc. Much harder to compete with that. Now that's something I enjoy eating once in a while.
The problem is that things like the beyond burger are somewhat better than a cheap fast food burger but not really in the same league as a really premium burger. But they are priced like one. So that narrows down the audience to people that actually like meat but feel guilty about it and want to pay more to eat less of it. These people exist of course but it's a relatively small group of people. I just try to eat other things than meat to cut down on meat consumption. Works fine for me.
It comes from a normal farm and they are actually quite thorough in validating the cow was healthy. Source: Parents had a farm in europe and mc donalds inspected it.
That's an important part of the answer (if not the answer) and should have been highlighted in OP. We've had a bit of inflation lately. Food in particular has become more expensive. Maybe this doesn't affect the average HNer much, but it absolutely does affect a lot of others. At the margins, which is where markets are made, quite a lot of people who might have bought plant-based meats won't at these prices.
We are meat-eaters and have been trying lots of plant-based products. I was never sold as them being health products, but I liked the (presumed) environmental benefits. Plus, I could make a single meal for me and my Vegan friends.
Plant-based meats were supposed to be cheaper. But it never happened. So now we've mostly moved back to normal meat products. (It doesn't help that my vegan friends never stopped thumbing their nose down at the products).