How Beyond Meat’s Marketing Strategy Set it Apart
Beyond Meat, the company that is making eating plant-based protein mainstream continues to grow at a fast pace. In 2021 Beyond Meat’s revenue increased by 14.2% to reach $464.7 million. Plant based burgers are not new but Beyond Meat has been able to capture more of the mainstream market. This is not by accident but instead by design. From the beginning Beyond Meat has viewed itself as a company that could take a typical meat eater and get them to consider a tasty alternative. If you are wondering how Beyond Meat has been able to make strides where others haven’t consider these four elements of its marketing strategy.
1. Expand the definition of your target market. From the beginning Beyond Meat had a vision for its business that was much broader than any of its predecessors. Although its products are plant based Beyond Meat’s marketing does not explicitly call that out. Instead, it avoids labelling its products as vegan even though they are. This makes a lot of sense since only 2.7% of packaged meat sales in the United States are plant based. Instead Beyond Meat fought for placement within the meat section of grocery stores. When grocery stores resisted this in the beginning Beyond Meat declined to place its product in those stores and decided to wait until a grocery store embraced its vision.
In 2016 Whole Foods decided to give the company a chance by placing Beyond Meat in its meat section. “This Beyond Meat Burger in particular cooks like a burger and looks like one,” said Joe Wood, who was the mid-Atlantic meat coordinator for Whole Foods Market at the time. “This is the first time a vegan meat alternative has been merchandised in the meat department at Whole Foods Market.” After that Beyond Meat started calling itself: “the world’s first plant-based burger sold in the meat case of U.S. grocery stores.”
Having the largest natural and organic food retailer in the United States take a chance on this relatively unknown brand gave other grocery retailers an incentive to try the same product placement in their stores.
Part of Beyond Meat’s strategy is to redefine what the best source of protein is. Who’s to say that it’s red meat? “People are perfectly happy eating vegan food as long as they don’t know that’s what they’re doing,” says Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat. “They only get anxious when they realize that they haven’t eaten something they’ve come to believe they need.”
Beyond Meat believes that protein is protein and consumers shouldn’t care if it comes from a plant or an animal. “The future is one where the meat case is going to be called the protein case and consumers will be able to buy plant-based and animal-based protein side by side,” said Ethan Brown, founder and CEO of Beyond Meat. “We are providing energy for the body and we can pull it from a lot of different places.” ”It represents what we feel is the first product that mainstream omnivores are willing to seek out and put at the center of their plate.”
This vision can be found throughout Beyond Meat’s marketing collateral. Here’s a post from Beyond Meat’s Facebook page:
There is no mention at all that the Even-Better Beyond Burger is plant based. Ads like this are created to convert the masses instead of targeting a niche market.
2. Tackle stereotypes about who your customers should be. Eating meat has long been associated with masculinity. There are countless advertisements with men barbequing burgers or hanging out with their friends as they bond over their favourite protein, read meat. Eating meat is associated with strength and power while a plant based diet is not, at least not for now.
There was also a long standing view which only recently has begun to change that veganism or vegetarianism will only be embraced by a narrow part of society. Back in 1988 when John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods tried to get funding to expand his company he was rejected by many venture capitalists. One venture capitalist even told Mackey this: “you know, John, I see you have got a pretty good business here, but it looks to me — I looked at all the stores — like you are a just a bunch of hippies and you are just selling food to other hippies and I don’t think that is a very big market.” He passed on investing in Whole Foods and ten years later that very same venture capitalist told Mackey that not investing in Whole Foods was the worst decision he had ever made.
With these headwinds Beyond Meat had to convince meat lovers that its products passed the test. One of the ways it did this was by creating burgers that look like meat burgers down to the meat actually bleeding. There’s no actual blood, instead beet juice is used but it does the trick. Beyond Meat burgers even have grill marks further convincing consumers that maybe it really is like meat. These features also convince consumers that Beyond Meat burgers are not your average veggie burgers which were never popular with mainstream consumers.
To show that Beyond Meat’s protein is just good as alternative protein on the market the brand has partnered with NBA players like Kyrie Irving and Chris Paul who are not only brand ambassadors but are also investors in the company. “We’ve tried to run straight at the question: is a plant-based meat sufficient for humans to be vital and robust,” says Brown. “Our marketing speaks very much to the ability for the highest-performing people in our society to perform not just as good, but better as result of the consumption of plant-based meat, particularly, our plant-based meat.”
3. Leverage partners with larger platforms to expand reach. You can find Beyond Meat in many places from small restaurants to national chains but what really accelerated its growth in the beginning was its partnership with Whole Foods. It provided Beyond Meat with one of the best forms of advertising, credibility. Landing in Whole Foods which takes the brands it allows in its doors seriously was a signal to both consumers and retail customers that Beyond Meat was a brand worth giving a chance. Without having that partnership in the beginning Beyond Meat may have floundered for many years trying to build a customer base on its own.
Another key marketing vehicle for the company is its partnerships with big brands like McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut. If you think about the first time you heard about Beyond Meat it very well many have been when the product launched at a large fast food chain. These launches create a lot of buzz and put Beyond the Meat on the map.
Beyond Meat entered into a partnership with PepsiCo. last year where it will: “develop, produce and market snacks and beverages made from plant-based protein — bringing together Beyond Meat’s innovation expertise with PepsiCo’s marketing and commercial capabilities.” PepsiCo is known for its marketing prowess and just working with PepsiCo will expand Beyond Meat’s reach.
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4. Create a great product. While consumer interest in protecting the environment or having a healthier lifestyle continues to grow it doesn’t always mean consumption follows. Some of the largest retailers in the world including Zara and H&M are in the fast fashion business which is not environmentally friendly. But consumers shop there because the low price points allow them to have a constant rotation of outfits. A lot of that clothing ends up in landfills which proves that the product often matters more than the social cause a customer is interested in.
If Beyond Meat created the healthiest plant based products that don’t taste very good then it wouldn’t be in business very long. When it comes to social causes brands still need to remember if the product isn’t good no social cause, no matter how important can save it.
A staff member at Business Insider that cooked and reviewed a Beyond Meat burger at home said this about it: “overall, it was tasty and juicy, unlike most veggie burgers which can often taste closer to cardboard than beef.” Marketing is always easier when you have a great product because you don’t have to try quite as hard to get people to try it as consumption spreads more organically over time via. word of mouth.
Beyond Meat’s real breakthrough is not landing in the meat aisle or having celebrity endorsements but creating a plant based product people actually want to eat.