Plant based meat is seeing is on the
struggle bus. Yeah.
Listen, I think that the sector's challenged, but I think it's not
representative and a bit lazy just to paint a general picture.
Right. They're green shoots and they're brands
that are doing well. We're doing well.
We're growing double digits, but we don't like the sector in the
category being where it is. And there's a lot of reasons why there
are a lot of companies that are making food that's not great food.
There's 200 plant based companies in America, probably only need three or
two. So there's a lot of small companies
making not so great food and people are having bad first impressions.
And then I think it was launched incorrectly from the beginning.
It was very climate, it was very zealot. There was a lot of rhetoric.
It was anti cattle industry. So it got political, it got woke, it got
by coastal, academic, elitist. So that all has to stop.
Right. And we want to encourage meat eaters to
try our food. But if you don't go that route to sorry
on the street, that's okay. That's kind of the woke idea.
I mean, it seemed like that was the core audience.
At least that was the perception was, yes, that was a core audience.
If you're not selling it from that perspective and that ethos, then how do
you sell that? What is are you encouragement?
So in the end, if you look at plant based, it's about seven and a half
billion dollars globally, two and a half billion dollars in the US.
Pretty small, right? Chicken, beef, pork, breakfast, lunch,
dinner, animal meat is 1.4 trillion. So the value proposition this only works
is if you encourage meat eaters. By the way, a 5% share of 1.4 trillion
is pretty good. And so, no, I'm not interested in
stealing share from other plant based companies.
That's not going to move the needle from a value perspective, from a revenue
perspective. But it's also not from a mission
perspective, because if you're trying to have less water, less trees, less GHG,
it only works if you're displacing animal.
So I think that got all muddled as well. So we just need to clear this up and
understand who the target audiences and speak to them in a respectful, inviting
way, not an insulting way, which is what I think was done in the past.
If you want to take some say you were able to draw some meat eaters into
the plant lists, burgers like you're talking about.
Do you have to compete on price? Is that where the value is helpful?
So I think you have to compete on two things.
First, it's got to be delicious, because if it's not delicious, you're asking
people to compromise food and food you eat because you like the taste of it.
Secondly, it's got to be three things. Secondly, it's gotta be nutritious.
This is zero cholesterol meat. This is 50 to 75% less saturated fat,
more fiber, more protein. So there's a nutrition part of it that's
not been articulated well. And then you've got to be price
competitive. So we're on average about a dollar to a
dollar 50 less than grass fed organic. But we are premium to what what I would
call the well, you know, in the Saran wrap cellophane stuff.
So we have more work to do. But we brought our prices down 20% in
the last year and a half. And the animal meat on average, if you
look at the data, they're up anywhere between 18 and 22% because input costs
are up and labor costs are up. And and, you know, they've called their
herds because of drought and famine and stuff like that.
What about your costs? We've gone down.
Ten have gone down. Yeah.
In a year and a half. Meaning the cost to produce something.
Yes. Yes.
And a lot of this could do with scale and sourcing better and things like
that. But there's still work to be done.
We are premium to the base animal meat, but we are now less than grass, wood
organic, which is huge. So it's moving in the right direction.
More work to do for sure. When you look at the the fast food
areas, right. I feel like a lot of hype was made about
ooh, you can get impossible burgers or beyond meat at different fast food
places. Now I don't see that as much any more.
What do you do about that? Yeah.
I mean, yes and no. We're at every Burger King.
You mentioned Burger King, so we're like 5500 Burger King's with the Whopper.
And I feel as like, I mean, I wish I just had one at the airport the other
day, and it was pretty prominent on the menu board.
And that's a really good the Whopper. You know, it's not a vegan burger.
It's good cheese and special sauce on it.
Yeah, we are at Starbucks, 15,000 Starbucks with the impossible sausage
sandwich, which is one of their bestselling and it's great sandwich.
Not a vegan. It's got egg and cheese on it.
We're at Applebee's IHOP, you know, so we're chipping away and we're in a lot
of independence burger, burger and things like that.
So again, we're in 48,000 foodservice locations, so we're number one in food
service and plant based, but there's 1.4 million, 1.4 million.
So we have we have a lot of work to do. I am curious how you.
Yeah, well, let's talk about that. I'm curious how you manage the company
specifically right now. You're still a private company.
You kind of came on the scene at the same time around the same time, Sure.
Beyond Meat, which of course went the public route.
There were a lot of questions as when impossible was going to go public.
Are there still plans for that or do you kind of relish being a private company
and maybe not having that sort of sausage grinder, pun intended, of being
in the public? Yes.
No, I think it's a great question. Yeah, we're lucky enough to be pretty
well capitalized right now. We raised a lot of money over the years.
Ever since I've taken over as CEO, I've I.
Invested in the brand. We just launched a huge advertising
campaign, but I haven't spent on silly stuff and we've extended our cash flow
so we don't need to go public in the near future, which I think is a really
good position to be in. I don't think the public markets are
great right now. I don't think the IPO market's great
right now. And also I think we'll go public when
we're prepared and we're ready. Yeah, I think things were rushed maybe
in the past and we don't need to rush, luckily.
That said, it would be nice to go public at some point on our own terms to, you
know, further capitalize and cement the legacy of the company.
So what's the expansion plan, though? Is it just to sell more patties and
sausages, or is there like an expansion of the product line?
Like what? What's in your.
Yeah, So we've expanded, you know, we have a whole chicken portfolio we never
had. We just launched a hot dog and we're at
Duke University and we were at, I was at a White Sox stadium for opening day.
Yeah, we have 50 SKUs now, so we have enough SKUs.
We have chicken, beef, pork, breakfast, lunch, dinner.
Now it is to get them distributed. So we're in 48,000 and at 1.4 million
foodservice locations, we have under a thousand total distribution points at
retail and they're 9000 distribution points.
So there's just a lot of upside. We're in first gear.
It's nobody's fault. Yeah, and we have 15% awareness.
85% of the country hasn't heard of us. And the last thing I'll say is 6%
household penetration. So 94% of Americans yet to try and
impossible products. So the way I look at it, what keeps me
up at night is the opportunity, not the cynicism.
I mean, this is you know, and by the way, you can expand awareness through
paid advertising. You can expand household penetration
through more distribution. Food companies do this every day.
So that right things we need to do are not high math, right?
Crazy things. But you're not doing a whole lot of
advertising right now. Right?
We just launched well, we did a campaign over the summer, which is the first time
we've ever done advertising, and we just launched last week at the Met Gala, a
massive campaign, our biggest and plant based, the biggest.
So we'll see. It's going to be a three month long
campaign. Did you get an invite to the Met gala
for that? I got it.
I got an invite to the pre met. Yeah.
Yeah. You got to work in a little bit.
Yeah. Which I which which I rejected.
Yeah. You can't get to the real one or get it.
I mean you know we feel that.
