After months of unclarity, finally there was the news last week around McDonald’s McPlant platform. McDonald’s has reached a global strategic agreement with Beyond Meat (hereafter BYND).
McPlant Platform
The press release mentioned the following:
‘…As part of the agreement, Beyond Meat® will be McDonald’s preferred supplier for the patty in the McPlant®, a new plant-based burger being tested in select McDonald’s markets globally. In addition, Beyond Meat and McDonald’s will explore co-developing other plant-based menu items – like plant-based options for chicken, pork and egg – as part of McDonald’s broader McPlant® platform. […] This announcement further solidifies the relationship between McDonald’s and Beyond Meat, which began in 2019 with the Canadian test of a sandwich made with Beyond Meat’s plant-based patty.’
Beyond Meat
Somewhere in July of 2018 we witnessed the rollout of the Beyond burger 1.0 across A&W’s Canada (large fastfood chain) ourselves. And I remember pulling over for lunch in Lillooet (British Columbia, Canada) all too well. This was one of the rare moments on our road-trip that we chose A&W for lunch. Upon entering the sign read: “Beyond Burger SOLD OUT”. It had just only been launched for a week or so. And yet, it was sold out just like that. That has only been 2.5yrs to date (!). To me it feels much longer than that with all that happened next. With that being said, following their recent strategic alignment with PepsiCo weeks prior, BYND also announced a Global Strategic Partnership with Yum! Brands (KFC / Pizza Hut / Taco Bell) last week.
Say what you want, but BYND is going all-in with three major industry leaders. Both in retail as well as in foodservice / QSR. BYND’s next goal is turning its EPS-loss into an EPS-profit! Bear in mind that even posting red figures, BYND’s market capitalization (62.5million shares X $150/share) is north of $9bn (!).
See my previous posts mentioning BYND:
Giants Joining Forces in Plant-Based
Eat Just Inc.
CNBC Make It series covered the story of Eat Just’s lab-grown chicken (meat), available in Singapore. Founder & CEO Josh Tetrick’s ideas was ‘… to start a food company that takes the animal, the live animal, out of the equation of the food system.’ And he ‘started out in 2011 with only $3,000 in his bank account’. Eat Just is estimated to be valued at around $2 billion, based on the funding that it is seeking (info according to Bloomberg). The company is backed by investors including Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund and Bill Gates’ VC firm Gates Ventures and Singapore’s Temasek. Eat Just Inc. is likely to be filing for an IPO (listing at the stock exchange) in the course of this year.
After Asia Singapore they are actively seeking regulatory approval in both the US as well as Europe.
See my latest LinkedIn post here.
Source: CNBC Make It, Euromonitor