A new era in the ‘meat culture wars’

Note: Transcripts are automatically generated from episode audio, and are not fully corrected for spelling, grammar, and formatting.

PETER MCGUINNESS: I strongly believe that we all, in plant-based meat, have to completely overhaul and change how we go to market, how we communicate, and how we product develop.

We’re not going to out advertise and outspend the meat industry. We need to outsmart them. And we’re better together than we are apart. 

I do speak regularly to many other plant-based CEOs. They’re not the competition. If I steal from the eight-billion dollar pie, and don’t go after the 1.4 trillion dollar pie, we haven’t advanced the value of the company for our shareholders, and we sure haven’t advanced climate.

So that’s why I tell everyone: “The industry’s dead? It hasn’t even gotten started.” 

BOB SAFIAN: That’s Peter McGuinness, CEO of Impossible Foods. Peter was on Rapid Response two years ago when the plant-based industry was surging. Today the industry is struggling, or “correcting” as Peter puts it. But he says that’s not a bad thing. Speaking live on stage at Climatech 2024 in Boston, Peter talks plainly about how Impossible is responding to the “meat culture war,” the missteps that have plagued plant-based players, and what he’s doing to tell a better story about a huge opportunity. Even if you’re not interested in the food space, Peter offers valuable insights about evolving a brand, admitting your mistakes, and more. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response. 

I’m Bob Safian, and I’m here with Peter McGuinness of Impossible Foods at the ClimaTech 2024 in Boston. Peter, it’s great to be here with you.

MCGUINNESS: Good to be here, Bob.

SAFIAN: So, the climate conversation usually centers around fossil fuels, renewable energy, electric vehicles. Food and agriculture — not so much. And that’s something you’re trying to change?

MCGUINNESS: Yeah, definitely trying to change, it’s not top of mind. It’s not directly linked. And so it’s an education process, it’s a complicated thing.

SAFIAN: I mean, people don’t understand what the impact of agriculture and food is on climate. 

MCGUINNESS: And they certainly don’t think about it when they’re having a burger, they’re having a steak or they’re having a hot dog. They’re not sitting there saying, “Oh, there’s more land being and there’s more water being used. There’s more GHG being admitted.” Gotta like the hotdog. It’s a moment. I’m having a moment at a baseball game. I’m having a beer with it. It’s fun.

I don’t think people want to bring a heaviness to their food either. It’s complicated.

Copy LinkExplaining the decline of the plant-based food industry

SAFIAN: So two years ago you appeared on my podcast and at that point there was lots of enthusiasm and kind of a tailwind behind plant-based foods, plant-based meat in particular, and since then things have kind of cooled, sales have slowed for the industry by double digits. These kinds of struggles, were these things that you expected? Anticipated? Surprised by? 

MCGUINNESS: Well, first of all, it’s just a coincidence that I’m CEO now, and things have cooled. No, we saw it coming, I think I wouldn’t call it cool. I would call it maybe a correction. I think, you know, when the stock market, you know, goes down a thousand points, is that cool or is it just overheated? And so I think some of the novelty is wearing off. I think some of it was a bit overblown. And so some of it’s a correction. Some of it is cooling, and some of it is a reality that we need to change. So we saw it coming. We didn’t know the depth and degree. And it’s really up to us to reverse it, right? And not be a victim. But, yeah, the category’s down, the sector’s down, bit of a cloud around it for a whole host of reasons and it’s not good.

SAFIAN: You said at one point, I feel good about where we are, I don’t feel good about where the category is. Can you explain what you mean by that? 

MCGUINNESS: Yeah. I think, look, you always want a growing category, because you want that pie to be bigger. And in this case, you want plant-base to be bigger, because that means the animal industry will be smaller. And you’re actually moving the needle on animal welfare and climate change. We’re doing well, that’s not, you know, an award I want to win. I don’t want to be the fastest and only growing plant-based meat company in America. I’d actually like us all to grow, but I don’t want everyone else declining and us the only one up. I don’t think that’s a great 

My interest is not to steal share from other plant-based meat in the 8 billion global space, it’s really to go after the 1.4 trillion addressable animal market. Chicken, beef, pork — globally, 1. 4 trillion. That’s the market, right? That’s going to drive the value for the company. It’s going to drive the value for the consumer. It’s going to drive the value for the planet. And we don’t need to rearrange the deck chairs within plant-based.

And unfortunately, there’s a little bit of that happening. We’re way, way up in share, and it’s coming from other plant-based companies, but that’s not the intent, that’s not the goal, that’s not sustainable, nor is it the end state.

Copy LinkRefuting the idea that plant-based meat isn’t healthy

SAFIAN: So this correction, I want to ask you a little bit more about it, because I feel like there are two main drivers that have emerged, one about health and one about politics. So for first: health. There’s been pushback that plant-based diets may not be healthy or as healthy, you know, I’ve even heard this from family members, and I’m not sure where they’re getting it from, although maybe they’re getting it from the meat industry. How has that happened? How have you let it happen? Is it true?

MCGUINNESS: Yeah, sure, it is the elephant in the room. I don’t know that we let it happen, but it happened. So maybe we did let it happen.Look, I think, you know, it’s a bit of a smear campaign. There’s a lot of myths around what plant-based meat is and what it isn’t. And the meat industry threw a couple terms, they throw a lot of things around, but there’s a few that stuck, and we need to admit it as an industry. ‘Fake-faux-processed,’ they stuck. You say it enough, people will believe it.

And so they just keep hammering away at that. And we’ve done a really bad job of refuting it. So, is our stuff not healthy? No, that’s complete BS. It’s made from plants. And I don’t want to get into a war with the animal industry, because I don’t think that’s the way to grow plant-based, but, you know, meat is an animal. We’re made from soybeans from a seed that was put in the earth and that’s harvested. And you know, we also hear our stuff’s bad for you. It’s from China and all that stuff. It’s all grown in America and made in America.

And look, we have as much if not more in some protein than the animal product. We have as much if not more iron, we have more fiber, we have zero cholesterol, and we have half the saturated fat so you’re going to tell me that Impossible Burgers are not healthy compared to the animal product? I mean, it’s kind of ridiculous. But again, we need to play offense and set the record straight and we have not done that individually as Impossible, we have not done that collectively as a category. So it’s a bit of a shame on to us, and we are starting now to put the gloves on and fight fire with fire, but we’ve let it happen for too long and it has hurt this industry.

SAFIAN: Your industry colleagues or competitors, however you want to talk about it.

MCGUINNESS: Let’s go with colleagues.

SAFIAN: So at Beyond Meat, they have chosen to reformulate their product and bring in sort of medical experts to attest to its healthiness. Now, your beef light was recently certified by the American Heart Association, but you haven’t leaned in in the same way in like, ‘Oh, we have a new formulation.’ Why is that?

MCGUINNESS: Listen, I think, you know, and I admire Beyond Meat, and I want them to, you know, succee,d and everyone has their own playbook. You know, I’ve been in the food industry a long time. Reformulating your food is always not the wisest, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t because some people liked it the way it wa.s So that’s a risk. Look we’re on Burger 4.0 right now. We’re not reformulating. We’re just revising, curating 

I think that’s continuous improvement. I think that’s just smart, good business. Medical experts are fine. In the end of the day, it’s food, people want it to be delicious first.

So the way I kind of look at this, and I think we’ve gotten it all wrong for so long, is look, we’re making delicious food. If you want to go down the rabbit hole of animal welfare, and climate, and GHG, and trees land, and all that kind of stuff, we can do that. There’s very few people that want to, but everybody wants good nutritious food, you can’t argue with that. So we’re focusing a little bit more on taste, followed by nutrition. Because if it doesn’t taste good, it is a non-starter.

SAFIAN: To me the stickiest critique in some ways is that word you mentioned — ‘processed.’ Because of course it is processed and it will always be processed because you’re taking something that is a plant!

MCGUINNESS: 70 percent of the grocery store is processed. So it’s a very clever word, right? So you go to any grocery store, 70 percent of the store will have a processed food. The way I define processed is food that doesn’t deliver any value. So, a Twinkie’s — there’s nothing good about a Twinkie, but it delivers no nutritional value and it’s highly artificial. Right? Now that to me is the textbook definition of processed. To your point, anything that’s derived from something is technically processed. Which is why it’s a very clever word they chose.

Copy LinkHow plant-based foods has become political

SAFIAN: Alright, so I wanted to go to the second point, which is about politics, or what has been referred to sometimes as the ‘meat culture wars.’ The idea that eating plant-based food is a political statement, right? I mean, I first noticed this, I think it was 2022 when Cracker Barrel started offering your Impossible Sausage and there was like this social media uproar over it. I’m sure you remember this moment. What did you hear? What did you do? How did this come to you?

MCGUINNESS: I mean, flash in the pan or upward, I’m not sure, I think it was pretty quick. Look, I think this goes back to how the plant-based industry was launched and created. It was launched as an industry against something. We are against the cattle industry. We are against cattle farmers. We are against the slaughter cartel. And it was very politicized, very politically charged. It was very partisan. And it pissed a lot of people off and it was very polarizing. Regular people in America were like, ‘Oh, that’s just the elitists, and that’s the coasts, and that’s the academia.’

SAFIAN: And it is more expensive, right?

MCGUINNESS: But it’s coming down, so animals have gone up 20 percent in the last year and a half, and we’ve gone down 20 percent.

But so you know, the industry should be for something. We’re making better food for more people. We’re putting good options for people to try. I don’t have a problem with cattle farmers. They’re hard working people. America doesn’t want a civil war, it’s just silly. So let’s be inclusive. Let’s invite meat eaters to try our products because we believe in our products and we think they’re delicious. Let’s not insult them. Let’s not judge them for eating meat. People have been eating meat for thousands of years. And oh, by the way, it was also launched as an either-or. If you eat meat, you’re a neanderthal and you don’t get it, and you’re stupid. Almost the majority of America are flexitarians. And I knew this, you know, when we launched Oat Milk at Chobani. And we see a lot of Impossible folks, you know, five burgers a month is what the average American consumes. If two of them were impossible, your cholesterol would go down by 50 points and we’d grow 500 percent. The scale is so large, you don’t have to say, stop eating an animal burger. Start incorporating this into your diet. 

See if you like. And so just how we went about it was all wrong. It was very judgmental, and it was kind of angry, and there was a lot of rhetoric, and frankly, a lot of zealot behavior, and it didn’t work. So we have to kind of change the playbook in our messaging and how we communicate and behave and talk to people.

SAFIAN: There is a candor in Peter’s assessment of his own business that provides a lesson for all of us. What are your assumptions about yourself, and are they correct? Sometimes we need to re-examine our perspective, so we can strengthen those things that pass the test and reframe those that don’t. Especially if you’re trying to be a disruptor, like plant-based meat is. After the break, Peter explains why emphasizing the climate-advantages of plant-based food has backfired and how Impossible leverages retail partners like Burger King and Starbucks. Stay with us. 

[AD BREAK]

SAFIAN: Before the break, Impossible Foods’ CEO Peter McGuinness talked about how Impossible is battling the meat industry while wooing meat-eaters. Now, Peter shares lessons he learned from marketing oat milk for Chobani, and how he balances patience and impatience in his strategy. Let’s get back into it. 

Copy LinkWhy the messaging around plant-based food shouldn’t lead with climate

You mentioned your work at Chobani with Oat Milk, and your background is as a marketer. You guys recently launched a marketing campaign this spring, which doesn’t focus on health claims. It doesn’t focus on environmental claims, particularly. You know, you moved from green packaging even, right? Are there things that you learned when you’re marketing oat milk at a Chobani that you’re applying here about sort of the way to attract hearts and minds and bellies? 

MCGUINNESS: Well, listen, I think, you know, we didn’t launch oat milk at Chobani against the dairy industry because 99 percent of our business is dairy.

SAFIAN: Right.

MCGUINNESS: So, we actually called oat milk, ‘lactose free milk.’

Who the hell likes lactose? Whether you’re a vegetarian, vegan, or consume animal products. We could launch Impossible as zero cholesterol meat.

Who likes cholesterol? Whether Republican, Democrat, young, old, rich, poor, educated, not educated, you know cholesterol is not a good thing. Right? So you could simplify this.

SAFIAN: But you didn’t do that with this?

MCGUINNESS: We didn’t do it yet. I mean, look, we did change our packaging because the green packaging wasn’t appetizing. You eat with your eyes. Right? So we didn’t want to be greenwashed with everyone else. So we leaned into red. Like animal products.

SAFIAN: Like the color of meat. 

MCGUINNESS: Yes, like it’s meat. 

But what we led with in the campaign was deliciousness. This is really good food. You should try it. At the end of the day, we have less than 20 percent awareness at Impossible. So 80 percent of the country hasn’t heard of us. That’s a very easy thing to fix through paid, owned, nerd media. Just never did it before. And so, message hierarchy, value proposition is critical here. For 10 years, the industry led with climate. We do research, when you tell someone you’re about to eat a burger that’s good for the climate, the taste cues drop in half. People think it’s gonna taste terrible because it’s a climate burger, can’t taste good. It’s a really interesting psychological thing. So you don’t lead with climate. There’s not enough people that care about it. It’s unfortunate, it’s our job to make more people care about it, but it’s not your broadest marketing vehicle.

Delicious. Tastes good, good for me first, because I care about me. And oh by the way, then it’s good for the planet. It’s good for animals. So, it’s not like we’re not going to talk about climate. We’re just not going to lead with climate.

Copy LinkBattling the meat industry

SAFIAN: This marketing message that you have to get out, you don’t have the resources that the meat industry has. Right? So even though you want to reach that other 80%, like you don’t have the dollars to do all of that the way you want to, I know you guys have leaned into partnerships as a big part of your strategy. Is that partly why?

MCGUINNESS: Yeah, I mean, look, we’re not going to out-advertise and out-spend the meat industry. We need to out-smart them. We don’t have the resources. Not even close to the resources, they have a lot of cash, extremely large. They’re very well coordinated. And they’re very well-lobbied. We don’t have the luxury of any of that. So we’re going to have to be scrappier and smarter. And we’re better together than we are apart. Now, the other thing  that we’ve done in this crazy industry is we’ve been all about ourselves because we’ve had our own unique challenges of scaling of profit margins, of lack of profitability.

Many are going out of business, and so it’s, kind of, survival. And we haven’t banded together in a cohesive collaborative way to get a good narrative out there. It wasn’t sinister, there was no malice intended. Everybody was just fighting for their own survival, right? And kind of got tunnel vision. What The meat industry has said, you know what? We’re just going to combine wits, we’re going to combine money, we’re going to combine muscle, and we’re going to erase them. So, I don’t blame them, you know? 

SAFIAN: For you to succeed in that, like, do you need to help your colleagues sort of address the challenges that they face against meat in a different kind of way? Are you trying to teach them, learn from each other, or do you just like, I can’t really do that, I have to keep my head down, control what I can control, and hope that I can learn from them and they can learn from me?

MCGUINNESS: It’s a good question, Bob. I think, look, at the end of the day, I’m not a prophet, or an oracle, or the ultimate expert here. First and foremost, I’m paid to grow Impossible, but that does not mean that has to be at the expense of the categories. So I do try to help. And I do reach out, and I do attend a lot of conferences, and I do speak regularly to many other plant-based CEOs. Because at the end of the day, that’s the right thing to do. That’s the category we’re and they’re not the competition. You know, worst case scenario, they’re frenemies, but they’re really friends, right? And again, that doesn’t move the needle. If I steal from the eight billion dollar pie, and don’t go after the 1.4 trillion dollar pie, we haven’t advanced the value of the company for our shareholders, and we sure haven’t advanced the climate.

SAFIAN: It’s such an interesting conundrum because people who go into the business of doing this are maybe compelled, not necessarily because, ‘Oh, this is going to taste great.’

MCGUINNESS: Yeah and the value proposition has been muddled. It was, you know, launched as a climate burger. It’s like, what the hell is that?

Look, at the end of the day, and I tell this to my team, I tell this to anyone who will listen, and it’s okay to admit, it’s nobody’s fault. We failed. This thing was supposed to be massive. That’s why I said, “is it a correction, is it cooling, whatever.”

It’s two and a half billion dollars in the U.S. That is a pebble in an ocean. Right? And I’m not trying to denigrate the industry I’m in. I’m just saying we all have to take a long look at ourselves and be open to change. And so I think we have to rewrite the playbook. I think, if you think you’re going to do the same thing over and over again, and expect a different outcome, right? Definition of insanity. I strongly believe that we all, in plant-based meat, have to completely overhaul and change how we go to market, how we communicate, and how we product-develop. Why? Because I think we have a brilliant case study of a small category that’s declining. And I’m not trying to be negative. I just think we all have to kind of co-own that. And I think we all have to admit that, to move forward.

Copy LinkWhy partnerships are key to Impossible’s playbook 

SAFIAN: I’m curious about your relationship with Burger King, it was a great platform for you to be out all over America, in middle America. Some public comments from their leadership recently have been a little bit lukewarm about plant-based. How do you approach that relationship? How much of the new campaign is geared toward that and their audience? 

MCGUINNESS: Well, I think the tide raises all boats. So I think, you know, when we advertise, everything works better. We love our Burger King relationship. You know, it’s five years strong, right? No one’s had five year relationships in food service.And we’re in all Burger in the U. S. We’re in all Starbucks. One of their best food performing items in Starbucks is our Impossible Sausage Sandwich. It’s not a vegan build. It’s got an egg and cheese on it. But the meat is not pork. So it’s still a win. And that’s another reason why I’m saying, like, we should do this practically. 

SAFIAN: It’s always difficult when your business, certainly from my point of view as a media person, where like so much of our success is based on another platform, whether that was Faceboo at some point, or TikTok, or whatever. And you’re kind of straddle some of that too, because a lot of your reach has to do with some of these partnerships.  

MCGUINNESS: I mean we’re in I-Hop and we’re in Applebee’s and you know we’re in Burger King and we’re in Starbucks, so food service is a big deal. We have like 58,000 food service locations, but there’s 1.4 million in America. So I tell the team great job, but you’re not done yet. You’ve barely started. So that’s the scale of this thing, right? We’re number one in food service, in all of plant-based, and we have less than 60,000 locations out of 1.4.

Retail is a good hedge fund to the food service. So we only hit retail two and a half, three years ago.

You couldn’t buy it at a grocery stores. And now we’re in retail. We have about a thousand total distribution points, but there’s eight thousand in total. So we have seven thousand more to go. It’s a really good start, I tell the team. We’re at Walmart, we’re at Target, we’re now at Whole Foods, But, not in every store, not with all of our SKUs. So that’s why I tell everyone, like, the industry’s dead? It hasn’t even gotten started. 

When you look at the household penetration, right, under 10%. So 90 percent of the country hasn’t even tried a plant based option. That’s a huge opportunity, right? The awareness, 80 percent hasn’t heard of. The 60,000 out of 1. 4 million. The 1, 000 out of 8,000. By the way, these are all movable, doable things. Food companies have done it for 20, 30 years. So the challenges we have as an industry, yes, narrative, right? Formidable competitors like the meat industry. But most of the challenges are things like making fit more available, you know, selling more into stores and, you know, just get a sales force. I mean, this is not high math stuff. 

SAFIAN: It’s blocking and tackling. 

MCGUINNESS: It’s kind of basic. We just haven’t done it.

Copy LinkFood’s overlooked role in the climate crisis

SAFIAN: The idea that plant-based food is critical to the climate crisis. It certainly is, but how important is that to your business, to your customers, to your investors, or is it more like an internal issue for your team, for you personally?

MCGUINNESS: Yeah, I mean, look, the ultimate mission is to reverse climate change, right? How you go about that can be debated and discussed, right?

The biggest lever to do that is agriculture. Now, the problem is people don’t equate it, right? Now, I would love the government, you know, there’s a sweeping climate bill, and you’re getting $8,000 tax relief checks to buy an EV. There’s nothing about food. So I would love the government to assist in availability, awareness, and also incentives without making it political.

SAFIAN: But you don’t have a lobbying arm that is robust enough to get that to happen yet?

MCGUINNESS: I don’t believe we do right now. Now, it would be nice if the government looked at this thing in a very intuitive way. I mean, the math is the math and the facts are the facts. So the fact this was omitted. I mean, food’s the most important thing. It’s the largest industry in the world. It’s the one thing we have to do. You can live without a car. You can’t live without eating. So it’s pretty mind-boggling that this was completely omitted and missed. But, we didn’t lobby it hard enough too. So we’re to blame as well.

Copy LinkChoosing the right messaging for consumers

SAFIAN: But it’s so interesting that the mission as you come back to it is about climate, and yet the success of that mission has to do, at least it seems at this point, in not necessarily leaning into that as message.

MCGUINNESS: I know that’s counterintuitive, Bob. At the end of the day, we have a calculator on our website. It’s the simplest thing. The more plant-based meat that’s consumed, the less water is used, the less land is cleared, and the less GHG is emitted. So, you know, when this industry was launched — ‘we’re a tech company, we don’t need technology.’ We’re a climate company. We don’t eat climate. So what we need to do is get more people eating these products, and that’s going to do the most good, not only for your own nutrition, health, and well being, but the planet’s. So I think we just went about it, I mean, I hate to say it. We may just have to admit we’re a food company, 

SAFIAN: Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting as you are saying, it’s almost like to raise capital, the things that get investors excited are new technology, climate, you know, ‘Oh, these are tech companies, they have great margins’. Food businesses — not so much. And, it’s sort of drove you down a road that maybe wasn’t the best place to be.

MCGUINNESS: For the consumer, look, to make a plant-based burger that tastes like an animal burger, there is technology involved. It ain’t easy. Trust me.

So, but it’s how you communicate about your products. I joke around with the team at Impossible, so I said, I’m gonna split the difference. We’re a tech-enabled food company. So we’ll innovate like a tech company, but we’re gonna operate like a food company. That’s it. Right? And I believe in that, right? But how we communicate to a consumer to get you to buy it, is you gotta lead with taste, and follow up in nutrition, and then maybe tertiarily get into animal welfare and climate.

SAFIAN: A it sounds like the other part that’s counterintuitive is you have to be patient, but you also have to be impatient at the same time to be able to make the changes you need to make. Right?

MCGUINNESS: Well, what we are trying to change eating habits over hundreds and thousands of years. It just doesn’t happen overnight. It really doesn’t.

SAFIAN: Well, Peter, thank you so much for doing this. Great to chat with you. 

MCGUINNESS: Thanks, Bob. Always good to see you.

SAFIAN: And thank you everybody!

I’m really impressed by Peter’s willingness to admit to Impossible’s mistakes. If customers aren’t responsive to climate messaging, it makes sense to pivot, focus on the taste and have climate impact be a positive by-product. It’s a reminder for business leaders everywhere to meet customers where they are, even when you’re trying to change a marketplace. The high-minded ideals that define your mission, maybe it’s okay to hide them a bit. It’s like trying to get your kids to eat their vegetables. Lecturing just makes them frown. In the end, you gotta make it appealing. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.