Loss-making Beyond Meat is reportedly ditching ‘Meat’ its corporate name, perhaps to breath some life into sales.
Ethan Brown, the founder, president and CEO of the US-headquartered meat-alternatives producer made the revelation in an interview with American business magazine Fast Company.
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Brown told the publication: “What we’re great at is making protein,” and adds “instead of thinking about a simple replacement for animal protein, what if you just thought about your daily protein consumption, and I started to try to replace as much of that as I can with plant protein, any form that I could?”
Fast Company suggested that the name change meant the company was “turning its focus away from mimicking animal proteins to letting plant-based proteins speak for themselves”.
Beyond Meat doesn’t plan to discontinue any of its existing products, according to the publication.
Just Food has approached the company to confirm the details in the Fast Company report.
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By GlobalDataGlobal sales of plant-based meats have been falling or at least slowing in many markets. The main criticisms fired at the category have generally centred around taste and quality, with inflated price also being an off-putting factor for consumers.
Reasons for this include long ingredient lists, and allegations that many products are overly processed.
The reported name change comes just several days ahead of the company’s second quarter results.
In its first quarter of 2025, losses in adjusted EBITDA widened to $42.3m from $32.9m. Beyond Meat’s net loss was $52.9m, a slight improvement from the $54.4m loss in the same quarter of 2024.
Sales fell 9.1% in the opening three months of 2025 to $68.7m.
In the same quarter of last year, it dropped 18% to $75.6m. Another decline is now expected in the new quarter, with Brown at the time pointing to $80-85m, compared to $93.2m in Q2 of 2024, when they fell 8.8%.
In its International segment however, Beyond Meat’s foodservice sales were up 12.1% at $15.3m, while retail sales were more subdued, up only 0.8% at $12.7m.
Beyond Meat saw sales revenue rebound in the third quarter of 2024, but it still slightly downgraded the top-end of its year-end guidance.
At the time, the CEO said: “You can see a very steep curve moving in the right direction and that’s why we feel so confident about our plan to bring the business into profitability.”
He told analysts: “I can’t say when – I don’t want to imply it’s going to be anytime soon but that is where we’re headed.”
Brown at the time also condemned critics of plant-based meat, who label the foods over processed: “The weaponisation of the word process, a tactic emphasised in the incumbent industry playbook on how to undermine plant-based meat and preserve the status quo, has grown long in the tooth. It is past time we put it to bed.
“We plan to do that by applying generous amounts of sunlight to our own process, educating consumers on how we build meat directly from plants.”
Beyond Meat’s new product Beyond Ground, reportedly due to launch in August, is stripped down to four clean ingredients: the fava beans, potato starch, water, and psyllium husk.
Fava beans, Brown told Fast Company, are just the start: “If you want something that’s a ground product, here you have it.”
Going forward, Brown said the company can “serve an occasion versus trying to mimic an animal…. You’ll see us come out with things like, maybe, lentil sausage. Or chickpea hot dogs.”
Beyond Meat has not turned a profit since it went public in 2019 on the Nasdaq exchange. Similarly, EBITDA has not been in the black since the meagre $11.8m generated in 2020.
Its shares last traded at $3.04. They have lost more than 50% this year and faded from the loft heights of north of $100 five years ago.
