Fast Food Fake-Meat Market Test Falls Flat: Customers Don't Want It
Could McDonald's Save the Cattle Industry?
The fake meat push has suffered some setbacks recently. Lab Made (mystery) Meat has serious marketing hurdles, and Plant-based-meat-maker-stocks are crashing. Investors are not so easily convinced that Americans are going to line up for a long-term relationship with ‘Meat’ (ground beef specifically) that didn’t come from cattle.
To be clear, it is not more environmentally friendly. It is not better for the planet. It is nutritionally deficient (real beef improves health, and it’s not a secret). But it is out there, and it has attracted some buzz. If you are in the food service business, it might make sense to take a look at it as a way to broaden your customer base, especially when the fake meat cabal is working so hard to make real meat more expensive so fake meat can actually compete on price.
Politics vs Value
They want us to use less water, and suddenly, things happen that make water more expensive. They want us off fossil fuels, so partisans make it cost more so the more expensive alternative can get a foot in the door. The same goes for everything, but in the interest of staying on topic, food, and beef are currently in the crosshairs. The US herd is at record lows. There is no good reason for that except forces are at work making it so. But plant-based meats, even after announcing reduced prices, are still a lot more expensive. So, what impact might this have on the otherwise fixed agricultural game of chess?
Would it help if they could find another big name to get on board? Of course, it would and as noted above, given the buzz, plant-based meat is still on everyone’s radar. Well, not everyone.
McDonald’s tested plant-based burgers in Dallas and San Francisco. Both were Blue, and both were more likely to embrace narratives about emissions and cattle. So, what happened?
The latest sign that the tide is shifting against billionaires like Bill Gates, who advocate for a reset of the food supply chain by ushering in 'sustainable' insect burgers and plant-based meat and also push to ban cow farts, comes from McDonald's US President Joe Erlinger.
At the WSJ Global Food Forum in Chicago on Wednesday, Erlinger admitted the fast-food chain's plant-based burger tests across San Francisco and Dallas markets ended in a major failure.
At the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago, he said McDonald's customers aren't looking for "McPlant or other plant-based proteins from McDonald's."
As a matter of disclosure, many decades ago, I worked for McDonald's, and yes, they spelled my name wrong on my paycheck. I started as a teenager at $2.35 an hour, way back in 1978, and before I left - about ten years later, I had run restaurants (store manager) for the corporation and franchisees. When it comes to fast-food, franchises, and an empire built on thin unit margins, I know a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing or two.
I don’t eat there much these days (after my heart attack six years ago), but let’s say I was familiar with the business environment, product testing, and so on.
Can Real Meat Win Big?
This plant-meat test failure is a big deal. McDonald's is the single largest global buyer of beef on planet Earth. It is estimated that the business uses 2000 pounds of beef a minute, or more than two billion pounds of the stuff, annually. And while they closed some restaurants in and around COVID, they have been back in growth mode, adding locations around the world.
So what?
This is worth more than whatever Bill Gates and his lab buddies’ thinks is good for us.
McDonald's is striving to come up with efficiencies that allow them to offer affordable meal solutions that appeal to people pinched by food inflation and a crappy inflation-riddled economy.
McDonald's has the resources and the weight to ensure cattle are available and affordable to feed its customers at these proposed prices, even if it has to own, run, or partner with ranchers on a larger scale itself.
And their customers don't want fake meat—no plant-meat, no lab meat, just real beef patties. And yes, I've toured a processing facilities. It was a pristine, high-tech cathedral filled with real beef and lots of it.
McDonald's needs beef and they will have it, and they'd prefer to pay less for it than more, because customers want value and that has to have a lower price point. I don't know what that looks like, exactly, but it isn't good for fake meat, which has been having a rough year.
And just so we are clear, I don't care if you want to pay more for fake meat, nor the reasons why, real, or imagined. But if you're doing it because you think doing that is better for you and the planet, that's a lie. It is good for neither.
If you want to eat plants, get a salad.