From a Vegan perspective, I believe that cell-based meat fails because it doesn't pass the fundamental test of doing everything possible and practical to not harm or exploit animals. From what I've read, cell-based meat requires that blood is harvested from animals as part of the production process. This would not be in alignment with ethical veganism.
Prior to now, as far as I know, one of the major drivers behind dairy alternatives was kashrus. Non-dairy margarine, even non-dairy creamer...
That said, I don't think a religious impetus is *necessary* here, but it certainly provided a helpful backstop.
Semi-similarly, I actually think that coffee shops have significantly helped drive plant-based milks into the mainstream. But within the alternative dairy space, while plant-based milk sales have grown tremendously, plant-based cheese sales have not, I would imagine for similar reasons to those of plant-based meat.
What will be the demand-side impetus for plant-based cheese and meat, like coffee shops for milk or like kashrus for margarine?
Early plant based cheeses really weren't great (Daiya comes to mind). However, with the increased market for plant-based foods, there are great improvements (Violife, Chao, Miyokos). Anecdotally, behind meat, cheese has often said to be the biggest barrier to changing to a plant based diet. However, there are so many good options now!
Hi Alex!! Yes this is exactly why I think the dairy space is so interesting -- a wide variety of products and use-cases, each one with potentially different avenues for product innovation, distribution, etc.
I bet that consumer psychology is different for the various use-cases -- is cheese for a sandwich, or for melting, or for small-bites with wine and beer, or for breakfast, or... and each use-case probably carries with it several segments of the population who have different mental-models about what they're looking for... I haven't done the research yet, but my intuition is that there are innovations to find.
Great post! I hadn't thought about it that way before, but actually that sounds right. I had previously thought in terms of taste and price, and the belief that with scaling laws precision fermentation and other technologies will bring down the price of meat alternatives to much below meat, and this would be transformative. But you're right I've also seen this belief about the "healthiness" of meat. I might add, however, that this is a socially constructed belief, one that is promoted very explicitly by the meat and dairy industries, despite, for example, the role of cholesterol, nitrites and other very unhealthy things in meat. It makes you wonder if there could be a different marketing approach in the meat-space akin to what has worked with milks - "almond-pattys" rather than "fake-meat".
Thanks Andrew! I think price is a significant issue, too, which I'll talk about in the 4th post. But yes, what you call marketing - what I call product positioning, which I think is the key to innovation – is, I think, the first problem to solve, before we know which technology we need to scale. Maybe precision fermentation wasn't the right bet at all...
From a Vegan perspective, I believe that cell-based meat fails because it doesn't pass the fundamental test of doing everything possible and practical to not harm or exploit animals. From what I've read, cell-based meat requires that blood is harvested from animals as part of the production process. This would not be in alignment with ethical veganism.
Prior to now, as far as I know, one of the major drivers behind dairy alternatives was kashrus. Non-dairy margarine, even non-dairy creamer...
That said, I don't think a religious impetus is *necessary* here, but it certainly provided a helpful backstop.
Semi-similarly, I actually think that coffee shops have significantly helped drive plant-based milks into the mainstream. But within the alternative dairy space, while plant-based milk sales have grown tremendously, plant-based cheese sales have not, I would imagine for similar reasons to those of plant-based meat.
What will be the demand-side impetus for plant-based cheese and meat, like coffee shops for milk or like kashrus for margarine?
Early plant based cheeses really weren't great (Daiya comes to mind). However, with the increased market for plant-based foods, there are great improvements (Violife, Chao, Miyokos). Anecdotally, behind meat, cheese has often said to be the biggest barrier to changing to a plant based diet. However, there are so many good options now!
Hi Alex!! Yes this is exactly why I think the dairy space is so interesting -- a wide variety of products and use-cases, each one with potentially different avenues for product innovation, distribution, etc.
I know there are some clever startups working on plant-based cheese. These guys are getting good press: https://www.changefoods.com/. And even Kraft is now producing "NotCheese" kraft singles: https://vegnews.com/2023/6/krafts-vegan-cheese-singles-nationwide
I bet that consumer psychology is different for the various use-cases -- is cheese for a sandwich, or for melting, or for small-bites with wine and beer, or for breakfast, or... and each use-case probably carries with it several segments of the population who have different mental-models about what they're looking for... I haven't done the research yet, but my intuition is that there are innovations to find.
Great post! I hadn't thought about it that way before, but actually that sounds right. I had previously thought in terms of taste and price, and the belief that with scaling laws precision fermentation and other technologies will bring down the price of meat alternatives to much below meat, and this would be transformative. But you're right I've also seen this belief about the "healthiness" of meat. I might add, however, that this is a socially constructed belief, one that is promoted very explicitly by the meat and dairy industries, despite, for example, the role of cholesterol, nitrites and other very unhealthy things in meat. It makes you wonder if there could be a different marketing approach in the meat-space akin to what has worked with milks - "almond-pattys" rather than "fake-meat".
Thanks Andrew! I think price is a significant issue, too, which I'll talk about in the 4th post. But yes, what you call marketing - what I call product positioning, which I think is the key to innovation – is, I think, the first problem to solve, before we know which technology we need to scale. Maybe precision fermentation wasn't the right bet at all...