I’m not here to judge one multi-syllable ingredient versus another. But I do know consumers, and no matter how much we want them to be highly involved, they think about a lot of other things. The industry only gets a few seconds to make that statement [at the point of purchase], and in that period shoppers might be thinking about updating their fantasy football team. They’ve got text messages going on. Something’s really cool on TikTok, or whatever else is going on during that shopping trip. Even the normal chaos of household life, of hav-ing young kids around. When people are looking for that quick decision, it might be seven to 17 seconds, vs. ‘Let me do some research on that item and try to figure out, is that really something good or bad?’ You get a lot of, I would call it direc-tionally informed thoughts, that may not even be specifically correct. The hard part is you want to make it easy, and the cleaner things are, the easier it is. Alt-Meat: This is where marketing triumphs over engineering. DuBOIS: A little bit. That’s the battle being fought now. And I’ve heard it from a consumer side, too. They might say, ‘Well, I can make it out of black beans, corn, quinoa and a few other ingredi-ents at home..’ Not that everybody’s doing that, but if you think about the standard, and you could do it at home, why can’t it be done [on the label]? How do you get through to someone who’s not fully invested, and might give you seven seconds to think about it? export to other countries. Alt-meat has been much more thor-oughly embraced in Europe. The retail-ers love it, the consumers are buying it. The numbers look much better. Are there lessons in what’s going on, par-ticularly in Europe, that U.S. compa-nies and retailers looking to reach U.S. consumers should consider? DuBOIS: In Europe, there’s been the benefit of what I would call a regula-tory push, but also a retailer-led push: Retailers are embracing alt-meats as a way of thinking about climate change. So the markets are stronger, the brands are a little stronger, the pickup in the markets are just stronger overall. That’s the price gap we talked about, and the form and the flavor and texture [in the U.S. market]. It doesn’t mean these elements are wrong, it just means Americans tend to be really picky be-cause our meat is relatively inexpensive and of high quality. Alt-Meat: With these trends in mind, what should companies in the U.S. do in 2025 to counteract the headwinds? DuBOIS: On this competitive battle-field, the place to win and to hold has to be frozen. It doesn’t mean discontinue the fresh products; I’m not here to tell someone to get out of that space. But you’ve got to put all your energy into winning frozen. If you can’t win there, and you can’t get the volume back, and you can’t get consumers attracted and Alt-Meat: The alt-meat sector is more global than animal protein. A lot of the brands that we see in the United States in our frozen sections have come here from overseas; Quorn comes to mind. And also, a lot of the U.S.-based companies would like to 34 Alt-Meat February 2025
Alt-Meat February 2025: Page 34
