As demand for plant-based meats continued to grow over the past year, companies feeding that demand kept on developing new products despite the pandemic.
The parent of plant-based meat brands Lightlife and Field Roast is debuting new products at Whole Foods Market
WFM
Lightlife in particular has been on a mission to make its products with cleaner, simpler ingredients, and the brand’s lineup is now 100% vegan. That mission also raised some hackles in the plant-based and vegan communities last year after Greenleaf President Dan Curtin signed a letter that ran as a full-page ad in national media to challenge plant-based meat rivals in a push to promote its simple ingredients list. The letter challenged Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods to similarly simplify the ingredients in their popular plant-based burgers.
The message drew ire among some in the plant-based community looking to share a cohesive message about the benefits of shifting to a plant-based diet on the lives of people, animals and the planet. Basically, it was seen as infighting over what came down to the difference between a burger with 11 ingredients and one with a few more.
But Curtin sees it differently. His company has partnered with other vegan food makers, including JUST Egg maker Eat Just, which teamed to launch a Just Egg/Field Roast sausage breakfast sandwich at Copper Branch restaurants in Canada. And he believes in the collective mission, he says, but that also means he wants the entire industry to do its best.
Curtin spoke earlier this month about the growth of the plant-based brands he oversees, the challenges of the pandemic, the outlook for the plant-based meat industry and the reaction to last year’s ad campaign.
On the controversial ad campaign
Dan Curtin: We did that after speaking to consumers. We spoke to over 11,000 consumers and they were telling us that choice is very important to them. They were screaming that they didn’t really understand what the ingredients were and that they wanted things that were simple, clean, they wanted real food and didn’t want things made in a lab. We took that as an opportunity to raise the bar for everybody. We challenged our team and found a way to clean up the ingredients and use simpler ingredients. I felt it was our responsibility to bring attention to that, and challenge the others, to bring them along.
Some people got upset, but we also got plenty who were applauding that. There’s an opportunity for all of us in the industry to do better, to give consumers cleaner, better products. We would do it all again, it served its purpose.
Some of the people in the plant-based industry have started changing, some haven’t. We’re proud that we’re standing for that. We’re a real food company and I’m proud of that.
On competition and cooperation in the plant-based space
Curtin: There are more people getting into it, and there are two approaches. Some of the bigger CPG companies and bigger meat companies see it as an opportunity for growth. And then there are a lot of smaller companies too. It’s all good, it will all bring more attention to the category. We’re massive leaders and heavily invested in the category, which continues to grow double-digits. [Our company] and some other players that are investing in marketing communications to make people aware they have choices in how they get their protein, I think we will see continued growth.
On the expanded distribution into Whole Foods Market
Curtin: Whole Foods has been a great partner with us. We’ve got 20 to 25 items listed with them. We shared our different innovations with them. They really saw the [potential of] the new Field Roast Signature Stadium Hot Dog.
We’ve got some great customer partners throughout the U.S. and Canada. We’re in over 30,000 grocery stores. While Whole Foods is the first one launching, we have a whole lot of other retailers [that will add the] new Signature Dogs.
On launching the hot dogs on Roy Choi’s Kogi Trucks before retail
Curtin: Roy Choi has been a great partner. Strategically, it was all about the flavor-first culinary experience. It was a remarkable success and consumers have been incredibly impressed. It’s the first pea-based hot dog in the marketplace. It’s different from the other Lightlife and Field Roast hot dogs in a couple of ways.
On the ingredient side, it’s the first and only pea-based hot dog out there. Number two, some of the textures and ingredients allow it to perform differently. It’s great on the grill and however you’d normally cook a hot dog. The pea protein is the most versatile and it gives great natural flavors. One other thing that’s really great about this is that as part of the process it’s smoked in a smokehouse using maple hardwood chips, so we don’t use Liquid Smoke.
On the pandemic and supply chain issues
Curtin: I would say the biggest challenge we had was just the initial high demand for the product, there was a lot of panic buying going on, not only by consumers but by distributors as well. First, we had to make sure that all our employees were safe, and we did that. We invested in PPE and education. Number two, from a supply side, there were no interruptions [in sourcing ingredients]. We did have some service issues as demand skyrocketed, but that has since been corrected and now there’s plenty of inventory.