Beyond The Meat

Meatless products have been of big interest to me lately. My group project in this class is on Memphis Meats and I have been studying the industry and the competition, one of the main ones being Beyond Meat. Beyond Meat holds the largest portion of the market share for meat alternatives and continues to grow in B2C and B2B. Most recently they have been partnering with restaurants around the US.

Beyond Meat was founded in the US and mainly operates in the US and has expanded over the past few years into Europe, however, recently they have expanded their distribution to an entirely new market, China. China is a notoriously difficult market to penetrate, especially for B2C products that are foreign. The opportunities of growth if done correctly are incredible, due to the huge potential, buying power and size of the market within China.

China consumes the most amount of meat in the world and they account for almost 30% of meat consumption in the world. So why did Beyond Meat think it would be a good idea for them to try and disrupt this market? I believe Beyond Meat are doing something incredibly risky but with the potential for incredible success down the road. Beyond Meat clearly did their research and saw that China doesn’t currently have any plant-based manufacturing facility in a country of almost 1.4 billion people and they could be the innovators and the ones to dominate a potentially huge industry.

Kerin in chapter 6 talks about Economic Globalism and how marketing has changed due to trade agreements and treaties. China is however not an easy country to expand to, due to its difficult bureaucracy and laws about foreign products and companies. Another factor Beyond Meat has to consider is the cultural, customs and value difference that Kerin mentions. The vegetarian and non-meat culture of the western world is not shared by that of China and other Asian countries, these are obstacles that they would have to maneuver around.

My suggestions to Beyond Meat would be to incorporate a strategy of partnering with large fast food chains and release specific products to the cultural likings of China. This would not only help to market their products but would also drive sales up. Beyond Meat have tried the restaurant strategy within the US and they have seen success from this, and I believe this would also work in other markets. The suggestion of specific products for the Chinese market will help overcome the cultural difference, the chinese cuisine is very different to the US cuisine and they would require different product selection and tastes to be successful.

As always, I hope you have enjoyed and learnt something from my blog attempt. I’m always open to suggestions and would love to hear your thoughts.

Best,

Zak