Even as it’s nearest competition in the Veggie Protein / Fake Beef market niche, Impossible Foods, threatens to overtake Beyond Meat, Beyond literally goes the next step beyond. It’s snagged perhaps the most iconic player in the Chicken Niche – KFC – to partner on development of Veggie Chicken…
Beyond Fried Chicken: Veggie-based Nuggets and ‘Boneless’ Wings in testing
this week at a KFC near Atlanta: When they hit the market for real,
look for the new, trademark bright green labelling…
Sure, we had some fun with the comic feud between the ‘real meat’ producers and the Veggie Protein pioneers with posts about the ‘Marrot’ – an ‘experimental Meat-based Carrot replacement – and the ‘Carrot Dog’ – a Veggie-based Frankfurter replacement. That was good-natured pranking, like the big Burger chains toss back and forth with each other occasionally, especially when one player opens a door by making some kind of gaffe.
Nevertheless, the infighting is going to become more intense and more ‘real’ as time goes on, and we get closer and closer to 2050, when the production of ‘real’ meat will finally become unsustainable, both environmentally and economically.
KFC going out with two products
So, all of us who follow developments in the food biz have been waiting with great curiosity to see when and what the faux meat people would come up with after they’d perfected Veggie-based Beef.
Beyond’s Veggie-Chicken program will have it’s first real-market taste test today at a single KFC location in Smyrna, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb. Sample Veggie-based Chicken Nuggets and ‘Boneless’ Wings will be offered at prices competitive with traditional Chicken Strips and Nuggets as part of Box Meal combos. Nuggets will also be offered solo.
How does the Veggie Chicken taste?
Kevin Hochman, Chief Concept Officer for KFC US, told CNN Business: “KFC Beyond Fried Chicken is so delicious, our customers will find it difficult to tell that it’s plant-based. I think we’ve all heard ‘it tastes like chicken’. Well, our customers are going to be amazed and say, ‘it tastes like Kentucky Fried Chicken!'”
That may be the easiest part of the whole faux Chicken challenge for Beyond to overcome. They proved they have the ‘juiciness’ issue beaten already, in Beyond Beef 2.0 and, on top of that, KFC has its classic 11 different herbs and spices to contribute to the effort. I expect the Veggie-based Chicken to have a mouth feel that’s sort of a cross between the traditional ‘Pink Slime’-based real-Meat Burgers and a Beyond Burger. But that’s less important than the flavour.
My take
Beyond stays ahead of the competition – principally Impossible Foods, which recently penned an mass production deal with a major national food processing company – for now. Though Beyond celebrated a highly-successful IPO on the stock market recently, Impossible says it’s in the final stages of preparing for its own investment market ‘coming out’ party. Call that dimension of their head-to-head competition – well – pretty much head to head.
I’ll be curious to taste test ‘Beyond Fried Chicken’ for myself as soon as the opportunity offers itself.
One thing that the enthusiastic consumer interest surrounding early-stage faux Meat products tells me is, it may turn out to be easier than many observers have been thinking, for us all to segue from real Meat to Veggie-based substitutes over the next couple of decades – as we all, inevitably must do.
~ Maggie J.