Plant-based foods aren’t new. From plant-based burgers to chicken nuggets, a wide spectrum of well-established brands have spent significant amounts of R&D on developing new products, as well as engaging in partnerships with and acquiring various meat alternative companies.
The scale of these investments is significant. According to the Good Food Institute, $5.9 billion of capital was invested into alternative meat and protein companies between 2010 and 2020.
These alternative protein companies include plant-based, fermentation, cultivated, or cell-based proteins — all of which provide consumers with viable alternatives to traditional proteins.
Food Dive has identified that retail sales in the plant-based vertical have shown continued growth. In 2020, plant-based meat had $1.4 billion in sales and made up 2.7% of all U.S. retail packaged meat sales.
Additionally, sales of plant-based protein and meat alternatives are projected to continue growing to $85 billion by 2030, according to a study done by investment firm UBS.
Then there’s adoption: Consumers are increasingly demonstrating a willingness to try and a propensity to buy plant-based alternatives.
According to a study by the International Food Information Council, almost two-thirds of respondents indicated that they had eaten at least one plant-based meat product in the previous year. Of those respondents, 20% indicated that they consumed plant-based meats weekly, and 22% indicated that they consumed them daily.
While plant-based proteins are currently gaining traction, plant-based milk leads the way when it comes to dollar sales. It now represents 16% of the entire milk category, and the study found it is leading growth and innovation in the milk category as a whole. Plant-based meat had flat growth but now represents 1.4% of the entire meat category.
Plant-based cheese, yogurt, creamer, butter, and ice cream all saw more growth than their animal-based counterparts, with plant-based creamer seeing a 33% jump in sales.
Want to learn more? Check out the full report here.
ICYMI: Last week, we published a new Heat Check on the growth of Pickleball. You can access that report and our entire catalog of research at Pro HQ.
