Key facts:
- Beyond Meat just launched its online sales.
- As always with the two plant-based meat alternative startups, one is following the other, as Impossible Foods had just launched its e-commerce website in June.
- In the meantime, Impossible Foods has raised $200M to sustain its growth and Beyond Meat released its second-quarter results (one of the benefits of the startup being public is that we now have greater access to its financials) which show a 194.9% growth in US grocery sales. However, the company reported a loss due to extra costs
Why it matters – DigitalFoodLab’s opinion:
With this new round of funding, the total amount raised by the Impossible Foods nears a staggering $1.5B. It will be notably used to keep scaling its production capabilities and retail presence. At the start of COVID-19 lockdowns in March, the Impossible Burger was only available in 150 US stores. Shoppers can now find it in more than 8,000 grocery stores.
These impressive figures illustrate the issues both face: keep pushing for demand and the production while lowering their pricing (there is still a long road ahead in their goal to reach price parity with meat). These challenges have been reinforced by COVID-19 which has impacted their margins with additional costs and the substitution of foodservice by grocery sales (lower margins). We can therefore expect new rounds of financings in this category (or partnerships on production facilities) to help these companies keep scaling.
