Rise of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods – Location Analysis

The alternative meat industry is worth $800 million and accounts for 2% of packaged meat sales, which counts Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods as two of its top contenders.

Beyond Meat shares have skyrocketed more than 500% since the IPO in May 2019. This puts their company’s current value at about $10 billion. Impossible Foods recently raised another $300 million of funding.

Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods products are sold in more than 30,000 locations across the country, and the list of restaurants and grocery chains responding to consumer demand is growing daily.

We looked into their locations to break down where both companies sell their products.

Where can you find Beyond Meat?

Beyond Meat has expanded aggressively into retail, attracting big deals with major grocery brands making the product even more accessible to consumers. The top three U.S. states ranked by total number of stores that sell Beyond Meat products are California (2,979), Florida (1,925) and Texas (1,085).

Grocery stores that sell Beyond Meat

Beyond Meat products are sold in 872 independent and chain stores, the chart below shows the top 10 grocery chains that sell Beyond Meat products.

Beyond Meat products are available in 68% of all Walmart stores followed by, 29% of all Food Lion and 93% of all Kroger stores. Beyond Meat products can be found in almost all Whole Foods stores.

Restaurants that sell Beyond Meat

Since 2017, Beyond Meat has struck deals to supply burger patties and meat to chains such as Carl’s Jr, Del Taco, and TGI Fridays. The bar chart below shows the number of restaurant chains that sell Beyond Meat.

Beyond Meat is available at 62% of Carl’s Jr locations. It was the first QSR to sell plant-based products. Del Taco sells Beyond Meat in 505 of its locations and has already sold two million Beyond Tacos within two months.

Popular Beyond Meat Products

Beyond Meat has a product line of plant-based burgers, ground meat, and sausages. The most popular product being ‘Beyond Burger’, sold in more than 90% of locations. Beyond Beef, the plant-based version of ground beef is distributed the least.

The chart below shows the number of stores that carry each Beyond Meat product:

Where can you find Impossible Foods?

Impossible Foods have a comparatively lower reach compared to Beyond Meat. The top three U.S. states that sell Impossible Foods products are California (1,316), Florida (829) and Texas (747). Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods products are ubiquitous nationwide with the latter’s distributions dominating more in certain cities.

Their products are available mostly through restaurants. In January 2019, they released a new and improved version of its beef substitute, the Impossible Burger 2.0, and in recent months, have made major deals with Burger King, Qdoba, Red Robin and most recently Mcdonald’s.

Little Ceasars, the 3rd largest pizza chain in US, has also started selling pizzas with Impossible Foods toppings.

Restaurants that sell Impossible Foods

Impossible burgers are sold in about 2,500 independent and chain stores. Below are the top 10 restaurant chains where Impossible Foods are sold:

Impossible Foods offers meatless Whoppers in more than 86% of Burger King locations and Qdoba offers the Impossible Bowl and the Impossible Taco in most of their US locations. Recently, Impossible Foods has started selling burgers at grocery stores starting with Gelson’s Markets stores.

The bar chart below shows the percentage of chains and independent stores that sell Impossible Foods.

Burger King composes of more than half of the locations that sell Impossible Foods. While independent chains come second with 19.7%, followed by 10 percent of restaurants which have 2-30 stores.

Fast-food chains across the board are dabbling in plant-based products, but there are still a few hurdles to overcome before it takes over a substantial market share. Beyond Meat dealt with product shortages in 2017 and 2018, while Impossible Foods ran into similar production issues this year.

Traditional Food Makers Enter the Field

With the early success of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, traditional food companies have been lining up to develop similar products. Companies best prepared to get in on the market include Tyson Foods, ConAgra brands, Unilever, and Nestle. Many investors don’t see these companies posing a major threat to Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods for now, but these companies have better funding and distribution, allowing products to be priced cheaper too.

Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are one of the few companies that are purely focused on meat alternatives. It can be the cutting edge of an entirely new industry. For now, it is too early to tell if the meat alternatives industry will take off, the way that investors expect it too but we will wait soon.

Comparison Map

Here is a side by side visualization of the coverage maps