Beyond Meat CEO talks about the company's latest burger

Beyond Meat Founder and CEO Ethan Brown sat down with Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi to discuss the latest 3.0 Beyond Meat Burger, competing with other plant-based companies, and their new headquarters.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Beyond Meat founder and CEO, Ethan Brown. Always good to see you. A little bit different setting. I'm in my Yahoo Finance vest. Your chilling over there in your office. Beyond Meat 3.0 Burger. What's in it? I have four burgers in front of me right now. What am I about to eat?

ETHAN BROWN: It's really exciting launch for us. It's something we're working on for a very long time. As you know, we've set this internal goal within the company to constantly iterate our products and to replace those on the shelf today with better versions as we go forward. And I'm very proud of this 3.0 Burger. It delivers benefits from a taste, and aroma, and texture perspective. But it also delivers very strong health benefits.

It has fewer calories, it has less fat, less saturated fat, I think 35% less fat, 35% less saturated fat than ground beef. So it's healthier for you. It tastes great. We did these really exhaustive consumer studies around this in terms of tests and large statistically significant populations. And the likeability relative to 80-20 ground beef was really strong. And that's what got me so excited to release this. And so we're looking forward to hitting the markets next week.

BRIAN SOZZI: So I took a quick bite of it. First thought, it tastes a little more like meat. How do you go-- why is that the case?

ETHAN BROWN: It's interesting. So there's about 4,000 molecules that make meat taste like meat. And so our job is to identify that the kind of 20% or so of those molecules that are driving from a human centric perspective, the taste of meat. And then we try to match those with molecules in plants and scale those up in flavor systems. And I think we're just getting closer every year to that. And that's really important. Because as we get closer to that beef experience that we all love, or most of us, we bring more consumers into the brand. And then we obviously are able to accomplish more of our broad objectives that way.

BRIAN SOZZI: How long does it take to develop a burger like this?

ETHAN BROWN: Well, we've been at this for I'd say what, 12, 13 years now. And everything we learn, whether it's across any of our key meat platforms, whether beef, pork, or poultry, we're applying. So you're getting the very best of Beyond Meat in any new product that we put forward. We have now over 200 research scientists and engineers working every day on a very simple goal, which is to build meat directly from plants. And we're bringing everything we know into this new product. And so next year, we'll release one that will be better.

But this year, we're really satisfied and excited about what we're putting into the market.

BRIAN SOZZI: It feels-- and we've talked about this in the past. And I don't think we've ever dove into it. It feels like a burger traditional beef in my mouth. You've called it mouthfeel in the past. Why does it feel like beef when I'm eating it?

ETHAN BROWN: Yeah. So we have the opportunity given the way technology has developed over the years to really understand the composition of animal protein. And so just like you put your knee on an MRI or something like that when you've had an injury, we're able to look into the structure of meat and understand it. And so it's around how the proteins are structured when you break the proteins in plants and reset them like they are in muscle. You do that in a way that gives the mouthfeel to the consumer.

And so we're constantly iterating and trying to get closer and closer. Over time, Brian, as we talked about, we have these three really important levers that we're pushing on. One is around taste, making sure that the taste in a broader sense, a sensory experience, continues to get closer and closer to animal protein. The second is really around nutrition.

It's really important to us that the products that we're developing and putting on the market advance the consumer's health. So we could load our products up with saturated fat or do other things, put in ingredients that we don't think are good for you, to get there quicker. But we're not willing to do that. So we're always trying to advance nutrition. Finally, it's around cost. As we scale, we're going to start driving more and more cost out of our system, to allow some day to underprice animal protein.

So if you get the taste right, you deliver superior nutrition, and you underprice, we think we can take a very large section of that $1.4 trillion market.

BRIAN SOZZI: Do you think plant based meat gets a bad rub? Just for nutrition, a lot of focus on the fat content, but not a lot of focus on the fact that it's made from plants per se.

ETHAN BROWN: I think it's important to unpack that. Because in part, we have an obligation to the consumer because the consumer thinks about plant based eating in a general sense as being healthier than eating animal protein. But then you get into the concept of plant based meat. And it is possible to develop a plant based meat that's not really that good for you if you do load it up a saturated fat, or you put in elements of animal protein that aren't very good for you.

You're not going to confer to the consumer many benefits. But if you take the approach that we've taken, which just say, look, we're going to deliver all the sensory experience of animal protein. We're going to do so in a way that's better for you. That means we're reducing the saturated fat by 35%, we're reducing total fat by 35%, we have fewer calories. All these things. We have all the B vitamins and other nutritional benefits of meat in there. But we've just made it healthier for you. We think that's the approach rather than just replicating everything that's in animal protein because that wouldn't advance the consumer much into their own health.

BRIAN SOZZI: So a four pack in the Beyond Meat 3.0 Burgers, $9.99. When do you think that will be comparable to beef prices in terms of a four pack?

ETHAN BROWN: Right. So I think two things are happening. One is as more and more pressure is exerted on the animal agricultural supply chain, you'll start to see higher prices on the beef side. And that'll come and go. There'll be waves to that. And the second is as we scale, you'll see us be able to bring down our cost structure. And so if you think about us today, even though we're continuing to grow at really healthy pace, we're still pretty small. And so as we get to economies both in the United States, as well as in Europe, and then ultimately in China, you'll start to see us get closer and closer.

So we set a goal two years ago to within five years underprice animal protein in at least one category. And we're well on our way to doing that.

BRIAN SOZZI: We talk so much, at least in our business news sphere of the plant based burger wars. Do you view it as a war? Is it a battle between you and your nearest competitor? Do you think about that internally?

ETHAN BROWN: I mean, I love to compete. I think the NBA would be a pretty boring place if there was only one team. And so competition is really healthy. It fuels us. And we're all after the same thing, which is to develop products that are going to serve both the consumer and the world. But sure. I mean we want to be that group of people that separates meat from animals and leaves this lasting benefit to the world. So it just pushes us to move quicker, invest more. And so I think it's overall something is very positive.

But I don't view it as a war. I just view it as healthy competition. And that's never something we shy away from, particularly as long as we're winning.

BRIAN SOZZI: Last one before we go, Ethan. We haven't talked since you came out you announced your opening this big beautiful campus, the new headquarters for Beyond Meat. Why was it so important for you to put a flag in the ground saying, we want people to come back to the office? And you know what? We're going to build this big new campus.

ETHAN BROWN: Thank you. That's a great question. And I think when the pandemic first hit, and I love Zoom, and friendly with the founder, and I think it's an amazing technology that can really bring a lot of good into the world in terms of reducing travel and things of that nature. But as time wears on, you do need to keep that intensity, and that focus, and that sense of teamwork. You need to be in person with people. And I feel really strongly about that, that there's only so much you can accomplish over video.

And ours is such an emotional and highly focused effort to try to do something that hasn't been done before, and to do that remotely is difficult. And so I want to bring everyone back together in this state of the art campus. It's a beautiful structure. It's right across the Lake [INAUDIBLE] actually here in Los Angeles. And it'll be a place people want to be. It's architecturally beautiful. We want to attract the very best and brightest talent of this generation to come work at Beyond Meat and solve this issue.

And we wanted that to be a physical manifestation of the excellence that we really pursue here at Beyond Meat.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, you'll have to have me down and grill me up some of these burgers, Ethan Brown, because they're really quite good. And I could spend another 25 minutes asking you about these things. But I will not. Ethan Brown, Beyond Meat founder and CEO, always good to see you. Stay safe.

ETHAN BROWN: Great to see you.

BRIAN SOZZI: And enjoy grilling season.

ETHAN BROWN: Thank you. Great to see you. Thanks very much.