Posted on 08/09/2022 11:03:14 PM PDT by nickcarraway
McDonald’s McPlant experiment reveals how fake meat at fast food restaurants is, as a whole, a grift.
It was early 2022 and the world’s most profitable burger chain was finally rolling out a patty made of vegetables in hundreds of its stores. The pea, rice, and potato mixture mimicked the flavor and texture of its beefy brethren. Chains like Burger King and White Castle had done it before, but McDonald’s was the biggest. The McPlant was yet another mass-produced fake-meat burger lionized as a savior to the impending climate disaster—and, of course, an offering that could potentially lure more customers to stores. But the plant patty’s success depended on enough people actually wanting to eat it. Last week, a mere six months after launch, McDonald’s quietly ended its brief and underwhelming experiment.
The company’s first animal-free burger, which uses a fake beef patty from Beyond Meat, was made available in roughly 600 stores this past February to gauge customer demand. McDonald’s confirmed to CNBC last Thursday that the test concluded as planned, but neither the fast food giant nor Beyond Meat have since announced plans for a nationwide rollout—and Beyond Meat share prices fell 6% after the announcement. While the McPlant is apparently thriving in international markets like the U.K. and Austria, American customers were not about it, with some rural stores selling as few as three burgers a day.
So why was the McPlant such a McFlop? When products like Impossible and Beyond’s burgers hit shelves a few years ago, fast food was lauded as their ideal sales vehicle. Big chains could theoretically tap their low prices, ubiquity, and lab-manufactured addictiveness to sell fake meat convincing enough to overpower the American beef obsession. In reality, fast food restaurants were never going to be responsible for changing this country’s consumption habits based on moral, health, or prevent-the-environmental-apocalypse arguments.
It was a bit of a product-market fit error. The McPlant’s most likely buyers might be vegans and vegetarians, or at the very least, people who are conscious of their environmental footprint or sympathetic to the animal welfare issues Big Fake Meat promised to solve. But those folks probably didn’t want to give their hard-earned money to a business founded on processing and selling animal flesh as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Mass meat production in America is a miserable industry that exploits people, animals, and the land we all roam upon—to the point that a pound of Perdue chicken wings currently costs less than the same weight in broccoli. A plant-based burger sold at McDonald’s, which was only recently under fire for alleged animal welfare violations, is a paradox. It’s like planting trees at an open-cut mine.
The McPlant wasn’t truly vegan or vegetarian. It was a (delicious-looking, sorry) Beyond Meat patty topped with melty American cheese and sweet mayonnaise that’s sandwiched between a preservative-packed bun. Though the burgers themselves are vegan, they’re cooked on the same grill as McDonald’s regular beef patties. Some flexitarian customers might not mind a bit of beef juice mingling with their alternative pea protein, but it’s hardly compelling enough to attract the diehards.
It’s not really a surprise McDonald’s couldn’t win over their customers. Many of the big chains have been through the same struggle. Burger King, White Castle, Carl’s Jr., and KFC all offer menu items thare designed to taste like meat, look like meat, and certainly be advertised like meat. But José Cil, CEO of Burger King’s parent company, has revealed that the chain's plant-based options tend not to convert carnivorous customers, who are unwilling to trade flesh for foliage. Cracker Barrel stans made that obvious last week, when the brand announced they were adding an Impossible sausage to their breakfast menu. “You just lost the customer base, congratulations on being woke and going broke,” one poetic, outraged Facebook commenter wrote. “I only eat vegetables I can recognize,” wrote another.
So the customers perhaps most primed to buy these plant-based alternatives can see through fast food’s corporate greenwashing, and many of the outspoken customers most loyal to these fast food brands find fake meat burgers “woke” and disgusting. Meat made from plants isn’t perfect, but it does have potential to help reduce environmental harm. And an iconic fast food company like McDonald’s could sell it at an enormous scale in this country. It’s a shame that no one seems hungry for this particular combo meal.
I was waiting for the McPage, McJones and McBonham myself.
How’s about a McCricket sandwich or a McMealworm Muffin? S/B tried out in San Fransicko, Holyweird and New Yack! See if those left wing whack jobs, who preach climate change, are willing to put their money where their mouths are!
Never again, and I'm not eating bugs.
I had that veggie burger at BK and it was better than I thought it’d be. I think I had them put some extra cheese on it though. No where near as good as real meat though. Same with supermarket fake meats.
I’ll stick to Culvers where I know I’m getting fresh meat made to order. Not That famous luke warm patty from McDonalds.
McDonald’s is stupid for trying this fake meat gambit. They’re a mediocre fast-food joint that generally only has convenience and price going for it. With that said, when I’m traveling outside the United States, my opinion on McDonald’s shifts substantially. Schizophrenic, I know, but there are few more welcome sights when you’re abroad than a McDonald’s. Seriously, a McD’s meal is a wonderful respite from the overpriced, tasteless crap you find throughout much of the world.
I McWish for 2 things:
Low carb buns
Bring back the salads or some healthy low carb alternative to Fries
I dont understand why the burger chains thought it was a good idea. Most veggies and vegans dont go to those places to begin with. So cost was higher with no increase/decrease of customers. I know what I would do if I were them, but I dont like giving out free advice worth billions over time.
The article is party right: McDonalds and the others did not understand either their potential vegetarian customers or their meat eaters. Why would a carnivore bother with a plant-based burger in the first place, much less one that didn’t taste exactly like meat anyway. OTOH, why would a vegetarian want anything that tasted like meat? So who was going to order an impossible burger? That’s why hardly anyone did. Ironically, Burger King used to offer a mushroom and grain based vegieburger which was quite tasty, but could never be mistaken for meat. It was doing fairly well until they discontinued it to make room for the impossible burger, which they are finding is impossible to sell.
The author says the grift comes from the fact that veggie burgers aren’t actually green. But that’s not why people aren’t ordering it.
The big problem with veggie burgers is that they’re more expensive than regular meat burgers. If you want masses of people to try what’s considered an inferior substitute, you want the price to not merely match, but be lower than what it’s trying to replace.
If veggie burgers were half the price of meat burgers, I’d expect a good chunk of the meat burger customer base to migrate in that direction. But when it’s more expensive, that’s not an easy sell. The bottom line is that until fake meat is cheaper than real meat, fake meat is not gonna gain mass market acceptance. It’s like pricing processed cheese food higher than real cheese.
For right now, that issue is dependent on scientific advances. The problem for fake meat producers is that thousands of years of animal husbandry has turned select domesticated animals into very efficient converters of plant material into real meat. Fake meat producers wish they could achieve even a fraction of that efficiency.
That’s pricier than: the Big Mac sandwich, which costs $4.69 (and $7.89 for the meal); the Quarter Pounder sandwich, which costs $4.89 (and $7.79 for the meal); and the Crispy Chicken Sandwich, which costs $3.99 (and $7.38 for the meal).]
Well dumb me fell for the marketing trick, and the cheese was 50 cents extra.
Got the burger and it looked normal, sat down and took the first bite, it seemed normal in texture, with the veggies(lettuce, pickle, tomato, and onions), and I order my burgers, dry(no ketchup. mustard, mayo, etc).
That after taste from the plant burger was worse than a diet coke.
Ate the veggies ,and scraped off the cheese, and ate the fries.
Because it’s a hamburger joint, not a salad bar...
I tried a McDonald’s bean burger at Trafalgar Square 25 years ago.
Disgusting...
Had to two eat two hamburgers to get the taste out and even then had to go to a pub down a Guinness with Fish and Chips...
It is a clear case of listening to focus groups instead of your target audience. Same thing happened with the Arch Delux, the focus groups loved it, but at the time the consumer base of McDonalds just wanted cheap, decent tasting burgers, not some artisan sandwich. It is like when vegetarians threaten to boycott KFC unless they change the way they cage their chickens. KFC is smart not to listen because vegetarians don’t eat fried chicken so their opinion doesn’t matter.
Love seeing this major FAIL!
Their focus groups are in liberal urban areas, they never would think of focus grouping, where their bread is buttered, Podunk America.
It all falls apart when the entire marketing plan is to say, "hey, this thing that you're familiar with, well here's something that isn't as good but we worked real hard to make it look like that first thing. We're still selling the first thing, and the other thing isn't any cheaper or particularly healthier, but maybe you'll just eat it because you might, for some reason, feel bad about eating the first thing."
With as much data and planning that goes into McDonald's marketing, I'd bet they knew exactly what was going to happen before it started, but felt obligated to run it through anyway just to get it off their schedule.
They really called it McPlant?
And this article, it was woke. Meat industry bad etc...
Here in Australia I think they still offer a salad as a alternative to fries.
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