Despite Big Food's attempts at providing competition to Beyond Meat, they've failed. People looking for plant-based meats overlook Morningstar Farms (by $K) and Raised & Rooted (by $TSN) and only stick to Beyond meat or Impossible meat.

One reason for Big Food's slow start in entering the plant-based meat market is that they haven't ramped up their marketing for those brands. Many of them continue to emphasize their meat products and other products that they've been selling for a long time. Marketing managers in those companies seem hesitant to go head to head against Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.

As time goes on, Beyond Meat continues to maintain its pricing power and dominance in the industry. I myself continue to consume their products and I see many others consuming their products in the future.

Compared to real beef patties, Beyond Meat's products are much more expensive. However, compared to halal meat, Beyond Meat goes head to head with the meat sold by halal butchers. In the West, halal meat is hard to come by. You have to find a halal butcher (and they're not many in America despite the growing Muslim population). Thankfully, the Islamic Services of America certified Beyond Meat's products as halal. This makes Beyond Meat a great alternative for many Muslim families that want to be able to have meat while following the Islamic tradition of only eating halal.

And as the price of halal meat grows due to inflation, I have a good feeling that Beyond Meat will choose to keep their prices the same or even continue their push to make plant-based meats as cheap (if not, cheaper) than regular meat. The economics of plant-based meats can be improved. Assuming that $BYND and other plant-based meat makers have favorable economies of scale, more demand will mean higher margins for the company.

What are your thoughts on Beyond Meat? Do you see more Muslims warming up to plant-based meats? Do you see Beyond Meat continuing to dominate the plant-based meat industry, or do you see Big Food companies dominating the industry in the future?

In our newsletter this week:

🛒 E-comm still growing rapidly

💰 Signs of slowing in private capital markets

🍽 People are eating less at home again

We cover: $ASML $CMG $CBS $DIS $GT $IRBT $K $L $LYFT $MCO $MC $MGM $NET $ON $PTON $RDFN $UL $ZBRA

My observation from shopping at Costco:

The only reason why $BYND will beat Impossible Foods in the plant-based meat industry is because their meat is the cheapest in the industry.

Other than that, Impossible thrives in the form of appealing to budget-tight consumers.

Examples:

For $21, I get 10 Beyond Meat burger patty.

Meanwhile, I can pay $17 for 8 Impossible Meat burger patty.

Budget conscious consumers prefer the Impossible Meat because it’s cheaper in price, but if they had more money, they would’ve saved more with Beyond Meat.

Both meats taste fairly similar and because of that, there’s no moat in the industry. Beyond Meat is most willing to provide more savings to customers.

Many of the other Big Food producers like $K and $GIS have their own plant-based food brands, but because those aren’t fairly well-known compared to the main startups, they rarely get picked off the shelves.

That’s my $0.02 on the plant-based meat industry. Any questions?

When I realized $K , Kellogg is on a lot of 401k portfolio’s even tho they had a PR nightmare , has no product on the shelves and is getting boycotted, stock price still going up

The Great Resignation of Workers has resulted in 4.3million workers quitting their jobs. Employees who remain are demanding higher wages, which translates into "wage inflation" ultimately hitting gross margins and the bottom line.

Some have it worse like Deere ($DE) and Kelllogs ($K), where workers have gone on an outright strike.

Workers are noticing the returns the company is making during this time and is demanding a larger share of the pie.

This comes at a time when supply chain disruptions are already hitting companies like Deere and farmers are not able to get parts and equipment on time. A double whammy for the companies that need to get through this.

What's interesting is that Deere actually offered their workers a deal with approximately 20% in wage hikes over the coming 6 years. The union workers turned it down.

Both DE and K stocks have been suffering. DE remains firmly below it's 200-SMA , down almost 15% from it's 52-week high. Kellogg on the other is crossing it's 200D-SMA and is down 9.45% from it's 52-week high.

While I'm long DE and the company has great potential, I don't recommend buying into any of these right now until this plight is resolved. It's a firm Hold for anyone who's long.