UNSTUCK 001: Five Make-Or-Break New Year’s Resolutions For The Alt Protein Industry

This article originally published on Green Queen Media.

For the past decade the alt protein industry has been focused on the holy trinity of price, taste and convenience. While we’ve made huge progress on all three, there simply aren’t enough consumers showing up to the party. Many of our propositions will continue to fail unless we change our thinking. We’re calling for 2024 to be the year we shift our mindset and skillset to get us unstuck.

On the face of it, price, taste and convenience (collectively known as PTC) seem like sensible drivers of choice in food. Who wouldn’t want cheap, tasty and easy? But research published last year by Rethink Priorities, a think tank, shows they’re not nearly enough to explain actual behavior. As marketing and branding experts we have been trained to know real people are not nearly as rational as academics or structured research questionnaires will lead us to believe.

Why price, taste & convenience are not enough

Think about it for a moment. Bottled water is a $300 billion dollar category globally despite being indistinguishable in blind taste tests, potentially worse for your health, and sold at a 10,000% price premium to tap water. Aligning alt protein pricing with conventional animal products will not bring a flood of consumers knocking on our doors. Demonstrating value and justifying a fair premium will.

Let’s look at ramen next, a $50 billion category globally. It has graduated from dorm rooms into kitchens and Michelin-starred restaurants not by imitating established tastes, but by introducing new ones with a few lucky cultural moments along the way. Attempting to imitate the taste of animal protein, down to the blood dripping out of our undercooked burgers ...