Saturday 31 July 2021
Meatless alternatives
Meatless Farm wants to reach the masses
From Alexander Langer
The company Meatless Farm is researching with the driven nature of a young tech start-up to improve the taste of meat alternatives. His ambition has already made him industry leader in the UK. But founder Toft Bech wants more.
Actually a sign of a complete revolution that the excited reports about plant-based meat substitutes in the media world have taken a little backseat. In some bubbles, reaching for vegetarian and vegan alternatives in retail has simply become normal. In other words: now it’s getting exciting – the mass market wants to be conquered.
With this mission, the Meatless Farm brand started in 2016. Founder Morten Toft Bech had a simple insight back then, which the new European boss Erwin Meijer sums up as follows: “Often there are people who want to do the right thing, but then realize that it wasn’t really tasty either.”
This should sound familiar to anyone who, in the experimental phase of the food industry, tried their hand at the supermarket range with all the green labels on it. “In the market, everything is about taste,” says Meijer. Therefore, according to Meijer, Meatless Farm is researching with the energy and drive of a young tech start-up to improve the taste of products based on pea protein.
“We are constantly working in sprints,” says Meijer. “We are convinced that we will be able to offer an improved version every six months in the near future – and this is the only way to get an extremely good product and a convinced customer base.”
The perfect timing
With this formula, Meatless Farm has made it industry leader in Great Britain: “We have conquered our home market of England,” says Meijer. “We have grown tremendously in the US.”
For an outsider, however, the Meijer personality is almost the most exciting – because it comes from the retail giant Lidl after a quarter of a century. That there is someone like him who is now fully committed to the subject of meatlessness. Because even if the products are essentially different, supply chains and sales do not change anytime soon.
Anyone who really wants to make an idea and a product big still needs the necessary industry knowledge and contacts in all directions – and the old Lidl school certainly can’t be wrong. Meijer says: “Lidl is my first big love and always will be. I am an absolute fan, I grew up at Lidl.” He says that he now wanted to do something that would make new sense.
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“Meatless Farm came at just the right time. If I can help get people to buy a sustainable, high-quality product at the right price, and we go to market with big retailers, then we’ve done it.”
Perhaps the latest partnership coup best illustrates the force that Meatless Farm is striving for: it has recently become the official partner and supplier of Real Madrid. The team owns over 70 restaurants and has thousands of employees who increasingly want to resort to meat-free alternatives. Even Toni Kroos is a brand ambassador for the common cause. It’s hard to get bigger than Los Galácticos.
This article is at first Business punks published.
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