Why is Europe leading the world in plant-based options? Pascal Bieri, Co-Founder of Planted joins CEO of VegTech Invest and host Elysabeth Alfano on The Plantbased Business Hour to discuss the struggles and successes of the European market and the recent turn towards sustainable eating.
Specifically, they discuss:
- What is Planted and why did you start it?
- The sector has been struggling in the U.S., but seems stronger in Europe. Why is this?
- You have an incredibly varied selection. How have you been able to keep so many SKUs alive and which one does the best? Which country does the best?
- You recently finished a manufacturing plant. What was the reason for the capital outlay as opposed to co-manufacturing?
- Do you think that the U.S. could follow Europe’s lead on sustainability, perhaps now that we have someone in the leadership entourage that seems focused on food?
- Any predictions for the space for the next 2-3 years?
Below is a highlight and transcription from their long-form conversation. The audio podcast is here.
Elysabeth: Pascal Bieri, co-founder of Planted, thank you for being here with me today.
So what do you lean on in your messaging? That it’s fermented and there’s some added health benefits or that it’s kind of a clean label or that it just tastes better? You’re still not at price parity. Obviously meat having subsidies I believe in Europe like they do in the U.S.
Pascal Bieri: It really depends on the market for price parity. In Switzerland we are at price parity, for example, but it’s a market that is very weirdly priced. It has a lot of taxation on animal meat when it comes across the border and Swiss meat is super expensive to begin with. So I think it’s a special case. We’re not at price parity when it comes to other markets, that’s true, but I think we have a way to get there.
Towards the messaging, we’re not talking about fermentation too much on the packaging or towards the consumer or not yet, because what we’ve learned so far is that consumers don’t really care about tech. It needs to taste great, and it needs to be available and it needs to have a price that is comparable to other products on the shelf. Even though it might be better, you still need to have a price that is comparative to what else is on the shelf.
There is only a little tiny segment of consumers that care about tech and want to know more and for them just be transparent. We built our first factory under a glass house where we have four and a half thousand people visiting us each day from schools to business to social clubs. We do open days for the population around here so they can visit and see how we make our better meat products. But other than that very tiny segment that really cares about tech, I think towards consumers it needs to be about taste and a bit of availability and price.
Elysabeth Alfano is the CEO of VegTech™ Invest, the advisor to the VegTech™ Plant-based Innovation & Climate ETF, EATV. She is also the founder of Plant Powered Consulting and the Host of the Plantbased Business Hour.
