The Business of Vegan

Vegan foods are going to be the next big thing, definitely bigger than organic or gluten free.
It has become massively fashionable to 'become' a vegan. The food companies and supermarkets are gearing up for the new onslaught of demand which is being created by the left leaning younger generation who are wishing to 'save the planet' and the animals and no doubt become a part of the new hip movement. All great for business, it is quite making me salivate!

I have put this into Chat because I think it may dissolve into lightweight propaganda from the vegan political agenda group but I am actually looking at it through the lens of investment opportunities and if it doesn't dissolve into propagandized crap, I might get Joe to move it into one of the business sections.

Beyond Meat's share price more than doubles in vegan burger maker's IPO

(Reuters) - Shares of vegan burger maker Beyond Meat Inc rose more than 160 percent in their market debut on Thursday, as investors look to cash in on the first publicly listed veggie meat company and the growing popularity of plant-based meat alternatives.

The stock opened at $46, well above its IPO price of $25. Shares surged minutes after starting to trade and were halted due to volatility. They traded up to $72 during the day, before closing at $65.75.

Beyond Meat, which has warned it may never turn a profit, closed with a market capitalization of around $3.8 billion, based on shares outstanding including underwriters’ option.

Earlier on Tuesday, the company raised the size and price of its offering after increased demand from investors. The IPO raised $240 million.More...

I agree Ann.
It's such an innovative space.
Sure to be money to be made or lost.

I've heard the burger for beyond meat is more realistic than most in the market but I am sure there are scientists working all over the world for ways to better it.
I would worry if I was a shareholder that I would be up against giant food multinationals with deep pockets for research breakthroughs.

Saw a review of Vegan cheese. Some of the cheeses were basically awful but some were looking like they were half decent (but still not as good as real cheese). I think a good vegan cheese substitute would make millions. It would be cheaper to produce and be easier for the vegans to swallow

The setup period was a couple of years ago. I know a few who got into it. One done vegan cakes and made a truckload

I tried these two burgers. They tasted quite different to other burgers and I still have the after taste all this time later - 3 days later. That is a main problem with Vegan foods and particularly cheese. They taste odd to ghastly.
Beyond Meat burgers are very expensive and can be ruled out on cost alone. Equals are less than half the price and are a bit rubbery.
The answer is to be a Vegan who does not eat cheese or burgers.
At the moment I'm eating pumpkin seeds, walnuts, pecan nuts and almonds. I don't like them much but a website says I should, so I do.
Also lots of blueberries with Greek Yoghurt - not Greek style yoghurt - I tried a Vegan yoghurt and felt unwell soon after.
Vegan food has a long way to go to be reasonably priced and taste good.

Knobby22 said:

Saw a review of Vegan cheese. Some of the cheeses were basically awful but some were looking like they were half decent (but still not as good as real cheese). I think a good vegan cheese substitute would make millions. It would be cheaper to produce and be easier for the vegans to swallow

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It is going to be hard to get a quick hit of fat with the flavour of cheese, this is going to be a top product if it can be done.

moXJO said:

The setup period was a couple of years ago. I know a few who got into it. One done vegan cakes and made a truckload

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This is going to be a real billion dollar industry!

noirua said:

At the moment I'm eating pumpkin seeds, walnuts, pecan nuts and almonds. I don't like them much but a website says I should, so I do.
Also lots of blueberries with Greek Yoghurt - not Greek style yoghurt - I tried a Vegan yoghurt and felt unwell soon after.
Vegan food has a long way to go to be reasonably priced and taste good.

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Years ago I decided to give vegan/vegetarian foods a go (health thing, not animal welfare). There were some excellent vegetarian/vegan restaurants around and a lot of the food was absolutely awesome. There is no need for this junk food they are pushing at the new vegans, if folks go back to the early cookbooks they will find delicious, natural food without preservatives, added flavours or disgusting additives. It is no doubt why vegans/vegetarians were so healthy, they ate 'real' food. It would be far better for people to re-visit the original style of vegan eating without trying to reproduce a carnivore style of food. Having said that, the money is going to be in the fake meat and fake animal bi-product stuff. These are the businesses I am looking out for. They will come, the demand is there and growing, just like the supermarkets were swamped with low fat high sugar **** over the last two or three decades.

Hopefully some will publicly list.

If anyone finds some good tasting/or not good tasting fast vegan food, please add a review to this thread, it will be interesting to watch manufactured vegan food's growth and proliferation.

I see my local Grill'd is having a meatless Monday and only sell vegetable burgers on Mondays, I am guessing this is likely to be most Grill'd places.

Thanks for the great responses so far, it is very heartening!

So no Grill'd on Monday for me

qldfrog said:

So no Grill'd on Monday for me

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Try the simply grill’d.

It’s really good, from an investment perspective you should give it a go.

Ann said:

There is no need for this junk food they are pushing at the new vegans, if folks go back to the early cookbooks they will find delicious, natural food without preservatives,

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You can say the same about any junk food, but people aren’t going to want to give up pizza, burgers, tacos etc just because they become vegan.

Some people go vegan just for health, and of course they will focus on health foods, but if you make the switch for ethical reasons, and still want to go to Burger King with your friends, a beyond burger is a good choice.

Also, the alternative meat products can help new vegans through the transition phase, most people say the biggest road block to becoming vegan is they would miss the foods they are used to eating, alternatives are a good way to make the transition or just to satisfy that junk food craving.

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Having a lot of good vegan options makes great business sense for a restaurant or fast food location, not just because of the growing number of vegans but because of the multiplier effect.

Eg. When people go out with friends or family and the party includes vegans, the group will normally choose a place that has good vegan options, Say there is 2 vegans and 7 non vegans, the place offering good vegan options not only attracts 2 extra vegan customers but also 7 additional people.

Value Collector said:

You can say the same about any junk food, but people aren’t going to want to give up pizza, burgers, tacos etc just because they become vegan.

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Yes I agree with you and that is where I think Veganism will come unstuck as a beacon of good health. It will disintegrate into a nasty, unhealthy style of eating and the diseases which vegans avoided through good eating habits will break down with the mass increase of manufactured junk food eaten by people who won't bother to take the time to learn to eat correctly as a vegan.

This junk food greed is what I am looking at with the potential for new companies to spring up and create a whole new industry.

Ann said:

Yes I agree with you and that is where I think Veganism will come unstuck as a beacon of good health. It will disintegrate into a nasty, unhealthy style of eating and the diseases which vegans avoided through good eating habits will break down with the mass increase of manufactured junk food eaten by people who won't bother to take the time to learn to eat correctly as a vegan.

This junk food greed is what I am looking at with the potential for new companies to spring up and create a whole new industry.

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Don’t think that veganism is only about junk food.

If you want to fight against junk food, start by fighting against junk food, not veganism.

Switching from meat burgers full of saturated fats and cholesterol to healthier (relative) burgers is a good switch.

But it is nonsense to judge vegan burgers just because eating a salad would be healthier, if people want a burger they will eat a burger, and the beyond is a good option.

Value Collector said:

If you want to fight against junk food, start by fighting against junk food, not veganism.

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On the contrary I have no desire to fight against vegan junk food, I want to invest in the companies who make it! This is what this thread is all about!

Ann said:

On the contrary I have no desire to fight against vegan junk food, I want to invest in the companies who make it! This is what this thread is all about!

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It’s just a common theme of your posts about veganism, including the one I quoted is that vegan junk food exists, you seem to think vegans only eat is junk food.

All I am saying is that yes vegan junk food exists, but given that huge amounts of meat and dairy junk food exists also, it’s silly to point out some vegan food is junk.

Saying that though, switching to a beyond burger and avoiding all the saturated fat and cholesterol in a regular patty would be a better health choice, but ofcourse that doesn’t make it a “health food” but so what, you have to compare apples to apples.

If a teenage vegan can go along to hungry jacks with his friends and get a veggie burger, he is no worse of than his mates who get the regular whopper with cheese, and may be slightly better off.

Value Collector said:

It’s just a common theme of your posts about veganism, including the one I quoted is that vegan junk food exists, you seem to think vegans only eat is junk food.

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No I don't think vegans eat junk food, not true vegans. I was a vegan for a while and there is quite an art to eating properly. I found vegan food delicious, sadly it was not healthy for me as it turns out I can't eat any starch but that is me and I am not saying it is an unhealthy way to eat for others.

However I think there are going to be a lot of people who will 'become' vegans because it is fashionable and their mates are all becoming vegans but they won't want to change their crappy eating habits and will still want junk food.

This is the market I am looking to buy into, the new boom in junk foods to cater for the nouveau vegans.

Ann said:

However I think there are going to be a lot of people who will 'become' vegans because it is fashionable and their mates are all becoming vegans but they won't want to change their crappy eating habits and will still want junk food.

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If they were eating junk before they were vegan, and continue eating junk after, then it’s not the veganism that is the issue.

But atleast they are not harming as many animals, so it’s still a net plus, and as said earlier, a lot of the vegan junk isn’t really as junky.

I mean this burger is still basically some bread, with some salad, and a tasty patty made of pea protein with no cholesterol, It’s not the devil. s

Not familiar with vegan. But is that cheese or a vegan version? If it is vegan what is it made of?
The use of animal names like 'lamb' is that just used as a guide for the expected flavour, is there a vegan name for the same?
Back to investing is there anything covering this on, on the ASX?

i think eventually the FDA, TGA and other major government bodies are going to step in and regulate the language

clearly that which is vegan is not, by default, healthy and that which is healthy is not, by default, vegan

in the US the egg marketing board have been fined for using the words "healthy" and "nutritious"
it is illegal for them to do so, if you look at marketing it is extensively designed to emulate things we associate with health, yet, evidence clearly demonstrated, thru peer review process, that ingestion of eggs leads to several factors that lead to cardio vascular damage, cardio infarction, thickening vascular system around the heart, strong correlation with dementia and various inflammatory responses

if we eat a burger and call it heart-healthy, it is false and misleading, if it is fried in any way it already contains oxidised cholestrole, it also contain oxidised fats, it contains refined carbs, is not going to contain enough phyto-nutrients to reach a basic daily recommended intake, the oils and fats cause restriction of nitric oxide and cause contraction of the blood vessels, not enough potassium causing down-regulation of the liver leading to increased lipids both in the blood and stored which leads to toxicity and likely we'll find as with standard burgers too much protein thru the kydneys

on the plus side not the same haem iron going across the blood brain barrier, nor the same animal hormones, so, yeah, there are those!

if the cheese is not a synthetic (with it's own challenges) then there's your daily intake of rubbish animal product offsetting the 'value' of the burger

if you consider even the most basic diet say the Mediterranean diet even that is not as healthy as purported due to the oil although there is a balance in the % of plant food taken in the same sitting offsetting the debilitation from the oil (one adds nitric oxide the other chokes it!)

once the hubbub surrounding the fashionability of these 'vegan' burger n such we'll get down to business as the wave of (qualified) good health practitioners sweep the globe, already medical schools are expanding dietary courses to (re)include food as a rout to good health and there are now a plethora of online courses* with certification*

oh, the moderation myth

there's no such thing as moderation - Ann likely to tell you, any small amount of a food group can go undiagnosed for years and cause a recurring response, mostly inlfammatory, yet we think that "moderation" is the key whereas that moderation is likely just slightly poking a dog with a stick, after years of poking the dog bites back

https://sche.getsmarter.com/stanfor...LloCnlhTswQ7wgRw6_EQVAtEQm_cCQPxoC3q0QAvD_BwE

*https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/cou...ied-health-assistance-nutrition-and-dietetics

*https://www.deakin.edu.au/course/graduate-certificate-human-nutrition
https://nursing.jhu.edu/academics/programs/prerequisites/index.html

Joules MM1 said:

in the US the egg marketing board have been fined for using the words "healthy" and "nutritious"
it is illegal for them to do so, if you look at marketing it is extensively designed to emulate things we associate with health, yet, evidence clearly demonstrated, thru peer review process, that ingestion of eggs leads to several factors that lead to cardio vascular damage, cardio infarction, thickening vascular system around the heart, strong correlation with dementia and various inflammatory responses

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Recent views have changed about the nutrition of eggs...from the Heart Foundation...

Eggs are often a topic of conversation. People want to know how many kilojoules or calories they have, how they affect their cholesterol and how much protein is in a single egg.


But just one question lies at the heart of all egg-related questions: are they good for you?


The simple answer is 'yes'. But there's more good news - you don't need to worry about numbers. Calculating your intake down to the last kilojoule, calorie and gram isn't as important as following a healthy eating pattern. More..

Joules MM1 said:

if you consider even the most basic diet say the Mediterranean diet even that is not as healthy as purported due to the oil although there is a balance in the % of plant food taken in the same sitting offsetting the debilitation from the oil (one adds nitric oxide the other chokes it!)

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A recent study has shown olive oil lowers the risk of cardiovascular diseases...
Why does olive oil keep heart attack and stroke at bay?

...and another really interesting recent UK study done on the heart health benefits of olive oil here...

jbocker said:

Not familiar with vegan. But is that cheese or a vegan version? If it is vegan what is it made of?

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Are you talking about my photo of the burger?

If so yes that is plant based cheese, so it’s vegan, it contains no animal products.

I don’t know what brand they use on the burger, But this is the brand I use at home.

Ann, we are slowly moving away from that thread's aim..

Sanitarium has this virtually locked down - and they are tax exempt to boot!

Apart from human food, many people (not just veg*ns) would pay well for a dietetically sound vegan dog kibble available in the mainstream supermarket aisle.

Non-leather but still professional looking work shoes could be an area awaiting further commercial exploitation.