The Hidden Obstacle to Plant-Based Adoption (Part 1)
A field study by ETA Lumis Foods.
In today’s consumer economy, speed and convenience are paramount.
73% of consumers expect a grocery order to be at their door within 24 hours. If the hour hits 25, good luck winning that customer back as you should expect your SLA to drop by over 40 percentage points... tough crowd.
For in-store shopping, the expectation is just as grueling. Trusted brands like Amazon and Walmart are now the premier seller of groceries in North America (eCom + brick & mortar) simply due to their utility, supply chain prowess, and product convenience. Amazon alone has not only made the $13 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market in 2017 but it has subsequently increased its footprint specific to grocery distribution by 511 Whole Foods Market stores and 24 Amazon Go stores.
The above shows preliminary data on the overall speed of the food market, however, let’s take it a step further.
If we take the above customer satisfaction KPIs and add in some healthy competition ( 800 companies and brands) coupled with a market share of just 1.4% of the overall meat pie (pun intended)… Well then welcome to the plant-based world.
But don't worry, its not all doom and gloom! We will let the data tell the story but first, a quick introduction…
We are ETA Lumis Foods! We specialize in plant-based manufacturing through the use of high-moisture extrusion and flat-line batter/breading/frying/freezing. Our products are 100% plant-based because we believe not only in the mission of curbing the 40% of greenhouse gas emissions that come from meat/agriculture and land-use practices, but also because the market data is painting a clear picture of what the consumer wants.
As the two graphs below show, sales of PB meat have outpaced regular meat by an average of 55% (graph 1) and the total sales of that 54% CAGR pace has eclipsed $7 billion dollars as of 2021 (graph 2).
Plant-Based Sales Growth YoY vs. Animal-Based (graph 1)
CAGR of plant-based growth (graph 2)
If we bring it full circle and go back to that convenience expectation for a grocery order, we can see that the deliveries themselves have had a vegetarian component added at a rate increase of 55% since 2020. In Canada, there has been a 250% increase in vegetarians. There are now over 2.3 million vegetarians and 850,000 vegans, according to 2020 data, in Canada alone. Simply put, this is an exploding industry that needs all aspects of it’s supply chain to be humming in order to meet consumer demand.
But it’s not! Find out the core issues of scaling, manufacturing and achieving price parity in our next blog published via the ETA Lumis Foods medium page. (we love a good cliffhanger, don’t we?)
Our website is etalumisfoods.com. Want to reach out? Thoughts? Comments? We are happy to chat at Sales@etalumisfoods.com
