Beyond Meat just revealed its juiciest burger ever — here's how they made the magic happen

Brian Sozzi
·Executive Editor
3 min read
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It looks more like a traditional beef burger. It smells more like a traditional beef burger. And it tastes more like a traditional beef burger.

That is Yahoo Finance's quick and dirty food review of Beyond Meat's new "3.0" burger revealed on Tuesday, which the company dubs its juiciest plant-based patty ever.

The new Beyond Burger has 35% less total fat than 80/20 ground beef and 35% less saturated fat then 80/20 ground beef. It boasts fewer calories and no cholesterol compared to 80/20 ground beef, Beyond Meat says. The burger will start hitting grocery store shelves on May 3 — the recipe will then be introduced with restaurant partners starting in June. A four-pack will set one back $9.99.

Spend a few minutes (virtually) with the market share hungry founder and CEO of Beyond Meat Ethan Brown, and it's not a shock the latest iteration of the company's signature plant-based burger has inched closer to mirroring beef.

"You don't think about it, but there are about 4,000 molecules that make meat taste like meat, and so our job is to identify that kind of 20% or so of those molecules that are driving from a human sensory perspective. Then we try to match those molecules in plants and scale those up in flavor systems. I think we are just getting closer every year to that," Brown tells Yahoo Finance over a virtual lunch of Beyond Meat 3.0 burgers. "That's real important because as we get closer to that beef experience that we all love, or most of us, we bring consumers into the brand and then we obviously are able to accomplish more of our broader objectives."

To be sure, the new Beyond Burger puts the ball back into the court of rival Impossible Foods to release an improved version of its signature plant-based patty. In recent months, Impossible has slashed prices in a bid to wrestle away market share from Beyond Meat ahead of a potential IPO. But lower prices or not, if Beyond Meat makes a better patty consumers are likely to pay a little more for it.

Photo by: STRF/STAR MAX/IPx 2021 2/8/21 Plant-based 'protein continues to grow in popularity. Recently, Impossible foods made their products available to consumers as they compete for shelf space with Beyond Meat and other plant-based brands.
Photo by: STRF/STAR MAX/IPx 2021 2/8/21 Plant-based 'protein continues to grow in popularity. Recently, Impossible foods made their products available to consumers as they compete for shelf space with Beyond Meat and other plant-based brands. (STRF/STAR MAX/IPx)

Brown appreciates the burger battle between the two plant-based food companies as it furthers his goal of reducing traditional meat consumption to improve health and the climate.

"I love to compete. I think the NBA would be a pretty boring place if there was only one team. And competition is really healthy. It fuels us. We are all after the same thing, which is to develop products that are going to serve both the consumer and the world," Brown says of the competition with Impossible. "We want to be that group of people that separates meat from animals and leaves this lasting benefit to the world. It just pushes us to move quicker, invest more, and so I think it's overall something that is very positive. I don't view it as a war. I just view it as healthy competition."

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

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