Below are excerpts from a complementary research note written on 9/28 & 9/29 by our Consumer Staples analysts Howard Penney and Daniel BiolsiWe are pleased to announce our new Sector Pro Product Consumables Pro. Click HERE to learn more.

Has Plant-Based Food Reached A Peak? - 9 29 2020 11 08 57 AM

Last week Green Monday raised $70M in its latest funding round. The company is Asia’s largest wholesale plant-based product distributor to retail and foodservice companies (including Taco Bell and Starbucks).

The company produces plant-based pork substitutes and is an operator of vegetarian focused retail outlets. The company said it would use the proceeds to expand into 10 new EMEA markets and open 20,000 new retail outlets.

Has the plant-based food trend reached a near term peak or are we inflecting further when Reebok announced the launch of a plant-based shoe?

The new Forever Floatride GROW is made entirely from plants (rubber is from trees after all). The first 50 customers also will receive a half bushel of fresh veggies in a dozen varieties.

We don’t think it’s a peak, after all the shoes were announced last year. There will likely be more plant-based IPOs/SPACs in the next year – Impossible Foods, Eat Just, Oatly, possibly a spin-off from a conglomerate. I think the peak will be a plant-based electric vehicle IPO, named Beyond Nikola. 

Look at the data coming out of Germany.

Approximately 42% of Germans are actively reducing their consumption of meat, according to a new study published in the scientific journal Foods. The study was carried out by researchers in Berlin, Bath, and Franche-Comté and found that a growing number of German consumers now identify as vegan (1.9%), vegetarian (4.6%), pescatarian (5.1%), and flexitarian (30.5%). 

For the first time, people who regularly consume meat without dietary restrictions are in the minority — a vital tipping point that means meat-eating is no longer the norm in Germany.