Awesome Nestle Burger is the company's response to the craze for herbal meat

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Monterey County, where Moss Landing is located, is the perfect place for a vegetarian business. Location of the Salinas Valley, the "salad bowl of the world", it is one of the most productive agricultural areas on the planet, with more than 150 crops, including lettuce – many lettuces. Sweet Earth has been home for years, long before Nestlé acquired the company, which then numbered 350 people in 2017. But these days, it is turning into something else: the center Nestlé's herbal protein excellence, the heart of the recent business in dummy meat.

At the Moss Landing plant, where factory workers prepare the benevolent bacon made from wheat gluten and responsible for the fragrance, changes are underway. Nestlé spends more than $ 5 million on facility renovations, adding new equipment, more freezing capacity, "meat smokers" and more. Construction is underway and employees will soon start creating a host of new products, including Awesome Burger, Nestle's answer to Impossible burgers and Beyond Meat.

The product, currently being rolled out at retailers like Fred Meyer, Hy-Vee, Ralphs, Safeway, Stop & Shop and others, is hardly a breakthrough. As in the version of Impossible and Beyond, the herbal burger is designed to cook, look and taste real meat. And as with the Impossible and Beyond Meat products, a bite of the Awesome Burger slab, garnished with condiments, lettuce, tomatoes and onions and served in a fluffy bun, is a good approximation of a real beef burger.

But Awesome Burger is a big problem as it marks a turning point for fake meat.

Impossible Foods has been around since 2011 and beyond the meat since 2009. The burgeoning start-ups have grown rapidly, with orders coming in from Burger King, Dunkin's, Subway and Sodexo, which counts among its customers university and business cafeterias.

Like many start-ups, Beyond and Impossible have also struggled. Unable to cope with shortages, reassigning employees from its headquarters to a cold store to help meet the demand (the shortage, he says, is over). Beyond has had an extremely successful IPO and has since organized a secondary offering, but its losses remain significant and experts are concerned that the inflated stock price is a sign of a bubble. Impossible is private and does not disclose financial information.

The Awesome Burger is designed to look like, cook and taste real meat.

Nestlé, meanwhile, is the largest food company in the world, according to Forbes. He is about 140 years old on Beyond and Impossible. Breathtaking in size is unbeatable: the Swiss company employs 308,000 people, has annual sales of billions of dollars, has offices in countries around the world and has a wide variety of well-established brands such as Dreyer & # 39; s and Häagen-Dazs. ice cream, chocolate chips and cookie dough Toll House, Gerber baby food, DiGiorno frozen pizza, lean cuisine, Stouffer's and more. Sweet Earth has already benefited from this scale: under its responsibility, Nestlé has developed frozen pizzas, empanadas and new dishes.

Nestlé is a master of supply chains and a profit-making machine, unlike its younger competitors.

Thanks to its relationships and wide product range, Nestlé can guarantee that the Awesome Burger will be in one form or another everywhere – in restaurants, on grocery store shelves and in frozen food. Nestlé already works in partnership with McDonald's on vegan pastries in Europe. If this relationship spreads to the United States, Awesome Burger could be part of America's largest chain of burgers. McDonald's, for one, stated that he was still in the process of deciding to serve a meatless burger (but similar to this one) in the United States. And through Sweet Earth, Nestlé is also launching a range of herbal meat products, including turkey, ham, salami and sausage, this spring. The products will be sold in a dedicated and branded charcuterie counter as well as on shelves.

Tucker Bunch, Chef of Culinary Innovation and Development at Sweet Earth, prepares dishes in the kitchen test desk.

Nestle is not the only big food company looking for a piece of herbal cake. Kellogg plans to launch a line of meat substitutes called Incogmeato under its brand Morningstar Farms next year. Kroger is launching its own herbal products this fall, ranging from burger patties to bolognese sauce with sour cream. Hormel Foods, maker of Skippy, Spam and AppleGate, has also launched a line of herbal products and blends, just like Tyson, one of the largest processors of meat, pork and poultry.

The herbal products launched by Big Food are "literally the best thing that can happen for the sector," said Bruce Friedrich, executive director of the Good Food Institute, a non-profit organization that supports companies in the plant sector . "When the world's largest food and meat companies launch meat-based herbal products, it will do more to integrate herbal meats and make the pie even more big than probably something else. "

By partnering with fast food companies and selling in the retail business, Impossible and Beyond makes herbal foods available to many consumers. But "there is a difference between" able to "and" mainstream ", added Friedrich. "It's omnipresence."

Once all new products are available, consumers will be able to make their choice. They will choose based on ingredients, taste, nutritional profile and packaging. If the trend develops, it will give Big Food a chance to compete in a new lucrative space. But if herbal meat turns out to be fashionable and disappears gradually, it could mean the loss of millions of dollars for big companies that have made a bad bet.

But Nestle thinks that vegetable proteins are here to stay. And he's betting on Sweet Earth to put him at the front of the pack.

How vegetables became sexy

It may seem that the plant-based trend has come out of nowhere, but vegetarian products have been around for decades.

Vegetarian burgers began to hit grocery shelves about 30 years ago. Gardenburger, which makes burgers mainly from vegetables and cereals, was founded in 1985. Slowly, the market has developed. Dr. Praeger & # 39; s, who also makes vegetarian burgers, was launched in 1992. Tofurky launched his holiday roast in 1995.

It took about 15 years for habitual consumers to start paying attention.

Kara Nielsen, vice president of trends and marketing at CCD Innovation, an innovation consulting firm in the food and beverage industry, has sparked widespread interest in herbal foods. "When we look back and look [at] What were the previous steps? There were several. Including vegetables that become really sexy and interesting, "said Nielsen.

Things started turning for vegetables around 2010, according to Nielsen. That year, President Bill Clinton began talking openly about his decision to become (mainly) vegan to manage his health. Plenty, a successful vegetarian cookbook that New York Times culinary writer Mark Bittman has called "one of the most generous and luxurious meatless cookbooks ever produced," on display . Soon, the herbal diet attracted celebrities such as Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who had committed in 2013 to give the taste of being vegan. Bill Gates, who invested in Beyond Meat, praised the company in a blog post in 2013.

As a result, veganism was no longer a marginal category dominated by lenses and activists. It was a lifestyle adopted by the most powerful and famous, which aroused the interest of influential and wealthy investors.

As herbal diets became more and more popular, other changes were affecting the food sector. Large agribusinesses such as Nestlé and Kellogg were able to set the tone for food trends by launching new products or expanding their product lines without too much competition from the upstart. But the food sector has become more fragmented.

Start-up funds can be used by start-up companies to launch products and use online retailers to sell them, which can reach an audience quickly and without using traditional channels such as established grocery stores. The CB Insights research firm found that between 2013 and 2017, the number of investors – including venture capitalists, private equity firms and others – spent more than three times as much of funds to startups in the food and beverage sector.

Pea protein is a key ingredient in Sweet Earth's awesome herbal burger.

To compete, large consumer goods companies have launched their own weapons and accelerators to help them identify new acquisition targets or better understand what people want to eat.

Still, big companies have nearly missed the boat because of some new trends, said Nielsen. For example, major brands have been slow to launch GMO-free or gluten-free products.

Nestle, Kellogg, Kroger and other big companies in search of Impossible and Beyond do not want to be left out of the plant-based trend, which is particularly attractive. As more and more health-conscious consumers turn away from processed and sugary foods, they are perfectly integrated into the area of health and wellness that large companies are trying to create. And this has the added benefit of signaling and supporting efforts for sustainability. When Nestlé announced its intention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, it announced the marketing of herbal products. Vegetable alternatives to meat use much less water and release much less emissions than animal products.

In addition, herbal products are of interest to several demographic groups: aging consumers who wish to reduce their meat consumption for health reasons, Generation Y youth who are worried about global warming and even young consumers who may be primarily concerned with animal rights.

And, potentially, there is a lot of money to be won. Retail sales of plant-based foods in the United States have increased 11% over the past year, according to a report released in July by the Plant Based Foods Association and Good Food trade group. Institute. Barclays predicts that the meat substitute sector could reach about $ 140 billion in sales over the next decade, accounting for about 10% of the global meat industry. Jefferies predicts that by 2040, the replacement meat market could generate annual revenues of $ 240 billion worldwide.

For companies that want to grow while presenting themselves as being supportive of health, the environment and generally with them, the plant-based trend looks like a slam dunk.

For Nestlé, there were several possible ways to follow the trend of meat substitutes. Last year, she started selling vegetarian dishes through Lean Cuisine. In Europe, it offers a range of herbal products under the Garden Gourmet brand. The company could have launched Awesome Burger under these brands or make something out of nothing.

Instead, he bought Sweet Earth.

The Terre Douce gambit

Sweet Earth may seem like a family operation that was in the right place at the right time – a modest manufacturer of frozen vegetable burritos and imitation bacon that was lucky when Nestlé decided to embark on a new trend.

Its offices, with open cabins and windows that frame the pale Californian sky or allow workers to interfere in the plant on the ground floor, do not carry the Nestlé brand. The mascot of Sweet Earth, a farmer seated in a position similar to that of the Lotus, is visible throughout the office, in a small painting painted by the elevator and on a wall mounted gong. Employees have access to fruits and vegetables from a community garden located in the backyard and can stand up on a stubby footrest in a sun-drenched meeting room .

However, as little as that seems to be the case, the operation was started by a couple who are knowledgeable about the business and have years of experience selling big brands.

Kelly and Brian Swette, who founded the company in 2011, both have a background in marketing. Both have spent years at PepsiCo, Brian as Marketing Manager and Kelly as Brand Manager and Marketing Director for the Pepsi brand. Brian was also director of Jamba Juice, a board member of Burger King and brand director at Procter & Gamble. Kelly was Calvin Klein's Global Vice President of Marketing.

Sweet Earth President, Kelly Swette, in the Garden of Employees at Sweet Earth Headquarters.

The Swettes each had their own reasons for wanting to create a vegetarian meal business. In 2004, the couple's teenage daughter, Briana, began a vegetarian diet because she was concerned about the environment and animal welfare. Kelly, head of household cooking, looked for appetizing, easy and fast plant foods, and found that options were missing.

Meanwhile, Brian, who helped launch the Global Institute of Sustainability of the University of Arizona State in 2002, found that the diet did not play an important role in the movement for Sustainable development.

Both saw an opportunity.

"We thought there was a market," Brian noted. "It was pretty clear to me that you were talking to young people, seeing their behaviors and seeing the menus change, that there was a desire for delicious and nutritious herbal food."

Sweet Earth quickly began to attract the attention of industry experts. Specialized publications praised the company's frozen burritos, fake bacon and vegetarian burritos in the best-of lists. Kelly Swette, who remains the CEO of Sweet Earth (Brian is president), has also begun to attract attention – in 2015, Goldman Sachs named her as one of the 100 most intriguing entrepreneurs. of the year.

Two years later, around the time Sweet Earth began thinking of launching a meatless burger that looks and tastes like meat, Nestle acquired the business. It did not reveal the financial terms of the transaction.

"More and more consumers [were] Kelly wanted to eat herbal, but in a more familiar way. After the acquisition, with access to Nestlé 's huge R & D capabilities, Sweet Earth has been able to accelerate the development of the Awesome Burger.

This was good news for Nestlé. The acquisition of Sweet Earth "gives us a high speed to market," said John Carmichael, president of the food division of Nestle USA. "They have been in this situation for several years now," he said. The agreement "gives us both a kick-off on a market that matures as we speak."

Nestlé's Awesome Burger started arriving in grocery stores weeks before the Impossible Burger was sold for the first time. The Kroger collection will also be available this fall. A world of choice is open to consumers who want to test – or fully adhere to – meat substitutes. It's a new but already crowded market, and every brand will have to stand out.

When my colleagues and I tried Awesome Burger in the Sweet Earth test kitchen, it had a good taste – but it did not exactly taste the meat.

Sweet Earth manufactures Mindful Chik poultry substitutes and meat substitutes, Awesome Grounds and the Awesome Burger.

Awesome Burger is made from pea protein, coconut oil, wheat gluten and canola oil, among other ingredients. Beyond Meat also lists pea protein, canola oil and coconut oil among its main ingredients. Impossible, on the other hand, uses soy protein, coconut oil and sunflower oil, among other things.

On the nutritional side, the Awesome Burger is a little different. An Awesome Burger contains 260 calories, 26 grams of protein, six grams of fiber and 15 grams of fat per four ounce serving. An impossible burger of the same size contains 240 calories, 19 grams of protein, three grams of fiber and 14 grams of fat, and a four ounce burger beyond the meat contains 250 calories, 20 grams of protein, two grams of fibers and 18 grams. of fat.

According to the USDA, a four-ounce serving of real ground beef, made up of 80% lean meat and 20% fat, contains about 290 calories, 19 grams of protein, zero fiber and 23 grams of fat. .

The relatively high protein and fiber content of the Awesome Burger is inherent in the design, said Kelly Swette, pointing out that these factors could help differentiate it from the competition.

That aside, the Awesome Burger looks a lot like the Impossible Burger, at the brand toothpick stuck in the bun when it is served to customers (or at least to us). As the market grows and more and more cheeky meat-like products arrive on the shelves, consumers risk confusing one product with the other – or looking for brands they've heard talk for years, like Beyond Meat and Impossible.

The space is "superlative, I would say, in terms of naming," conceded Brian Swette. But "our intention is to take advantage" of the brand Sweet Earth, he said. "There will be marketing and distribution wars that will take place."

Carmichael believes that Sweet Earth's skills as an established vegetarian catering company will also help differentiate it from its competitors.

Some, like Friedrich of the Good Food Institute, think that it is a mistake to consider the plant sector as a nil sum. Newcomers to space are not going to share shares, said Friedrich, but they help develop the sector.

But that does not mean that every brand will succeed.

Kara Nielsen cited the trend of low-calorie ice creams, powered by Halo Top, as an example of how the plant-based trend could materialize. "Everyone wants one, and there will not be enough space," she said. "The one will be the winner."

And as the plant market warms up, a backlash could occur.

Customers interested in unprocessed foods, such as whole grains, beans, and vegetables, may turn away from the product when they realize that, like any other hamburger, it is prepared in a factory.

"Most consumers do not know how these products are actually combined," said Darren Seifer, a food and beverage industry analyst for the NPD research group. "At the moment, it's the herbal part.They think it's a plant, and that's a whole pile of plants." Beyond that, I would say that there remains some confusion. "

Nestlé itself can face its own challenges.

Because she sells bottled water, she is accused of earning money with valuable public resources. Nestlé says it is "determined to continue to preserve and protect water resources in the areas where we operate" and has created a webpage addressing concerns about its use of water in California after activists tried to stop Nestle from tapping into the state. The company has also been criticized for contributing to plastic pollution. In response, it is committed to making all its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025 and to reduce the number of disposable plastics by testing reusable packaging and other innovations.

In addition, allegations of animal cruelty at a Nestlé supplier put the company in the limelight this year (Nestlé cut ties with the farm in question and said it was working with its product suppliers dairy farmers to develop a program supporting improvements, particularly in the care of animals).

"In our community, Nestle has had a bit of disgust," said Anna Starostinetskaya, editor-in-chief at VegNews, a brand of vegan lifestyle products with a news and marketing website. ;a magazine. "But because Sweet Earth is a very popular business … some vegans could be attracted to it."

Kelly Swette said she was not afraid that the Sweet Earth association with Nestlé would chase vegan or vegan clients. "Our values and our mission are supported by Nestlé," she said. "Together we are stronger." Paul Mankowski, head of research and development at Nestlé Foods, said the sale of vegan food at an affordable price is "an opportunity to put more plant-based products in the hands of consumers".

Paul Mankowski, Head of Research and Development at Nestlé Foods, and Kelly Swette present products in the Sweet Earth test kitchen.

Environmentally conscious consumers can look forward to Nestlé's efforts in the field of plants, but they may decide to call on a company they feel is less controversial.

Most customers, maybe even most, do not even realize that there is a link between Sweet Earth and Nestle. The Awesome Burger package highlights the name and logo of Sweet Earth, but does not mention its parent company.

Nestlé says it is attached to the plant sector. He says that herbal products are an important and growing part of her business, a trend that continues unabated. But decades of experience mean that Nestle has seen fashion come and go, and knows how to get out when it's needed.

For example, the company stands out from candy, which has been a key part of its business for years. Last year, she sold American candies to Candero, including Butterfinger, Crunch, Raisinets, Nerds, Laffy Taffy and others, for $ 2.8 billion. "This decision allows Nestlé to invest and innovate in a range of categories in which we expect strong future growth," Nestlé CEO Mark Schneider said in a statement.

"We have experienced the trends and we understand how to manage them," said Mankowski. "We are well positioned to follow trends and react to new trends."

Some signs indicate that not all markets have a voracious appetite for herbal products. Tim Hortons launched Beyond Meat as a limited menu in Canada in June and has since announced that it will continue the test only in British Columbia and Ontario because of the "positive response from clients". After a limited retail test in the UK, Nestle pulled out its Garden Gourmet range from this market, claiming that it "had been greeted in a very positive way" and that she was considering getting back into the region.

Brian Swette says that he is not worried about the fact that Nestle has unloaded the Awesome Burger product or other Sweet Earth products. "We oversee Nestlé's product formulation, manufacturing and distribution, and I'm very confident about all three aspects," he said.

"It's not going to happen to us."

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