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Comment by ilikehurdles | Hacker News Reader

To me, seeing YuppieVCFoodStartup brand names in a restaurant is akin to the restaurant advertising they’re selling me Lays(tm) chips as the side to my burger. While I have no urge to eat food for its ability to imitate meat (so I’m not the target audience anyway), I think these products belong in a grocery or convenience store, not a dining establishment. It feels to me like paying a premium to eat frozen store-bought dinners, and as bonus points, they’re the vegetarian equivalent of over processed mystery meat. Can’t wait for this hype to level off or for the trend to go the way of shilling Soylent.

Sorry to be a downer, but anything remotely touching alt-food startups on HN is hyped with positive sentiment to the point where any criticism gets discouraged.

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What about ordering Mary’s free range chicken? Lots of restaurants advertise that on the menu. Sounds better than a normal chicken sandwich. Or Coca Cola braised short ribs from your favorite food truck? Sounds better than cola braised short ribs.

Some people wouldn’t even consider a veggie burger on the menu, but an impossible burger? Sure. It’s about _branding_.

The first time I tried impossible meat I was eating dinner with my old boss and he’d asked if I had heard about impossible meat. I’d heard about it but never tried it, so I ordered it and it was honestly better than I expected.

I never would have tried it if it wasn’t for word of mouth marketing because it was on the menu. Restaurants are in the business of selling food. It’s their job to make items on their menu sound appealing. Just like those Michelin star restaurants including ingredients I’ve never heard of, let alone can’t pronounce. I could never find that ingredient at my local store. Maybe I should try it.

Based on your tone it sounds like you’ve never tried “imitation meat” as you describe it but i can see why people are hyping it. I eat plenty of meat but have started buying beyond meat patties at the store every now and then. It’s magnitudes better than your run-of-the-mill black bean veggie burger.

Honestly, that branding for actual meat also makes me feel like I am getting a commodity product: I start to associate the food item together with all of the other food items I get which are "this same thing with different condiments" as opposed to "this unique meal that is notable for being from this restaurant". I actually really like the Impossible Burger, but it now feels like I am ordering the exact same product from every single restaurant... and this is not at all helped by how, to maintain the strength of their brand, they insist on certain kinds of preparations of their patties.

> I eat plenty of meat but have started buying beyond meat patties at the store every now and then.

Pretty off-topic, but a question: after seeing so many mentions on HN, I was pretty interested to give it a try after seeing Beyond Burgers appear in my Dutch grocery store recently. One thing that struck me, though, was that they were twice as expensive as the A brand plant-based burgers we already had, and over three times as expensive as the cheap ones. How expensive are they in the US? (i.e. are they just this expensive because they're from outside the EU?)

Probably not as expensive. They were pricier than other options, but not as extreme as you're describing. Generally, I notice these brands are more expensive than their meat counterparts and other fresh vegetarian options in the restaurants I visit. They're not cheap. I think a lot of that has to do with the marketing and hype around these products rather than inherent cost of producing or shipping them - and I hope the prices will become more reasonable in the future.

Thanks, I'm hoping the latter as well. Might also have to do with trouble scaling up, related to the hype. I hear they're working on a new factory here, so hopefully that helps.

It's not just about branding, it's also about knowing what you eat. And also about restaurants not being able to make every possible piece of food from scratch.

If they made their own veggie burger, I love that. If they bought the best veggie burger on the market, that's also great.

There are plenty of brands involved in restaurants, in meat, in fake meat, in the preparation of the food (Big Green Egg for example). It's rarer to come across brands in vegetables or non-meat/meat-like products, but it happens. Sometimes their bread comes from the best bakery in town and they want you to know that.

Making everything from scratch is a lot of work for a small restaurant. There's nothing wrong with outsourcing it to a specialist.

And they also sell branded drinks, don't they? They don't brew their own cola or beer (well, some do[0]), and they will tell you what brand they've got.

[0] I recently had lunch at https://deproefzaak.nl/en/ which brews their own beer and serves branded veggie burgers.

Do you also object to the entire concept of ordering a Budweiser™ beer at a restaurant or bar? I mean... You can drink that at home for a quarter of the price.

Somehow I don't feel the urge to tell someone enjoying a Budweiser™ beer at a bar that their drink "belongs" for sale only at a grocery/convenience store for at-home consumption only.

I buy sandwiches from a place that advertises they use Boar's Head meat. Shrug

Do you also object to the entire concept of ordering a Budweiser™ beer at a restaurant or bar?

Yes. Budweiser is terrible beer.

That's not a fair comparison, unless the restaurant also brews its own beer.

A better drinks comparison would be choosing from the menu between a 'Jose Cuervo Authentic Margarita' and a margarita mixed fresh by the bartender.

I agree with the OP - in a restaurant I would always order a made-from-scratch dish (the house margarita) than a factory-made burger (the premixed margarita).

Actually drinks were the first thing that came to my mind as well. With drinks it is basically normal to order by brand (several brands of beer on tap for example). But there are also restaurants and bars that brew their own beer, and people go there for exactly that purpose. So it is not directly comparable, maybe, but at least comparable and a good example on how you actually think about this with other parts of your diet...

> While I have no urge to eat food for its ability to imitate meat (so I’m not the target audience anyway)

That's a very short sighted view. This isn't about vegetarianism. It's about the environmental crisis, and the overfishing crisis, that we're currently experiencing at a global level. I don't care whether you are vegetarian or not, we are all in the target market for solutions to these problems. That's what replacement meat and fish are about.

I disagree, and I’m worried that this view will prevent adequate nutrition for children more and more frequently (meatless Monday etc). The next step is then preventing adequate nutrition for myself from special taxes or regulations on meat.

Your children will survive not eating meat one day of the week - in fact it's probably beneficial to only eat meat every other day or less (not by eating processed food like beyond/impossible etc just eating "normal" vegetarian meals).

I know a lot of people who eat meat twice a week. That seems like a very good balance.

They would also survive a beating one day per week. I would prefer that their life is optimized for the good.

If you believe that a vegan or vegetarian diet can't supply adequate nutrition, then your information is outdated.

Source: my wife who is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist.

A balanced non meat diet is at the very least as healthy as a balanced meat diet.

This site is such bullshit. I constructively participate in the debate and my opinions are constantly downvoted because you bugmen can't handle real discussion.

fuck off.

On the contrary, to me it would be a net positive if a restaurant was going to advertise their sources. I for one am highly skeptical of the perverse incentive between restaurantees and restauranteurs—restauranteurs being incentivized to buy the cheapest ingredients possible to minimize cost. That doesn’t align with my goal as a consumer to nourish myself with the best quality food. If the restaurant can assure me they only use organic/high quality ingredients that gives me some peace of mind and is a +1 in my book.

And this isn’t just fearmongering. For most restaurants it is uneconomical to cook with anything but the cheapest vegetable oils which are guaranteed to oxidate/become carcinogenic at the temperatures required to cook the food they’re serving. So if you eat out often, being informed about a restaurants sourcing and cooking habits is definitely worth knowing about.

Sure, but I still expect the things a restaurant is sourcing to be ingredients, not products.

Restaurants source lots of products. Certainly in the drinks department, but I've often come across some form of branded meat, usually to show their meat is better than just your standard random meat.

Are you a vegetarian? I am! And as a vegetarian, I can tell you that I love it when restaurants sell Impossible Burgers. First, I don't cook (unless you count making a bowl of cereal cooking), so it's not like I'm going to make it for myself. Second, restaurant dining is about more than just calorie intake - sometimes I want to go to a restaurant, and as a vegetarian I appreciate when they have tasty things for me to eat. Third, if I'm going to a restaurant as part of a larger social gathering, or as a company outing or whatever - in other words, if I'm at a restaurant when I would not have otherwise chosen to (which I'm sure doesn't happen to just me!), then I appreciate it when there are options for me.

I’d add to that: big brands make vegetarianism more palatable to everyone. If I’m stuck ordering a salad at a bad restaurant, I’m more likely to be mocked by meat eaters than if the restaurant sells good burgers (esp in the US). When I was in the states recently and the restaurant had an impossible burger, instead of people saying “why are you vegetarian? Where do you get your protein?” people said “oh, the impossible burger, yeah I tried that recently and really liked it”. It was a very pleasant change.

> I’m more likely to be mocked by meat eaters

Sounds like you need better friends.

I didn't say they were friends!

Absolutely. It's one thing for fast food service to do this, quite another for a real restaurant - which is presumably making their own burgers from ground beef, maybe butchering sides of beef, etc. - to be advertising retail-grade consumer products.

> I think these products belong in a grocery or convenience store, not a dining establishment

I heard somewhere that the fake burger companies sold to restaurants first because the parameters for cooking it well are much narrower than a regular burger (for now). They didn't want to ruin their products' reputation because of mistakes people made cooking the burgers at home, whereas restaurants will probably do a better job.

You're probably right, and I do expect at some point to see Impossible on grocery store shelves. I tried it in a restaurant once and liked it, and wouldn't mind having it as a quick option at home, but until it shows up in the freezer section I'll probably stick with the stuff the restaurant makes from scratch.

Nothing different than extolling that you're using Wagyu beef, or anything else where you're citing a specific supplier.

Agreed, all other things being equal - a restaurant serving me a product that someone else made, rather than something they created from ingredients is strictly worse.

Things like beer are a bit more understandable - not every restaurant can have a brewery out the back. (although the ones that do are pretty nice)

I think "Ycombinator" funds one of these. It is amusing that the U.S. discovers soy etc. burgers 20 years late.

The only tasty vegetarian food is Indian and Italian anyway.

I’ve got news for you — a significant portion of food you get from chain restaurants is from Sysco, a lot of it prepackaged.

On the other hand, beyond meat has quickly become a household name and the trademark is losing meaning quickly.

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