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Comment by flomk | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if a meat shortage that causes people who previously hadn't eaten plant substitutes, will be enough to let plant substitute companies take a bigger chunk of the meat market for good.

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Are any of those plant substitute companies in a position to help offset a meat supply shortfall in any meaningful way? Are the substitutes less labor-intensive to produce or otherwise less affected by the coronavirus?

Impossible Foods is expanding its grocery store presence right now, and says that its production plant is less susceptible than meatpacking plants due to increased amounts of automation....

https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/amp/Impossible-Burger-comes...

The problem is that when there is availability fake meat can't compete on price, even with high local meat prices (mostly due to drought) real meat is still a much cheaper option. In my area 500g of ground beef is $6-7, up from $4 a year or two ago, but 300g of fake ground beef is $9. It just doesn't make sense to pay 30% more to get 30% less of an inferior substitute.

The question is why is the price so high, is it scale, inherent costs or just a virtue tax?

Guarantee its scale. I'm not a vegetarian but I've eaten meat analogues for decades - even before it was "trendy" - and they are actually better priced now than ever. The first few weeks of the panic buying had even my local kinda-small-town-turning-into-suburb grocery out of stock. Was hoping they would be a good alternative to have when my meat ran out. Guess I wasn't alone.

I was wondering the same thing. Even if the number of people who take that opportunity is small by meat-industry standards, it's still huge for companies like Beyond and Impossible. The market seems to agree; Beyond stock is way up in the past month. Wish I'd bought it when I first had this thought.

The products you're referring to started out more expensive; why do you think they will become relatively cheaper? And why would people who prefer meat not just eat smaller quantities? If butter becomes more expensive, I'm not going to substitute margarine.

What I meant by "people who previously hadn't eaten plant substitutes" was people who just haven't decided to try it because they just preferred to stick to meat, I should have phrased that better.

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