Whatever its origin, the credo applies well to innovation and entrepreneurship.
To be worth doing, new offerings can’t just be better. They must be radically better.
Seth Goldman would know. The co-founder and former “Tea-EO” of Honest Tea—a beverages trailblazer that was acquired by the Coca-Cola Company— lives this belief. And he is putting it to work again in his latest adventure as Executive Chairman of the plant-based protein company Beyond Meat.
Goldman and I recently sat down at the Expo West innovation extravaganza in Anaheim and talked about going radical.
Beyond and chairman Seth Goldman
Beyond Meat certainly aims to be different—extremely.
The company was founded by CEO Ethan Brown in 2009 as a plant-based protein alternative to answer what he felt were growing challenges in the meat business, ranging from changing consumer tastes and nutrition preferences to supply and production issues. Its signature “Beyond Burger” launched a few years later.
Goldman—who was actively looking for what’s next and initially made contact with the company by simply writing to the general email address—said he was attracted by the degree to which the Beyond product bested the existing meat substitutes at the time.
“I thought that if the meat industry wanted to concoct a conspiracy to discourage people from pursuing plant-based diets, veggie burgers would be a great strategy,” he quipped. “Because most carnivores taste them once and then conclude that they don’t want to be a vegetarian that badly.”
The key for Beyond, Goldman said, was the exhaustiveness of its product development. As many incumbent veggie burgers relied on ingredients like quinoa and black beans to “kinda sorta” simulate a real burger experience, Beyond went much further.
For starters, the Beyond team repeatedly placed a number of traditional hamburgers into an MRI machine to micro-analyze the assemblage of proteins and fats. (I hope those poor burgers weren’t claustrophobic.)
Then, by scientifically arranging plant-based elements to mimic the structures the MRI showed, the team was magically able to create a product that essentially replicated a hamburger’s sensory aspects.
What happened? Sizzle—figuratively and literally. Now real meat lovers could experience plant-based burgers that would perform on the grill like hamburgers, an important ritual. The Beyond product also retained the moisture, char, and chew of a hamburger, and can even emit a hamburger’s aroma. All with zero cholesterol.
While the widely-held perception is that consumers are converting to new vegan/vegetarian diets in droves, Goldman said that the percentage is still only around 5%. He and the team are banking on moving that number beyond.
The early results suggest there’s a chance. Since its debut, the company says, Beyond already has sold more than 11 million burgers, and today is available in over 25,000 grocery stores and restaurants nationally.
Future product research and development will be run out of a gleaming new facility they recently built in Southern California that they say is considerably larger and more sophisticated than their prior one, so expect more innovation to come. Their new Beyond Sausage product is one example.
Here are three keys to the company’s successful foray beyond meat.
11x. In serial entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s opus Zero To One, he counsels founders to build technology that is “10X better” than the incumbent’s. Well, as someone devoted to progress — okay, and a fan of the movie Spinal Tap — I’m one-upping Mr. Thiel and suggesting you turn your product up to 11, as the Beyond team has.
Location, location, location. When it comes to sales, intelligently selecting your channels and customers is important, but so too is where you are shelved inside the store itself. The Beyond team shrewdly persuaded retailers to stock them in the traditional meat section, furthering perceptions of their brand as a viable substitute. Be strategic about your in-store placement. This applies to digital retail environments too, by the way.
Own it. I’m seeing more and more progressive new brands, like Beyond, handling as much product development and production in-house as they can (in some cases even acquiring their own manufacturing facility, as Harry’s has done). With product uniqueness and authenticity more important than ever, how might you better control the making?
Placement in-store matters
In transcending not just physical products, but consumer behaviors, the word “Beyond” in the company’s name is apt. Whatever your space may be, you may find success by designing way beyond it.
">“Anything in life worth doing is worth overdoing,” Navy SEAL Shane Patton famously informs his cohorts in the 2013 hit biographical thriller Lone Survivor. “Moderation is for cowards.”
It’s one of several unofficial SEAL credos (incidentally, this line has also been attributed to Mick Jagger in a different context, and an amended form of it appears in my own manifesto).
Whatever its origin, the credo applies well to innovation and entrepreneurship.
To be worth doing, new offerings can’t just be better. They must be radically better.
Seth Goldman would know. The co-founder and former “Tea-EO” of Honest Tea—a beverages trailblazer that was acquired by the Coca-Cola Company— lives this belief. And he is putting it to work again in his latest adventure as Executive Chairman of the plant-based protein company Beyond Meat.
Goldman and I recently sat down at the Expo West innovation extravaganza in Anaheim and talked about going radical.
Beyond and chairman Seth Goldman
Beyond Meat certainly aims to be different—extremely.
The company was founded by CEO Ethan Brown in 2009 as a plant-based protein alternative to answer what he felt were growing challenges in the meat business, ranging from changing consumer tastes and nutrition preferences to supply and production issues. Its signature “Beyond Burger” launched a few years later.
Goldman—who was actively looking for what’s next and initially made contact with the company by simply writing to the general email address—said he was attracted by the degree to which the Beyond product bested the existing meat substitutes at the time.
“I thought that if the meat industry wanted to concoct a conspiracy to discourage people from pursuing plant-based diets, veggie burgers would be a great strategy,” he quipped. “Because most carnivores taste them once and then conclude that they don’t want to be a vegetarian that badly.”
The key for Beyond, Goldman said, was the exhaustiveness of its product development. As many incumbent veggie burgers relied on ingredients like quinoa and black beans to “kinda sorta” simulate a real burger experience, Beyond went much further.
For starters, the Beyond team repeatedly placed a number of traditional hamburgers into an MRI machine to micro-analyze the assemblage of proteins and fats. (I hope those poor burgers weren’t claustrophobic.)
Then, by scientifically arranging plant-based elements to mimic the structures the MRI showed, the team was magically able to create a product that essentially replicated a hamburger’s sensory aspects.
What happened? Sizzle—figuratively and literally. Now real meat lovers could experience plant-based burgers that would perform on the grill like hamburgers, an important ritual. The Beyond product also retained the moisture, char, and chew of a hamburger, and can even emit a hamburger’s aroma. All with zero cholesterol.
While the widely-held perception is that consumers are converting to new vegan/vegetarian diets in droves, Goldman said that the percentage is still only around 5%. He and the team are banking on moving that number beyond.
The early results suggest there’s a chance. Since its debut, the company says, Beyond already has sold more than 11 million burgers, and today is available in over 25,000 grocery stores and restaurants nationally.
Future product research and development will be run out of a gleaming new facility they recently built in Southern California that they say is considerably larger and more sophisticated than their prior one, so expect more innovation to come. Their new Beyond Sausage product is one example.
Here are three keys to the company’s successful foray beyond meat.
11x. In serial entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s opus Zero To One, he counsels founders to build technology that is “10X better” than the incumbent’s. Well, as someone devoted to progress — okay, and a fan of the movie Spinal Tap — I’m one-upping Mr. Thiel and suggesting you turn your product up to 11, as the Beyond team has.
Location, location, location. When it comes to sales, intelligently selecting your channels and customers is important, but so too is where you are shelved inside the store itself. The Beyond team shrewdly persuaded retailers to stock them in the traditional meat section, furthering perceptions of their brand as a viable substitute. Be strategic about your in-store placement. This applies to digital retail environments too, by the way.
Own it. I’m seeing more and more progressive new brands, like Beyond, handling as much product development and production in-house as they can (in some cases even acquiring their own manufacturing facility, as Harry’s has done). With product uniqueness and authenticity more important than ever, how might you better control the making?
Placement in-store matters
In transcending not just physical products, but consumer behaviors, the word “Beyond” in the company’s name is apt. Whatever your space may be, you may find success by designing way beyond it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulearle/2018/03/22/beyond-meat-and-how-radical-wins/Bagikan Berita Ini
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