Maybe it’s just because my Facebook is often overrun by MLM salesmen and -women, but I’ve always thought that “direct-to-consumer” was sort of a passé business model.

It calls to mind my parents, sitting around the table with the Colorado Prime salesman 30 years ago, using a pen and a printed form to order the ground beef and pork chops that filled up our freezer and fed our family of seven.

It also calls to mind Daily Harvest, a more recent version of the model that is unlikely to attract my business after the Lentil and Leek Crumbles fiasco. (And I don’t think anyone would call me paranoid on that count.)

But lately, I’ve been looking at D2C with fresh eyes and wondering if I was somehow missing the charms of a direct-to-consumer sales model.

It first occurred to me in the middle of August when Juicy Marbles’ ribs, which they sold direct to consumers, were all over social media. But Juicy Marbles isn’t the only company taking their success into their own hands. Seaspire recently announced a direct-to-consumer play, Motif released its first burgers direct-to-consumer and Meati is centering its D2C subscription business.

So what’s the benefit of going direct-to-consumers?

Right off the bat, I can understand why not paying a slotting fee is beneficial — it’s a money-saver, for sure. Especially in 2023, when retail sales of plant-based meat products are in the toilet, and you can’t be sure your supermarket shelf space is actually garnering attention or foot traffic. In that case, for a company with brand recognition, it might make sense to go direct-to-consumer.

But I can’t get over all of the extra labor involved in a project like this.

Juicy Marbles, as far as I know, employs fewer than 20 people. Are R&D experts also packing and labeling boxes for shipping? Are they dealing with consumer questions and shipping logistics? That’s not sustainable long term — and honestly, do you really want to be paying engineers or scientists to put labels on boxes?

I’ve been circling the thought for a few weeks, so I looked toward the companies that are in the direct-to-consumer business to see what they’re saying. Seaspire co-founder Varun Gadodia told Green Queen that they’re shipping because retail simply isn’t a sustainable business plan: “Physical retail is not yet a promising channel in India,” Gadodia explained. “There is a huge inventory cost in the supply chain for physical distribution, and [it] is not viable corresponding to market adoption.”

But since Meati just launched in Whole Foods stores across the United States, that’s clearly not their specific concern. Instead, I found its president and COO, Scott Tassani, talking about connecting with consumers via the Meati Marketplace:

“We regularly get requests from Meati superfans to make our products available for online ordering. Meati Marketplace lets us reward our most loyal meati eaters with regular shipments of what they already love, while introducing them to all-new concepts and collecting valuable feedback to shape what we bring to market,” Scott Tassani, president and COO of Meati Foods, said in a statement. “This approach to product innovation will let us better connect with new and diehard fans.”

For their part, Juicy Marbles lately have been doing infrequent “drops” of several hundreds or thousands of units of product via social media. The products are known for selling out quickly, and their mail-order reasoning sounds at least a little similar to Tassani’s: “E-commerce gives us the opportunity to get a lot of feedback before we launch into retail and foodservice,” one of the company’s co-founders, Vladimir Mickovic, told another industry publication.

I don't have to wave a Wharton degree to see that building a relationship with consumers through direct sales could not only help build the brand over the long term, but also provide untold reams of useful data for a company that’s able to harness it and put it to good use. That data — on what consumers like and don't like, what words prompt them to buy, when they're more likely to buy and so on — might be worth the loss of shelf space at retail.

But I’m curious: What do you think about the direct-to-consumer business model for alt-meat companies?

The alt-meat man cometh

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