Recently my friend Graeme Goodsir sent around a digital image of a page from his local Aldi supermarket flyer that was almost solely dedicated to promoting meat alternative products — 13 items in all. They were “specifically labeled as ‘meatless’ to attract customer interest,” he pointed out.

Meat alternative products have been riding a wave of free publicity for several years now. Reading the companies’ boastful news releases and the news coverage that usually follows a day later, I wouldn’t expect much, if any, actual promotional marketing activity around these products. And other than Aldi, I haven’t seen any: I did a spot-check of FSIs from newspapers around the country that ran on the same day as the Aldi circular that Graeme noted, and didn’t see any that featured meat alternatives in such a splashy, concentrated way. Nor have I seen any since.

I don’t know if the tactic paid off for Aldi that week; I asked, but they politely declined to comment on sales trends for any particular product. No matter. The page still stands as an example of alt-meat’s journey to mainstream consumption, to the average customer’s grocery cart.

Consider Aldi’s primary audience: According to the Power of Meat 2018 report by 210 Analytics LLC (and sponsored by the Food Marketing Institute and the North American Meat Institute), the percentage of shoppers who regularly consult the printed circular before heading to the store is 57 percent, down from 80 percent in 2013.

Broken down by demographics, however, the range is startling, from a high of 70 percent among “older boomers” who regularly consult the paper circular before shopping, to 62 percent (younger boomers), 60 percent (Gen-X), 53 percent (older millennials) and 37 percent (younger millennials). (The percentage of shoppers who grab the paper circular at the store is more uniform, ranging from about 35 percent to 45 percent of total shoppers, regardless of age.)

Aldi’s target for its alt-meat promotion, then, is most likely consumers in their 40s and older, and given Aldi’s appeal to the price-conscious, they are folks on a budget. In other words, not the individual who immediately comes to mind when considering which consumer groups are thought to have propelled the popularity of alt-meat products so far.

The growth and mainstreaming of the alt-meat market presents more opportunity than threat to a growing number of meat companies. Just in the last week, two meat companies have announced deals that greatly increase their foothold in the plant-based meat alternatives market: Los Angeles-based Don Lee Farms announced it will begin distributing its Don Lee Farms Organic Plant-Based Burger to 15 countries in Europe, South America and the Caribbean, adding to its U.S. market for the item; and Dutch processor Jan Zandbergen is the exclusive EU (outside the U.K.) distributor of the Brit company Moving Mountains Foods’ plant-based burger. It is the first time that the Dutch company has offered a plant-based product.

Look at it this way: Whether your company actually handled plant-based meat alternatives or not, you are in the alt-meat business. Period.

Meatingplace is excited to roll out its new monthly newsletter dedicated to the fast-growing plant-based and cell-cultured conventional meat alternatives industry. The Analogue Dish features exclusive interviews with the sector’s movers and shakers, targeted news updates, relevant data and a sampling of the best coverage from around the globe, all with Meatingplace’s thorough analysis. If you’re interested in getting a copy of our first issue of The Analogue Dish to review, just tell us in the comments below and we’ll add you to our database.

Dishing on the alt-meat market

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