Making arrangements for our wedding 16 years ago, my wife and I agreed to meet with a photographer. He said, with the quiet and sincere tone of a funeral home director, that we’d meet at a “beautiful restaurant.” Now, I have nothing against casual dining chains, but that phrase really seemed a stretch for a Perkins Restaurant & Bakery along I-94 in western Michigan.

His photography, as it turned out, wasn’t all that much better than his choice of adjectives. But, to this day, we still get a good laugh when recalling the experience of that first encounter.

Another roadside casual dining chain, Cracker Barrel, gave our readers plenty of laughs, too, when we reported in early August on the viral — and, to some extent, vitriolic — response to the company’s decision to add Impossible Sausage as a plant-based option to its popular breakfast menu. Given the headline of that news story, “Don’t mess with Cracker Barrel’s breakfast sausage,” it’s clear we had a little fun with it, too.

All joking aside, though, this Cracker Barrel dust-up makes for a fine case study in what our nation has become, as opposed to what it aspires to be, and the same tug-of-war is playing out in the meat industry.

“The Cracker Barrel has gone WOKE!!! It really is the end times …” one commenter on the restaurant’s move wrote on Facebook. Counter to that, another commented, “Imagine getting upset because a menu option exists at a restaurant. Relax.”

In the most fractious political times of my lifetime, we are so damn prone to such venomous upchucks at the slightest taste of discomfort or difference of opinion. The whirling cesspools of social media channels, and their facility to protect people from face-to-face discourse, only make it worse.

In this case, a restaurant chain adds a new item — a plant-based sausage — and those who prefer meat items at that establishment somehow see the new introduction as a threat. Keep in mind, that restaurant is not taking away any of its existing animal protein menu items to make room for the plant-based protein.

Setting aside an altruistic discussion on the freedoms this nation aspires to provide, one of its true marvels, to me, is a food supply chain that affords its people an almost embarrassment of riches. Put another way, we have at our disposal a tremendous amount of choices. Cracker Barrel is adding a choice, not forcing anyone to eat it.

And while many of this industry’s largest players (and smaller ones, too) have invested heavily into the production of plant-based proteins, many traditional members also see them as a threat. Never mind that plant-based proteins make up maybe 1% of the North American protein market.

Having covered the meat and poultry industry for nearly 16 years now, I know and admire how much pride its professionals take in feeding people. With such noble aspirations, one need also recognize, though, that animal proteins alone won’t meet the needs of a rapidly growing global population.

Opinions differ on just how much the plant-based category will grow in the coming years, as it works through current shortcomings like taste, nutritional profile and cost. But one thing is certain: The free market will decide.

Relax.

Editor's note: This article ran as the Editorial in the September issue of Meatingplace.

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