Walking out of the Good Food Conference this past week in San Francisco left a feeling of excitement and optimist about the direction of the plant-based foods market. The topic of large meat-producing companies entering the fray was omnipresent, as even JBS, Perdue and Tyson were represented on the speaker roster.
Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods put plant-based food on the map by making meatless patties that “bleed.” But now traditional food giants Hormel, Kellogg’s, Kroger, Smithfield, Tyson and others are all jumping into realistic alternative proteins, making recent announcements of new products and investments they’ve made to take a bite of the market.