The battle of the plant-based burgers is heating up, and Walmart Inc. is ground zero. Impossible Foods' patties have found their way into nearly half of Walmart's U.S. stores, just as rival Beyond Meat's pea-based product moved beyond Walmart into its wholesale club division.
The Impossible Burger debuted Thursday at nearly 2,100 of Walmart's Supercenters and Neighborhood Market stores nationwide, the meat substitute company said in a news release. The product is sold in the fresh-meat section in 12-ounce packages.
Impossible Foods' founder and Chief Executive Patrick O. Brown said the company aims to make the global food system sustainable. That means making its burger patties available wherever people shop for meat.
"More Americans buy meat for their families at Walmart than anywhere else," Brown said.
Adding Walmart stores makes the Impossible Burger now available in more than 8,000 grocery stores in all 50 states, the Silicon Valley-based company said. The patties were introduced into grocery stores in September.
The alternative beef company announced earlier in July that the patties will also be sold at Trader Joe's.
Impossible Foods' competitor, on the other hand, has been in Walmart stores since 2016. But now the Beyond Burger is expanding into Sam's Club, Walmart's members-only warehouse division.
BJ's Wholesale Club will also sell the meat-alternative patties, Beyond Meat said Monday in a news release. Beyond Meat entered the wholesale market at Costco Wholesale Corp. in 2019. The Southern California-based company packages its patties into eight packs for its wholesale business.
None of the companies disclosed the terms of the agreements. Walmart did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Chuck Muth, Beyond Meat's chief growth officer, said that after entering all the conventional retailers in the U.S., "club stores were the next logical step" toward reaching mainstream consumers.
Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have emerged as the leaders in the increasingly crowded plant-based meat-alternative market. Made mostly of soy and pea protein, spices and binders, the products cater to customers who want to limit their meat consumption for health or environmental reasons.
Retail data released in March by SPINS, a Chicago technology firm, shows that grocery sales of plant-based foods that directly replace animal products have grown 29% in the past two years to $5 billion. Swiss bank UBS projects the category will reach annual sales of $85 billion in the next 10 years.
Even Springdale-based meat processor Tyson Foods Inc. entered the alternative-protein market last year. Its "blended" burgers are a mixture of meat and plants. Tyson also makes nuggets that resemble chicken but use ingredients including pea protein, bamboo fiber and egg whites.
Fresh-meat alternatives were already gaining in popularity before the pandemic, with research firm Nielsen reporting year-over-year sales up 158% in the last week of February. But by the last week of March, after President Donald Trump had declared a national state of emergency, sales grew 255% over the previous year, Nielsen said. In contrast, meat sales rose 53% over the same period.
The rise in faux meat sales may be partially attributed to supply chain disruptions as the pandemic forced temporary closures at meat-processing plants. Meat production fell 28% in May compared with a year earlier, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
The drop in production and subsequent supply tightening caused meat prices to rise, according to a May report by the Department of Agriculture.
Beyond Meat patties cost about 20% more than beef on a per-pound basis, the company said. Ethan Brown, the company's chief executive, said he expects the company to reach pricing parity in about 3½ years.
Information for this article was contributed by Nic Querolo of Bloomberg News and Nathan Owens of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Information for this story was contributed by Nic Querolo of Bloomberg News and Nathan Owens of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.