Vegan Company Urges Supermarkets to Change “Meat Aisle” to “Protein Aisle”

United Kingdom-based vegan brand The Meatless Farm Co. debuted at 450 Whole Foods Markets in the United States this week and its founder, Morten Toft Bech, hopes that supermarkets will soon phase out their meat departments in favor of integrated protein aisles. “The vision is that you walk into a supermarket and it’s no longer called the meat aisle but it’s called the protein aisle—where there is a whole bunch of protein, some of which is from animals and hopefully a lot which is not,” Bech told MarketWatch. Whole Foods now sells the brand’s meat-free quarter-pound burger patties ($5.99 for a pack of two) and its meat-free ground beef ($7.99 per 14-ounce pack), products that Bech hopes will eventually be stocked alongside meat. When vegan brand Beyond Meat launched its Beyond Burger in 2016, the company also urged stockists to place it in the meat department—which some have done to varying degrees—in order to better reach its target consumer: meat eaters. When it comes to purchases made at fast-food restaurants, a recent report showed that 95 percent of people who purchased the 228 million plant-based burgers sold between January 2019 to May 2019 also made a beef purchase during that time period.