Oscar Meyer to roll out vegan hot dogs, sausage with startup backed by Jeff Bezos
Oscar Meyer is rolling out a plant-based hot dog and sausage this year with the help of a startup backed by Jeff Bezos.
The Kraft Heinz Company’s iconic brand is teaming up with TheNotCompany — a vegan-centered firm whose investors include Amazon’s billionaire founder — to introduce the “NotHotDog” and “NotSausage”, according to a statement from the company.
American consumers will have the option of plunking down $5.99 for a package of four plant-based hot dogs and $7.99 for four of the “NotSausages.”
In December 2022, Kraft Heinz and TheNotCompany jointly introduced a plant-based Philadelphia Cream Cheese to appeal to non-dairy-leaning consumers.
The Kraft-NotCo partnership has also yielded a plant-based “Kraft NotMac&Cheese” as well as alternative versions of mayonnaise (“NotMayo”) and cheese slices (“NotCheese Slices”).
Kraft Heinz, which is headquartered in Chicago and Pittsburgh, is banking on the popularity of the plant-based market to surge.
The conglomerate cited projections showing that sales of plant-based food products are estimates to rise from $8.3 billion in 2023 to $19 billion by 2030.
“We know people are hungry for plant-based meat options from brands they know and trust,” Kraft Heinz Not Company CEO Lucho Lopez-May said in a statement.
Judging from recent trends in the plant-based industry, Kraft Heinz has its work cut out for it in convincing consumers to ditch meat for good.
Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have seen their share prices fall considerably since 2020.
The stock price of Beyond Meat, which reached a record high of nearly $235 a share in 2019, has plunged a whopping 96% since then.
Beyond Meat stock was trading at just north of $8 a share on Wednesday.
In the first nine months of 2023, the company’s US revenue dropped 34% on weak consumer demand.
Beyond Meat said in November it was cutting 19% of its workforce and considering cutting some products, like jerky, and reducing its operations in China.
The El Segundo, Calif.-based firm announced in late February that it was revamping its signature plant-based burger by reducing saturated fat by 60% thanks to a switch from canola and coconut oils to avocado oil.
The new products — Beyond Burger patties and Beyond Beef grounds — go on sale in the US this spring.
Inflation is one reason US buyers turned to cheaper sources of protein in recent years.
But US consumers’ doubts about the health of plant-based meat – fed partly by advertising from the meat industry – has also been a consistent problem.
With Post wires
