Leonardo DiCaprio has invested in it, everyone from McDonald’s to Ikea is selling it, and now some companies are even growing it in a lab: We’re talking about oversized doors alt-meat.

The category’s gone from niche to mainstream (no, really, there’s a plant-based burger brand called Mainstream)—boosted, no doubt, by the pandemic: Plant-based meat sales shot up 45.3% to $1.4 billion in 2020 amid Covid stockpiling, per a report by the Plant Based Food Association and Good Food Institute (GFI) last year.

But sales slowed down in late 2021, and it seemed like the space had been counting its alt-chickens before they hatched.

• On Q3 earnings calls in early November, Maple Leaf Foods President and CEO Michael McCain said sales in the plant-based category had “evaporated,” affecting sales for its subsidiary Greenleaf Foods (-6.6% YoY), while Beyond Meat said US net revenues declined 13.9% to $67.5 million.
• Sales across the refrigerated alt-meat segment had declined 3.1% YoY in Q3, per IRI.
• Plus, some plant-based items were dropped from fast-food menus.

Then there are fermented and cell-based meats, which could potentially alter the alt-meat segment’s dynamics as they come to market.

With so much competition, retailers, fast-food chains, and VCs may be getting a bit pickier about the companies and protein types they bet on in 2022. And brands will need to adjust their strategies to keep up.

Meating expectations

Juan De Paoli, Kroger’s VP of Our Brands, said stocking plant-based brands “is a priority” for the grocer.

• Plant-based food sales grew 10% YoY in Kroger stores last year, 8x the growth rate of other categories, he said, citing SPINS data.

But as it brings in more brands, clean-ingredient labels will be paramount.

“There is still a gap and customers are craving more whole-food, veggie-forward, less-engineered meat options,” De Paoli told Retail Brew. “As plant-based trends continue to evolve, we want to make sure we continue to provide our customers with options.”

Cutthroat: New forms, too, could be key to reaching more consumers.

Brands will need to “go beyond the kids menu” this year to focus on more center-of-the-plate, whole-cut offerings, said JP Frossard, consumer food analyst at Rabobank. “There’s a limit to the amount of burgers and nuggets you want to eat in a week, right?” he told us.

There are barriers to this, of course, namely that making whole-cut analogs is trickier and more expensive than producing burgers and nuggets.

• That’s why Frossard believes we’ll be “talking more and more” about fermented meat companies once they scale up production and bring their products to market.

What else is next for alt-meat? Click here to read what brands and investors are thinking.—EC

Go big and go (closer to) home. That seems to be Amazon’s gameplan for its new Go store.

The e-comm giant is introducing its Just Walk Out tech to suburbia (hi Mom), with the first location slated for Mill Creek, Washington, outside of Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.

• At 6,150 square feet, it’s more than double the size of the largest existing Go stores, most of which range from 1,200–2,700 square feet.

Convenience is king and scan-and-go tech is “the way of the future,” noted Richard Kestenbaum, co-founder and partner at Triangle Capital. And Amazon, in signature Amazon style (more on that here), is getting out ahead.

“Once your competitor across the street has it, you have to have it. Knowing full well that convenience is so critical to consumers, there’s no reason to stand in line anymore in most retail stores,” Kestenbaum told us.

Hold on: Plenty of people still need convincing.

• Only 17% of shoppers say they regularly use cashierless tech, as opposed to 29% who have either never heard of it, or have but aren’t all that interested, per a December eMarketer survey.

“It’s like the shiny penny that a lot of people in the industry are interested in, but I’m not sure that consumers are quite there yet,” Suzy Davidkhanian, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, told us. That’s why Amazon is going suburban.

“They need to see if this is really going to be the thing that they’re going to do. They need to see that it works in every market.”

What do our experts think about Amazon’s move into apparel? Click here to read more.—KM

Fashion Nova is accused of another fashion no-no. (Sorry, can we start over?) The Federal Trade Commission this week said that the fast-fashion clothing site will pay $4.2 million to settle allegations that it “blocked” unfavorable customer reviews from its website.

According to the FTC’s complaint, Fashion Nova used a third-party product review system that automatically posted four- and five-star reviews to its website and held ones with anything less for the company’s approval.

• The e-tailer didn’t give the or publish hundreds of thousands of negative reviews from late 2015 until late 2019, according to the FTC.

In a statement to Retail Brew, Fashion Nova spokesperson Terry Fahn denied the company suppressed negative website reviews and said it “immediately and voluntarily addressed the website review issues when it became aware of them,” in 2019. “The issue in this case was caused by Fashion Nova’s reliance on a reputable third-party enterprise software vendor, which offered an option to ‘autopublish’ various star ratings in a drop-down menu.”

Star light, star bright: Negative reviews can actually bring about some good for brands and consumers alike. Erin Schmidt, a senior analyst at Coresight Research, posited that companies could use them to their advantage.

• Brands need to embrace the feedback to improve their products, she said—and understand how much customers rely on these reviews to inform their decisions.

“For researching and buying products, the review process is hugely important, because it represents the consumers’ authentic opinions about the size, the fit, and the style,” Schmidt told us. “[Negative reviews] can actually be a positive for the retailer because they can help reduce returns…What a brand could perceive as a negative review is actually helping other consumers determine which item to buy.”

It’s also about maintaining a relationship with consumers built on “truth,” she explained. Click here to read more.—JG

Today’s top retail reads.

Edgy: Why retailers are turning to stylists to stand out. (Glossy)

Click here: Brands are thinking about their online presence everywhere—even their “link-in-bio” pages. (The Atlantic)

Back up: A look into how Amazon sellers deal with returns, including new options like reselling and liquidation auctions. (CNBC)

*Sigh.* Retail is changing again: Got déjà vu? Same. But don’t panic. SAS’s e-book can show you how Accenture Applied Intelligence, using SAS and Intel capabilities, helps retailers approach big changes with customer-focused experimentation—now that’s how you achieve competitive differentiation! Read it here.*

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Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• Smell that? Scents are a key part of a store’s identity, even in Covid
• Why DTC smoothie startup Kencko is spilling over into a new category
• Resale startup Archive scores $8 million in funding

Three of the stories below are real...and one is most definitely not. Can you spot the fake?

1. Queen Elizabeth is dropping her own line of condiments, including royal ketchup.
2. A Providence-based company introduced a vodka made from actual oysters, the first ever in the US.
3. Jamba Juice is testing a smoothie drizzled with sriracha.
4. Bud Light will roll out a zero-carb beer.

Keep reading for the answer.