Who’s eating meatless fast-food burgers? Not vegans

It’s not the committed vegetarians or vegans who are buying meatless burgers but 'flexitarians,' people who are trying to reduce their meat consumption but not rule it out entirely.

KATE BERNOT: ‘Most coverage of the rollout of meatless fast-food burgers like Burger King’s Impossible Whopper and White Castle’s Impossible Slider pegs them as a long-awaited drive-thru option for vegans. But new data indicates it’s not vegans who are buying them, but meat eaters. A new report from market research firm NPD Group finds 95 percent of plant-based burgers buyers have also purchased a beef burger within the past year.

It’s not the committed vegetarians or vegans who are buying meatless burgers, the report concludes, but so-called “flexitarians,” people who are trying to reduce their meat consumption but not rule it out entirely. This makes sense once you think about it: Established vegans may not need a food replicating the flavor and texture of a beef burger. But for avowed carnivores, a burger like Impossible or Beyond certainly makes plant-based eating much more palatable.

“Although vegetarians and vegans are certainly contributing to the growth in plant-based, they still represent a small (single digits) percentage of the U.S. population and aren’t the primary contributors,” NPD notes… Meat-eaters’ appetite for meatless burgers helped push sales up 10% for the 12-month period ending May 2019 versus a year prior. Beef burger growth, meanwhile, remained flat. The data indicates that’s because carnivores are making a trade-off, at least sometimes: For every 18 fast-food beef burgers they purchased over a 12-month period, customers bought two meatless ones’.  SOURCE…

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