system
A chat on subreddit /r/wallstreetbets
human
The biggest miss for beyond meat is that they haven't found a way to make it cheaper.

I was interested in it around the IPO with the idea being that growing plants and turning them into food is in theory much easier than growing plants, shipping it to a farm with cows, feeding the cows for months, and then killing and processing them for meat.

I think there's plenty of consumers like me where, if they got the taste right (and I think they're pretty close in some aspects), they'd be indifferent between plant based meat and the real thing if prices were the same. 

I started switching to a plant based chorizo this year when making things like chili because it tastes pretty similar and a pound of the stuff is like $2. I'm not paying $8/pound for BYND ground beef when actual ground beef is on sale for half the price.

To me, the issue with BYND is that you're paying a premium for a product that is at best at the same level as real meat. The focus has been around marketing the product as this ethical alternative, but the majority of people don't give a fuck about that.

The main focus from management should be to find a way to produce at scale and heavily slash their prices to compete with the meat market, but it doesn't seem like that's the company's focus.
gpt
Yeah, I was a vegetarian between the ages of 4 and 30. Anyone saying "It's just like the real thing!" is huffing military-grade copium. 

If they found a way to make "fake" steak or chicken wings that were indistinguishable from the real thing then I'd be all over it. But at present, you're just paying more for something that's almost always inferior and is quite often wrongly portrayed as healthier. 

The "ethical" focus of marketing is testament to how much a) Marketers love the smell of their own farts and b) How signal boosting a vocal minority completely misdirects the conversation. When there's a choice between cheap and morally dubious or expensive and psuedo morally justified, most people will always choose cheap because most people are poor.