The Slutty Vegan, an Atlanta, GA food truck and restaurant, has announced the launch of their bacon-alternative product Slutty Strips. The restaurant, a celebrity favorite and so popular that people regularly wait in line for up to 5 hours to eat their Impossible and Beyond Meat creations, said that this new product will top their in-store burgers and will be available at supermarkets within the year.
Two advertising creatives in the UK are Kickstarting Vegan Pig, a non-meat version of pork scratchings (similar to US pork rinds). Created in partnership with food innovation company TasteHead, the soy-based crunchy snacks have nearly reached their Kickstarter goal. Their ultimate goal: to get Vegan Pig into every pub in the UK.

So What? Sometimes you have to break expectations before you can make expectations. That’s the story of Tesla (they overcame the idea that electric cars were weak, ineffective golf carts by building a muscle car) and that’s what’s happening with plant-based meat. The biggest names (Impossible and Beyond) aren’t aiming for the niche vegetarian market but for mainstream flexitarians (data proves it).  Even the words ‘plant-based’ are an attempt to move away from the name and stereotypes typically associated with ‘vegetarian’ or ‘vegan.’ Why did Impossible join forces with Burger King or Little Caesars? Beyond just getting their name out their using an established network, I believe it was to purposefully move their brand into areas that vegetarian brands traditionally would never dare venture. They are effectively breaking the stereotype that plant-based food is fussy, stuffy or for a certain class of people (which is why I think Beyond’s recent partnership with Blue Apron is not a good move).
Right or wrong, the terms ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’ have baggage, often associated with a particular political ideology, moral beliefs and even style of dress. In order to gain scale, in order to win in Everytown USA, these ‘plant-based’ companies have to distance themselves from the old-school stereotypes. And that’s what the Slutty Vegan and the Vegan Pig are trying to do, using extremes to let you know they are not your hippie grandmother’s kind of vegan. As Slutty Vegan says on their website:
“A Slutty Vegan is someone who takes time away from their busy lives to indulge in the pleasures that life brings. And there is no better pleasure than eating good food with good people! So take a break from your brussel sprouts and quinoa salads and enjoy the best burger in town!”
As I look around at many emerging lifestyle brands and products, I’m realizing that they need a similar expectation reframe. Too many concepts won’t get traction unless they break free of old-fashioned beliefs and stereotypes: weight management, cannabis, or just cooking a weeknight dinner. The successful companies in these spaces will be those that distance themselves from what’s gone before and start again.

Somersaults Snack Co, a privately held company out of Sausalito, CA, has launched a new line of snacks called Crunchews. Combining the company’s signature sunflower seeds with dried fruits. Each serving has 5g of protein. Flavors include: Apricot & Ginger, Blueberry, Cranberry and Mango. Hormel has added globally-inspired flavors to their line of Natural Choice snacks. The new products include a Mediterranean-style chicken paired with bruschetta jack cheese alongside garlic and herb pita chips and chipotle chicken paired with queso quesadilla cheese and flax seed corn chips. So What? It was ok for snacks to be one-dimensional when they were just snacks. Eating a quick bag of chips or an apple was fine because it was never meant to be the meal, it was the intermission between. However, meals are going away. When was the last time (during the week) that you actually sat down for breakfast? What about lunch? Instead, I’m seeing more and more consumers eating 2-3 bars a day or slurping down yogurt. The monotony of such omni-textured food is grating on people’s taste buds. What they’re looking for (to paraphrase an old Campbell’s soup line) is a snack that eats like a meal. Somersaults and Hormel’s new lines are just early examples of what a lot of snacking will look like in the future—multi-textured and multi-sensorial. If your snack brand can be described in one word (e.g. crunchy), you might want to start thinking about phase 2!