Two plant-based meat companies have seen an increase in sales as meatpacking plants are hit with coronavirus outbreaks.
Beyond Meat reported its first-quarter revenue increased 141% from last year. Its net revenue in the first quarter of 2020 was $97.1 million compared with $40.2 million during the same time period in 2019.
The profits “exceeded our expectations despite an increasingly challenging operating environment due to the COVID-19 health crisis,” Ethan Brown, Beyond Meat’s president and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
The company attributed much of the growth to expanding the number of places where its products were sold and higher sales. But it also noted that it’d had a reduction in recent sales to food service customers because of the pandemic.
Impossible Foods, a private company, said last month it was rolling out its plant-based products at an additional 777 grocery stores in California, Nevada, and the Chicago area as demand surged.
“We’ve always planned on a dramatic surge in retail for 2020 — but with more and more Americans’ eating at home under ‘shelter-in-place’ orders, we’ve received requests from retailers and consumers alike,” Impossible Foods President Dennis Woodside said in a statement. “Our existing retail partners have achieved record sales of Impossible Burger in recent weeks, and we are moving as quickly as possible to expand with retailers nationwide.”
The surge comes as meat processing plants in more than a dozen states have shut down in recent weeks because of coronavirus outbreaks in rural meatpacking communities, putting the country’s food supply chain at risk.
