Beyond Meat Rival Just Launched a Plant-based Pork and Crayfish

China’s Zhenmeat, a rival of U.S. based Beyond Meat, has released a plant-based pork and crayfish to feed the home-market appetite.

Beyond Meat had entered the Chinese market back in April. The company had made its jump into China in April through a partnership with Starbucks.

Zhenmeat CEO Vince Lu told CNBC that the company’s “unique advantage” is to play to local tastes. China is the world’s largest consumer of pork and and one of the biggest of crayfish.

“For the plant-based meat, U.S. companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible are very successful with the burger. They have their unique tech to make burger taste juicy and like beef. But since (the) start-up of Zhenmeat, we are always focusing on Chinese cuisine,” Zhenmeat founder and CEO, Vince Lu, told CNBC this week.

“Our unique advantage is to find the most favorite dishes in China and use tech to replicate these meat dishes.”

The company’s pork tenderloin is made of pea and soy protein. The outside layer is made of sweet potato starch to give it a crispiness when it is deep fried. Zhenmeat’s crayfish is made from seaweed and konjac extracts, which is a sort of root plant.

“One major problem is that Chinese consumer(s) love crayfish but if you look at consuming of crawfish, there are two big problems. One problem is a lot of food waste. The tail meat is smaller than (the) body. If you have 10 kg of crayfish, once you discard head and tails you only get 1 kg of crayfish meat,” Lu said.

“Second is: quality of the crawfish is not very even. Demand is so huge but supply cannot meet demand.”
Lu told CNBC that the company is looking to raise $2 million by end of this year.

“We talk to a lot of consumer and a lot of market research has shown Chinese consumer are growing (to) the idea (that) eating more protein will boost their immune system. And plant based protein will be the future choice, I believe,” Lu said.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Beyond Meat Inc. (NASDAQ: BYND) and have not been compensated for this article.