Beyond Meat Finds China to Be an Even Tougher Market Than the US
It pushed faux beef in a nation that prefers pork, and which already had plenty of non-animal protein options.
Beyond Meat Inc. entered China in 2020 with a bang. Items from the plant-based meat company were featured in more than 3,300 Starbucks Corp. coffee shops. The following year it launched a store on JD.com’s popular shopping site, a leading online retailer in China with more than half a billion active customers. The company even created a Chinese-language website, as well as accounts on the WeChat and Weibo messaging and social media services to connect with all its hoped-for Chinese customers.
Today it’s a quite different story. Beyond’s faux meat products are no longer listed on Starbucks’ online menus in China. JD.com has no Beyond products available. And on Alibaba’s Hema Fresh, a popular grocery app, the only four customer comments under the listing for Beyond products are negative, all saying they taste bad or different from real meat.