The companies began testing the “McPlant” patty in eight McDonald’s U.S. locations in November. Those restaurants have been selling enough of the sandwiches — as many as 70 per day — to warrant an expansion of the trial, the analysts said.

McDonald’s said when it announced the tests that customers would have to wait for more updates. The company declined to provide new details to Reuters on Tuesday. Beyond did not reply to a request for comment.

Any move by McDonald’s to sell a plant-based burger widely across its more than 13,500 U.S. locations could be a boon to plant-based meat makers generally and Beyond specifically.

Rivals have been vying for partnerships with restaurant chains as they add vegan and vegetarian menu options. Beyond is working with Taco Bell owner Yum Brands, while Impossible Foods partnered with Burger King, a unit of Restaurant Brands International. In the Canadian market, Beyond partnered with McDonald’s to test a plant-based “P.L.T.” burger at some of its restaurants in Ontario last year.

BTIG analyst Peter Saleh said in a research note on Monday that he expects the product to be in about 700 restaurants across several regions as a limited-time offer in February and March, with a national rollout possible in 2023.

Unlike the current test, the expansion would come with local and regional advertising funded by McDonald’s franchisees and possibly Beyond, Saleh said.

Separately, Piper Sandler analyst Michael Lavery said in a note that McDonald’s could launch McPlant burgers nationwide late in the first quarter of 2022, earlier than previously anticipated.

That could pressure margins for Beyond. While it will sell more patties, it may do so at a lower price — closer to $4 per pound than the $5.25 Lavery initially forecast — as it seeks to undercut the price of animal protein by 2024, he said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Hilary Russ in New York.

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“Beyond Meat and McDonald’s co-created the plant-based patty which will be available as part of their McPlant platform,” a Beyond Meat spokesperson said in an email.

After McDonald’s announced its McPlant line earlier in the day, shares of plant-based meat maker Beyond Meat fell eight per cent.

Beyond Meat was the front runner for a contract as it had conducted tests of a so-called “P.L.T.” burger at nearly 100 McDonald’s locations in Ontario earlier this year.

McDonald’s reported market-beating profit and revenue for its third quarter on Monday.

“Plant-based products are an ongoing consumer trend. It’s not a matter of if McDonald’s will get into plant-based, it’s a matter of when,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said on a call with analysts.

Analysts, rival fast food companies and plant-based protein producers have been closely watching McDonald’s plans as it is one of the few national chains yet to sell plant-based meat burgers on a permanent basis.

While other chains have started offering plant-based meat options, including Restaurant Brands International’s Burger King, White Castle and Dunkin’ Brands, a McDonald’s contract could be the biggest and would put the plant-based meat movement front and centre in mainstream America.

McDonald’s said under its McPlant line, it could offer products including burgers, chicken substitutes and breakfast sandwiches, which it expects to test in some markets in 2021.

— Reporting for Reuters by Uday Sampath in Bangalore and Hilary Russ in New York; writing by Siddharth Cavale.

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The market for plant-based protein such as meat-free burgers has surged in the past few years, attracting major investment from global agrifood groups, including Archer Daniels Midland , Cargill and Nestle, hoping to capitalize on a trend towards healthy eating generally, including less red meat.

But lockdowns around the world to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have shaken the market, Jean-Philippe Azoulay, Roquette’s head of pea and new proteins business, told Reuters in an interview.

“Long-term were are not worried, this is a trend which is not going to reverse but short term there is some uncertainty,” he said.

Azoulay said there had been a sharp slowdown in new products due to the fact that many companies had to shut down laboratories, including Roquette.

The family-run company, which signed a three-year supply agreement with U.S. plant-based burger maker Beyond Meat to end-2022, is due to open the world’s largest pea protein factory at Portage la Prairie, Man. later this year.

Azoulay said sales to food service outlets, including restaurants and cafeterias, were also severely impacted by the crisis.

But it also led to increased demand for plant-based protein food in supermarkets, with people doing more cooking and trying new recipes, which could prove positive for the sector long-term.

A Reuters analysis of sales data showed that U.S. sales of fresh plant-based meat rose 102 per cent in volume in the second quarter of the year.

A positive impact from the COVID crisis, such as people eating less meat or less fish, could prompt Roquette to accelerate plans to open a second facility in Canada, Azoulay said.

— Sybille de La Hamaide is a Reuters correspondent covering France’s agrifood sector from Paris.

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The Canadian arm of the Yum Brands-owned chicken chain announced Wednesday its ‘Plant-Based KFC’ sandwiches will be available permanently at its stores across Canada starting Monday (Aug. 10).

The near-chicken sandwich will continue to be made by Lightlife, a brand of Greenleaf Foods, a U.S. subsidiary of Toronto-based Maple Leaf Foods.

Plant-Based KFC Popcorn, a bite-sized near-chicken product test-marketed in Mississauga at the same time as the sandwich last November, will only be “available for a limited time while quantities last.”

As for the plants going into the new product, the list of ingredients posted on KFC Canada’s website for the Plant-Based KFC sandwich includes wheat flour, soy protein, tapioca starch, corn flour, citrus fibre, dried garlic, faba bean protein isolate, wheat gluten, soy flour, modified corn starch, rice flour and dried onions, among others.

Well within the top 10 restaurant chains in Canada by number of outlets, KFC includes about 640 Canadian stores out of 24,390 worldwide.

“When we tested Plant-Based KFC by Lightlife late last year, we sold over a month’s worth of sandwiches in six hours,” KFC Canada’s chief marketing officer Samantha Redman said Wednesday in a release.

Redman described the sandwich as “a modern take” on the company’s chicken, “whether you enjoy a vegetarian or flexitarian lifestyle — or you’re one of our loyal fans looking for something new.”

Lightlife’s plant protein near-meats are no stranger to the Canadian quick-service dining market.

Last month it launched a “reinvented” Lightlife Burger, made with pea protein, coconut oil and garlic powder, for the Harvey’s chain, where it had introduced a plant-based burger the previous September.

Greenleaf, announcing the Harvey’s burger relaunch July 20, said its research has shown “consumers’ needs went unmet 98 per cent of the time when looking for plant-based protein with simple, recognizable ingredients,” leading the company to offer “the cleanest ingredient labels in the plant-based meat category.”

Also, Greenleaf said last month, “unlike some of its competitors, the Lightlife Plant-Based Burger is made from pea protein — not soy — and does not contain any artificial flavours, GMOs or gluten.”

Elsewhere in Canada, Lightlife’s plant-based burgers appear on menus at dining chains including Kelseys and Dave + Busters.

Vegetarian options also aren’t new to the KFC Canada menu, which has had such items since 2009, including a vegetarian sandwich with a soy- and wheat-protein-based patty.

KFC is also still testing plant-based “chicken” in other markets, including “Beyond Fried Chicken” items, made by Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat, in the U.S.

Those tests included a one-day run in Atlanta last summer and further tests in Nashville and Charlotte in February. It launched a new test run last month at over 50 California stores in and around Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego.

KFC Canada, in its release Wednesday, emphasized the chain’s bona fide chicken is “not going anywhere. It is Kentucky Fried Chicken after all.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

UPDATE, Aug. 18, 2020: A previous version of this article made note of the ingredients for Lightlife’s plant-based “Smart Tenders” near-chicken product, as the Plant-Based KFC sandwich’s ingredient list was not yet publicly available.

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Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat on Wednesday launched the “latest iteration” of its flagship Beyond Burger, billed as “produced locally at a co-manufacturing facility in Canada” and available now through major grocery retailers across the country.

Beyond Meat didn’t say in Wednesday’s release who its co-packer is or where in Quebec it operates, but said “producing the Beyond Burger locally in Canada enables Beyond Meat to better serve the Canadian market, while reducing the company’s environmental footprint.”

Per patty, the latest Beyond Burger offers 20 grams of protein from plant-based ingredients such as peas, mung beans and rice, with marbling made from cocoa butter to melt and tenderize like beef, the company said.

Beyond Meat didn’t say Wednesday exactly how the new product differs from what it has sold until now at Canadian retail, but said it “represents Beyond Meat’s commitment to creating plant-based protein that is indistinguishable (in terms of taste, texture, colour and cooking experience) from its animal protein equivalent.”

Beyond Meat early this year announced it had locked in a multi-year pea protein supply deal with French processing firm Roquette, which itself is expanding its space in the Canadian pea market with a plant under construction at Portage la Prairie, Man.

Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger has been in the Canadian retail market since June last year, followed by Beyond Beef and, more recently, Beyond Sausage.

The company has also brought its products to the Canadian fast food market, through chains including A+W, McDonald’s, Tim Hortons and Subway.

Tim Hortons last year dialed back its Beyond Meat use to the Ontario and B.C. markets. McDonald’s ran a 12-week test of a “P.L.T.” Beyond Burger in southwestern Ontario earlier this year, but hasn’t yet said if it will take that sandwich into other markets, either within Canada or anywhere else.

Beyond Meat didn’t say Wednesday whether its Quebec partner will supply faux-meat for the company’s Canadian restaurant or foodservice customers, or strictly for retail. A message to company representatives Wednesday wasn’t immediately returned. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The coffee chain said last week it aims to add more plant-based food and drinks to its menu as part of the company’s latest plan to become more environmentally friendly.

A company spokeswoman previously declined comment on potential suppliers.

Over the past year, with the rise of companies including Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, “plant-based” has become a food industry buzzword and several major brands and restaurants have raced to offer such products.

— Reporting for Reuters by Uday Sampath in Bangalore.

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This comes after the coffee and breakfast chain cut Beyond Meat’s burgers and sandwiches from its menu in September from all of Canada except the two provinces.

“We may offer plant-based alternatives again in the future, but we have removed it from the menu for now,” said a spokeswoman for Tim Hortons.

The fast-food restaurant chain had introduced the plant-based protein as a limited time offer, the spokeswoman said, adding that “the product was not embraced by our guests as we thought it would be.”

Responding to the removal of its products, Beyond Meat said that it may work with Tim Hortons again in the future.

Tim Hortons said in July it was expanding plant-based meat additions in the Canadian market. There are about 4,800 Tim Hortons restaurants in North America, of which almost 4,000 are in Canada.

The chain launched breakfast sandwiches with the plant-based sausage patty in June and the plant-based burger patty in July.

Plant-based fast food has gained popularity as diners become more conscious of how their food is sourced and its impact on the environment. The trend has given a big boost to Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, two of the biggest players to launch faux meats.

— Reporting for Reuters by Arunima Kumar in Bangalore and Hilary Russ in New York.

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Meat substitutes from plants in burgers, nuggets and many other foods are a fast-growing industry, driving up demand for crops that produce them.

Canada is among the world’s largest growers of peas and the biggest producer of canola, crops high in protein that technology companies like Burcon — a joint-venture partner in Merit — can separate and isolate for use in foods and beverages.

The agreement with Nestle is long-term, with no expiry, Burcon CEO Johann Tergesen said in an interview. Nestle will buy pea and canola proteins from a 20,000-tonne-per-year Merit plant to be built by the end of this year in Winnipeg.

Merit will process the proteins using Burcon technology under a licensing agreement.

“It’s a little bit like Christmas morning for those of us who have been doing this for 20 years,” Tergesen said.

“In the early days, I had to explain to people what protein was. Now it has been a wild ride.”

Burcon stock jumped 36 per cent in Toronto to $1.89 per share, touching its highest price in nearly three years. Nestle stock rose 0.9 per cent in Switzerland.

With the deal, Burcon expects to report its first-ever commercial revenue and profit in 2021. Terms were not released.

Nestle launched soy and wheat protein-based “Incredible Burgers” in Europe last year. The deal gives the company access to a range of ingredients for its foods and beverages, using the “unique expertise” of Burcon and Merit, Nestle chief technology officer Stefan Palzer said.

It comes after Beyond Meat this month struck a similar supply agreement with France-based Roquette, which is also building a pea protein plant about 90 km west of Winnipeg at Portage la Prairie, Man.

The new commercial demand “provides a real sense of optimism for the future,” said Gord Bacon of Pulse Canada, an industry group representing pulse farmers and processors.

“To have a diversified market base is what every group producing commodities or ingredients in Canada would hope for.”

With so much of Canada’s peas exported raw, finding enough supply to satisfy the Nestle deal will not be a challenge, said Ryan Bracken, Merit’s co-CEO. The company is already planning to expand the Winnipeg plant under construction to more than double production.

— Reporting for Reuters by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Silke Koltrowitz in Zurich; additional reporting by Kelsey Johnson in Ottawa.

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Over the past year, with the rise of companies including Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, “plant-based” has become a food industry buzzword and several major brands and restaurants have raced to offer such products. The plant-based meat substitute category is expected to be worth $140 billion in the next decade, according to Barclays (all figures US$).

Starbucks — which sells sausage breakfast-sandwiches, chicken wraps and smoked salmon bagels with cream cheese — did not say by when it would start offering plant-based items. A spokeswoman told Reuters the company is exploring meat alternatives for its breakfast menu, but declined comment on potential suppliers.

Shares in Beyond Meat, which makes pea-based sausages, chicken and burgers, rose as much 17.1 per cent to $127.80.

Starbucks also said it aims to eventually shift to reusable packaging from single-use cups and plastic, and invest in better waste management.

For now, the world’s largest coffee chain has laid out targets for 2030 including halving landfill waste from stores, and carbon emissions from its direct operations and supply chain. The targets were informed by research from the World Wildlife Fund and sustainability consultant Quantis, Starbucks said.

Starbucks, which uses about six billion cups a year at its more than 30,000 outlets, has failed in the past to meet some of its own environmental goals including making 25 per cent of its cups reusable by 2015. The target was revised to serving five per cent of its beverages in personal tumblers by 2015, which Starbucks also missed.

The Seattle-based company’s abundant use of containers, lids and straws has been criticized by consumers as well as activist groups for decades. To be sure, some of its goals have been met, such as a 2008 plan to buy enough renewable energy certificates to power all of its company-operated stores by 2015.

— Reporting for Reuters by Richa Naidu and Hilary Russ.

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Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat on Tuesday announced a “multi-year pea protein supply agreement” with France’s Roquette, renewing a “longstanding partnership” between the two firms.

No specifics were available on the amount of peas involved or the financial terms of the supply deal.

Beyond Meat, in its release, said the renewed agreement “significantly increases the amount of pea protein to be supplied by Roquette to Beyond Meat over the next three years as compared to the amount supplied in 2019.”

“This latest contract with Roquette reflects Beyond Meat’s commitment to further scaling the plant protein supply chain as global demand for our products continues to rise,” Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown said in the release.

Founded by Brown and partners in 2009, Beyond Meat has grown its public profile exponentially in the past couple of years, expanding its space on retail shelves as well as in the menus of major restaurant and fast-food chains including McDonald’s, Subway, Tim Hortons, KFC, A+W and TGI Friday’s, offering simulations of ground beef, sausage, meatballs and chicken.

Roquette has also expanded its space in the pea market in recent years, breaking ground in 2017 on a pea processing plant at Portage la Prairie, Man., where it expects to take in about 125,000 tonnes of peas annually from 2020 onward.

When it announced the Portage plant in early 2017, Roquette billed it as “the world’s largest dedicated to pea protein in the food, nutrition and health industry to date.”

“We are very pleased to continue supporting the growth of Beyond Meat, which shares our passion and values this long-term commitment,” Roquette CEO Jean-Marc Gilson said in the same release.

Along with pea protein, Beyond Meat products’ ingredients include mung bean and rice protein as well as coconut oil and cocoa butter for “marbling” and beets for a red beef-like colour in their uncooked form.

The company says it uses “a simple process of heating, cooling and pressure to create the fibrous texture of meat and layer in plant-based fats, binders, flavours and colours.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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