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U.S grocery store sales of Beyond Meat almost tripled in the second quarter of 2020, according to reports.
The sales grew by 194.9 percent during that time, during which Beyond Meat launched ‘value packs’ with lower pricing.
During the lockdown, Beyond’s food service sales fell by 60.7 percent, leaving the net sale increase at a total of 69 percent.
Loss
Despite the increase in retail sales, the company reported second-quarter net loss of $10.2 million, with CNBC citing ‘costs related to COVID-19 and the early extinguishment of debt’ as factors.
In addition, the company donated more than 1 million burgers to vulnerable people and frontline workers among the crisis, via its Feed A Million+ pledge, which it described as an initiative to ‘give back by providing access to good, nourishing meals at no cost’ during the coronavirus outbreak’. It spent $1.6 million on this.
Aggressively seeking sales
In a bid to offset its losses from the hospitality sector shutdown, the company repackaged products destined for restaurants and redirected them to grocery stores – at a cost of $5.9 million.
“We had to make a decision. Did we want to sit and try to weather this, and potentially take a step back in our growth trajectory, or did we want to go very aggressively toward the retail sector even if it curved more expensive doing so?” CEO Ethan Brown said.
He added that when it came to sales, the plant-based company had ‘a lot of help from the beef industry itself’, because of the high prices it was experiencing.
He added: “You will see us to continue to push pricing. We believe that through the continuing maturity of our supply chain, particularly around the protein costs, a lot more protein supplies are coming in the market as well as the own growth of our own operations in the U.S. and globally.”
