Beyond Meat’s financial concerns are raising questions about the plant-based meat company’s viability, while competitor Meati is preparing to sell its company following a technical default on its bills – highlighting fresh challenges to a category trying to shake off market headwinds and return to growth.
Beyond Meat’s problems stem from “massive debt in order to fund its R&D, which it continued to focus in parallel to expansion,” Miri Eliyahu, consultant of syndicated research at Euromonitor International, explained.
Beyond Meat holds a total outstanding debt of $1.1 billion as of March 29 and has on hand $115.8 million in cash and cash equivalents, including restricted cash, according to the company’s Q1 2025 financial earning report, posted on May 7.
The plant-based meat company bolstered its cash holdings this week with up to $100 million of senior secured financing from Unprocessed Foods, an affiliate of the non-profit focused on plant-based diets Ahimsa Foundation, as shared in a press release.
This is on top of $46.7 million raised in Q4 2024 through selling 9.75 million shares of common stock in Q4 2024 as part of an at-the-market offering, as previously reported.
“While old-school vegan companies were bootstrapped and expanded slowly, Beyond Meat tried to create a mass market with significant spending from investors, but like everything, it hit its cap. The point of their IPO was to raise capital with less accountability from shareholders, but this backfired as the market turned on it two and some years ago, showing that they need more fiscal responsibility, but that did not drive the company to significant changes,” Eliyahu elaborated.
“This is the new ceiling for protein alternatives – if you cannot prove high profitability with the product you are putting out there, you are not as investible as you think you are. I would advise founders to bootstrap, to be mindful and careful about their paths to market.”
Miri Eliyahu, consultant of syndicated research at Euromonitor International
Meati’s decline from $650 million to $4 million
Meati was a poster child for mycelium protein and was once valued at $650 million, following a round of funding in 2022 led by Revolution Growth. Now, the company’s assets are being sold for $4 million, after the bank pulled Meati’s cash following a technical default despite the company being current on its bills.
“Meati raised a fortune, about $450 million in several rounds but that did not mean anything because the profit simply was not there. We are in a capital-constrained environment, even before the new administration came, as a result of the high cost of credit (the Fed interest rate). This means that if a company cannot show a clear path to profitability, it is no longer investible, a stark contrast to 2016-2022 when credit was cheap, and the VC market was running wild,” Eliyahu explained.
Despite a capital crunch, Meati – and Beyond Meat – exhibited at this year’s Natural Products Expo West, with the mycelium company sampling its latest breakfast products. At the time, Meati’s Chief Commercial Officer John Bortells signaled optimism about growth but said that the company needed “a little more runway” on the funding side, as previously reported.
Both Beyond Meat and Meati “had great patents, but too little understanding of how food companies work, which is cash intensive and profit-oriented,” Eliyahu noted.
Plant-based meat newcomers, like Chunk, are “starting out slowly and steadily with a viable and good product to begin with” and “are likely to survive and thrive as they do not over expand,” she added.
“This is the new ceiling for protein alternatives – if you cannot prove high profitability with the product you are putting out there, you are not as investible as you think you are. I would advise founders to bootstrap, to be mindful and careful about their paths to market,” Eliyahu elaborated.
Beyond Meat Q1 2025 by the numbers
This week, Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown also reported “disappointing” Q1 2025 financial results, where the company posted a 9.1% year-over-year decrease in net revenues and a $1.1 million loss in gross profits. This follows 2024 full-year results, where the business declined 4.9% year-over-year, despite net revenues rising in Q4.
Beyond Meat went public in May 2019 – when alt proteins were starting to grab investors’ attention – with its stock reaching a peak of $239.71 two months later. Beyond Meat stock is down more than 98% in the last five years.
This comes as Beyond Meat launched its latest product, Chicken Pieces, into 1,900 Kroger stores to meet fan demands for its discontinued Chicken-free Strips.
