Juicy Marbles : how to avoid the climate misteak ?
The strategy to bring alternative meat to mass market.
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The next time you will eat a $2 steak, just remember it took 300,000 years to domesticate the cattle. So imagine, 15,000 years ago, you are a forager during the ice age, you wake up soaked and starving in your cave, you need to hunt long-hours in the bush, in search of an antelope or a bison, and maybe, you will get your meal. Today, you can go to the supermarket next door.
It’s funny after all. Over time, the meal we died for became so affordable, so convenient and so accessible, that now, we need to consume less of it, if we want to survive and save the planet.
That’s the kind of paradox that gives me headaches. We need to change the way we eat. That’s a fact. The future leads towards less animal consumption. There is no doubt. But what the hell is the solution to bring alternative meats to the mass market? How can we compete with the $2 steak from Tesco or Trader Joe? What is the right strategy?
This essay is not about veganism, animal well being or cow farts (god yes). I want to raise one key issue no one mentions : the price of meat. Yes, your steak costs 2 bucks.
The price of meat is tricky. On the one hand, you can’t underprice food without casting doubt on quality. As a kid, I remember the TV animator and famous Chef Jean-Pierre Coffe speech on Liddle - the French discount supermarket with $0.99 on big red letters everywhere: « Liddle is shit! ». On the other hand, over-price your meat and you will soon look like the Dubaï chef, Salt Bae, who became famous by selling $2000 steaks to soccer players and celebrities. Two rooms, two atmospheres…
So what to do? To answer that question, I was at the Hack Summit conference in Lausanne, Switzerland last week. More than 60 food alternatives products were there, from meat, to butter, cheese, shrimp or chocolate. I sat down with Tilen Travnik, CEO and cofounder of Juicy Marbles - an alternative meat startup - and its perspective blew me away.
At the end of this essay, you will learn one strategy to market and price alternative foods and how to apply it to different types of products in order to win the climate battle faster.
Let’s dive in.
Juicy Marbles : how to avoid the climate misteak ?
If you want to understand why Juicy Marbles is so special, we need to dive a bit more in the basics of economic theories. I promise, it won’t be boring.
How the economy works.
Basically, the whole economic system is organized around prices. If you remember your university classes, you should recall economists like Adam Smith or David Ricardo. All of them, from one way to another, discussed prices. Perhaps, the most prolific paper on this topic is Hayek and The Use of Knowledge in Society, who tell us that prices are a way to organize society's information system. In short, we don't know the good we need to consume, because information is incomplete, so let prices guide us. We look at prices like a psychic would look at its crystal ball.
So no wonder climate strategists think about prices to solve the climate crisis!
One framework I discovered recently is the “Green premiums” from Bill Gates. Let’s unpack it. If we want to avoid a climate disaster, we need to consume green alternatives, right? But those products and services are more expensive than oil and gas today. Why would someone pay more for it ? This is the green premium : the price difference between one good and its sustainable alternative. In other words, the price someone will accept to pay to get green.
Why green premiums suck.
Bad news! The green premiums of alternative meat is on average 86% higher than the real thing. I took this photo once when I was shopping at the supermarket in France. Two bacons, two prices. Guess which one is plant-based food?
One solution, of course, is to get the prices down. When alternative meat supply will increase, per unit cost will fall, we might be able to compete on prices. But the question is : when? It could take 5 to 10 years for the prices to be the same. Yet, it has to taste better and be healthier.
As I keep telling you in this newsletter, we don’t have much time to avoid a climate disaster, so how do we act now?
The story of Juicy Marbles.
At first sight, Juicy Marbles could be another plant-based food company like the dozens already in the market, with spongy taste, the kind of taste you keep in the mouth after you drunk the soap instead of the milk. At least, that’s what I thought before I met Tilen, their CEO.
Juicy Marbles differentiates. What surprises me the most is the price : 35€ for 5 steaks. Wait! We just said that plant-based meat was too expensive.... How is this possible?
Juicy Marbles and the art of “de-commoditization.”
Let’s get to the point. What is the “de-commoditization” strategy?
That sounds like a big word, but it’s pretty simple to understand. In short, you should take the opposite direction from what the market does. Just do the contrary. In every market, especially the most commonetized ones, like food and beverage, there is a common wisdom. People believe there is “one way” of crafting and selling products. Just because competitors all do the same, no one builds customer loyalty and people finally choose the cheapest option.
Here are three ways to do “de-commoditize” a market:
Target the segments others won’t.
Distribute differently.
Take care of (unimportant) details.
I admit, it seems easy to say, much harder to do, so let’s analyze how Juicy Marbles plans to do it.
1. Target the segments others won’t.
First, Juicy Marbles has a different positioning. “People should eat more meat,” Tilen told me. Surprising for a company willing to end animal consumption! They don’t target vegans or vegetarians, they want to sell to meat-eaters. After all, it's not a bad idea (it's still 97% of the market in the EU and US). And it's the best way to reach mass adoption. They start with flexitarians and then expand the market. But wait a minute. If you like meat, why should you buy it?
What I think Juicy Marbles did well, is finding a cultural answer to the meat problem. We all have a story with meat. I grew up with the warm smell of chicken and potatoes escaping from the hover at my grandparents Sunday lunch. You certainly have one as well. If we want to recreate it with alternative meat, we need to make sure it looks like, feels like and is cooked, just like meat. Nothing more. The message is simple: “Forget what you know and just take a bite”.
2. Distribute differently.
One important question regarding distribution is simply : “where to start?” In the alternative meat market, some companies decide to sell ingredients to big industrials first (B2B). Others want to close partnerships with big food companies or restaurants (like McDonalds or Burger King). Some will try to get to retail stores as soon as possible. Juicy Marbles started with Direct to consumer products (DTC). Uncommon.
It’s too early to predict which strategy will win. But Juicy Marbles DTC goal is to print the brand into customer minds. After all, do you care where your Big Mac’s steak comes from? You don’t. You only remember that you got it into McDonald's.So Juicy Marbles wants to avoid that. Once it’s done, they can expand to different market segments, restaurants and then retails, without losing their branding.
3. Take care of (unimportant) details.
A lot of details are neglected from plant based products. Let’s take the texture for example. Juicy Marbles actually pioneered a way to recreate the muscles and the texture of meat. It’s important because you can cut it as you like and make the recipe you want. What about the branding? Should a food company have a personality? I think it does.
The consequence is a community of meat lovers.
Does your butcher have a fan club? (assuming you even have a butcher). Maybe not. When I think about a community of meat lovers, I imagine a bunch of old dudes drunk after a day hunting in the forest or the wild boar feast at the end of Asterix comics. But for Juicy Marbles it worked.
You can still argue one thing. Only the rich can pay €35 for a steak. And I will answer “Yes, but only the rich can save your margins”. In a commoditized market, margins are maybe the best defensibility you can have. Anyway, I guess the price will go down over time, food can become taster and healthier, while the experience will stay the same. Bingo. If execution is done well, I expect Juicy Marbles to rapidly win market shares.
Juicy Marbles is a masterclass of de-commoditization. It is used in a way to solve the “green premium” gridlock. And I expect more and more companies in the climate space will use it. The biggest climate mistake would be to let prices drive customer choices, wait for 5 to 10 years, and not build better products now. Let’s do it!
That’s it for today - see you next Monday!
Love the prespective and topic Eliott! As someone in the Food tech space love way these folks have embraced such an integrated strategy to create a niche.