The decisions that made it
The Category Creator · Decision Forks
Beyond Meat Won the Race and Lost the War. It Created a Category for Someone Else to Own.
Beyond Meat's 163% first-day pop in 2019 looked like proof of demand. It was proof of sentiment. Revenue peaked at $464.7M in 2021, fell more than 40% to $275.5M by 2025, and the losses topped $1 billion - because the company built a category, not a customer.
8 min
The Fall · Decision Forks
Beyond Meat Didn't Have a Bad Business. It Had a Vanishing Customer.
In 2019 Beyond Meat earned a 33.5% gross margin and $25.3M of positive Adjusted EBITDA on $297.9M of revenue. By 2022 the gross margin had gone negative. The collapse wasn't a hollow company - it was a company that built for a demand curve that never arrived.
8 min
The Counterfactual · Decision Forks
The McPlant Test Was Designed to Say No. The Numbers Just Confirmed It.
Everyone read the McPlant's quiet exit as a marketing miss or a Beyond Meat stumble. It was neither. At roughly 20 sandwiches a day in San Francisco and 3-5 a day in rural Texas, the test wasn't a failure - it was a demand signal working exactly as the franchisees intended.
8 min