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IKEA is adding plant-based options to its in-store restaurants and its grocery markets.
IKEA
Furniture retailer IKEA said Monday that it plans to make half of its restaurant menu meal offerings plant-based by 2025.
Eighty percent of offerings will be non–red meat, and 80% of the packaged food for sale will be plant-based, the company said.
“Research confirms the importance of making sustainable products affordable and desirable, and IKEA can really make a positive difference here,” said Lena Pripp-Kovac, chief sustainability officer at Inter IKEA Group, in a statement.
“The more sustainable choice shouldn’t be a luxury for the few. It should be part of people’s everyday life.”
IKEA says more than 680 million customers purchased food in the company’s bistros, restaurants and Swedish Food Markets in 2019.
Fans of IKEA’s signature Swedish meatballs don’t have to worry about that popular item going away. The company plans to keep it on the menu, even as, over the past couple of years, IKEA has experimented with other versions of it, including chicken balls, veggie balls and salmon balls.
Plant-based menu options have been expanding in the U.S. and abroad. Beyond Meat Inc. BYND, +4.02% has steadily increased the number of items it offers and the number of retailers and restaurants where its products are available.
Also: Beyond Meat to launch latest iterations of the Beyond Burger in early 2021
Exposure to plant-based foods through quick-service restaurants, or QSRs, and other food venues is driving consumer exposure.
“Wider availability of alternative food products via QSR players, for example, and plant-based manufacturers’ ability to appeal to changing consumer tastes should help drive adoption of plant-based foods, which still sits at sub-1% of the protein industry,” said Landon Luxembourg, senior analyst at Third Bridge.
“Near-term, food retail partnerships, including Impossible Foods’ recent launch with Walmart WMT, , bode well for the industry as it helps expand the plant-based food markets’ consumer base.”
Morningstar forecasts that the plant-based-meat market will reach $74 billion by 2029, up from $12 billion in 2019.
“Studies show that plant-based proteins use 87%-99% less water, emit 89%-90% fewer GHG [greenhouse gases], use 93%-96% less land, and 46% less energy than their animal protein equivalents,” according to a Morningstar report.
New brands, products and investment dollars are flooding the category, among them McDonald’s Corp.’s MCD, +1.20% announcement that it is launching a McPlant sandwich.
Beyond Meat’s stock has soared nearly 89% in the year to date, while the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.40% is up 10.4% over that period.
