Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Katie Couric and welcome to Next Question.
Speaker 1: Today we're exploring the rapidly expanding world of plant based
Speaker 1: foods with Ethan Brown, the CEO of Beyond Meat. What
Speaker 1: starts with what are the parents are gonna feel really
Speaker 1: great about feeding their kids? You can't load it up
Speaker 1: with things that aren't naturally You can't put gm os
Speaker 1: in it. People don't want that. They want all natural foods.
Speaker 1: They want to eat healthier, but they still want to
Speaker 1: feel like it's familiar to them. Plant based food might
Speaker 1: have started out as a niche lifestyle choice for vegans
Speaker 1: and vegetarians back in the seventies with tofurkey and frozen
Speaker 1: veggie burgers, but today you can find plant based milk, cheese, fish, meat,
Speaker 1: and so much more in your local grocery store. The
Speaker 1: plant based market is even conquering fast food, joining in
Speaker 1: on the plant based meat craze with their newest addition
Speaker 1: to the menu, the PLT. McDonald's will no longer just
Speaker 1: be a place for a meat lover is as it's
Speaker 1: introducing it's very own plant based burger. From McDonald's to
Speaker 1: Burger King, from Kentucky Fried Chicken to Whitecastle, beyond meat
Speaker 1: and competitors like Impossible Burger can be found in pretty
Speaker 1: much every fast food chain across North America. And for
Speaker 1: Ethan Brown, that's exactly where he wants to be. Our
Speaker 1: job is not to moralized or or to to tell
Speaker 1: people what to do, and that's why again people give
Speaker 1: bel Muscow hard time. I actually really admire what he's
Speaker 1: done because he's made it sexy to have a car
Speaker 1: that's really good for the earth, right, And that's what
Speaker 1: we have to do. I don't know if you can
Speaker 1: make a sexy burger, but it can help you look sexy.
Speaker 1: But we have to go out and do that, create
Speaker 1: something that people just as satiates and they love. So
Speaker 1: my next question, why is plant based meat having a moment?
Speaker 1: I recently have the chance to talk to Ethan for
Speaker 1: Next Question Live, our intimate business and innovation focus series
Speaker 1: that's recorded in front of a live audience in our
Speaker 1: New York offices. Thank you are coming and welcome to
Speaker 1: Next Question Live. When I asked Ethan where this seed
Speaker 1: pardon the pun of his plant based company ideas sprung from,
Speaker 1: he said his childhood and his dad were major influences.
Speaker 1: So my dad grew up in the country. Um, he
Speaker 1: grew up in Connecticut in New York, but married my
Speaker 1: mother who was from the city, and so sort of
Speaker 1: a compromise was they were going to live in the city.
Speaker 1: But but he really have you ever seen like a
Speaker 1: deer in Central Park or something like that? That would
Speaker 1: be my dad, Like you just sort of not comfortable, right,
Speaker 1: So he always wanted to be out in the in
Speaker 1: the country where he enjoyed nature, and so, um, you know,
Speaker 1: ever since I was a baby, we would go out
Speaker 1: to a farm and enjoy ourselves and associpe for recreation.
Speaker 1: But he's pretty entrepreneur himself, so he started to create
Speaker 1: a dairy operation at the farm we bought, um, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, and and uh, that took on a life
Speaker 1: of its only that hunter ahead of Holstein cattle. And
Speaker 1: you know, he's a professor and he's very sort of
Speaker 1: cerebral as a person. Um. But this is a part
Speaker 1: of him that I think he wanted to express and
Speaker 1: bring ourselves together with. And so you know, as you
Speaker 1: become exposed to the animals that are in the food system,
Speaker 1: it becomes harder, at least it did for me as
Speaker 1: a child, to differentiate between our dog, for example, in
Speaker 1: a pig or a dog and sheep, right, because they're
Speaker 1: so similar biologically. And I didn't understand that as a child.
Speaker 1: But as I got older and started to read and
Speaker 1: understand science better, I began to understand why I felt
Speaker 1: that way. And so over time I developed a discomfort
Speaker 1: with treating one animal one way and another another way.
Speaker 1: I felt that wasn't consistent. But then I went into
Speaker 1: my own career, which was an energy and and I
Speaker 1: really was focused on climate coming out of school, and
Speaker 1: and even then it was something that people were really
Speaker 1: anxious about. And of course we haven't done much in
Speaker 1: all these years, but we're now starting to You are
Speaker 1: a vegetarian, Yes, I'm worth, I'm vegan. You're vegan? Okay, whoa?
Speaker 1: So when did you become vegan? I was totally, like
Speaker 1: like most young people, uh, you know, trying to find
Speaker 1: my way. So I wasn't completely integrated or coherent. Right.
Speaker 1: I would stop eating certain types of animals and I'd
Speaker 1: have fish instead, you know, And I said, well'm not
Speaker 1: gonna need land animals, but I have fish. Right. My daughter,
Speaker 1: when she was a vegetarian, she didn't eat meat except
Speaker 1: for bacon. Yeah, exactly. So there's bits and elements of
Speaker 1: your trying to become this integrated person. And so I
Speaker 1: would do things like that throughout my childhood, and then
Speaker 1: as I became an adult, UM, I became a vegetarian.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting even then, UM in this I think
Speaker 1: you'll see this in our work, particularly with athletes. I
Speaker 1: played basketball when I was in college, and I kept
Speaker 1: getting injured for reasons had nothing to do with diet.
Speaker 1: My knees just we're not where they needed to be,
Speaker 1: and people around me and be like, oh, you gotta
Speaker 1: eat meat. You know, you got and so I started
Speaker 1: to eat meat again, you know, and then I stopped
Speaker 1: after I got out of school. Um. And part of
Speaker 1: what I've done with athletes is just trying to trying
Speaker 1: to sort of dis uh, you know, disabuse that notion
Speaker 1: that you need to have animal protein to flourish. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's completely wrong. In fact, it has the opposite of
Speaker 1: fact correct. It creates inflammation in your joints and other
Speaker 1: parts of your body that inhibit your ability to recover quickly.
Speaker 1: And so therefore from a simply getting as much as
Speaker 1: you possibly can in it's better to have a plant
Speaker 1: based source of protein, and we can unpack this. But
Speaker 1: if you think about it, you know what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do is get protein into our bodies, and you
Speaker 1: have to think about the delivery mechanism for that. If
Speaker 1: you think about the animals doing, the animal is consuming
Speaker 1: a lot of vegetation and they're consuming a lot of water,
Speaker 1: and then they're using the digestive tracks and their skeletal
Speaker 1: muscular system to create muscle, which we then harvest is meat.
Speaker 1: But the purpose of that muscle is not for us
Speaker 1: to eat it. It's actually for the animal to perform work,
Speaker 1: just like it is in your body and my body.
Speaker 1: So there's lots of things in it that we don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want, right and so if we're going to start
Speaker 1: from a blank canvas, we have the opportunity now to
Speaker 1: go ahead and build a piece of meat that's free
Speaker 1: of many of those things that we don't want. And
Speaker 1: if you can do that, then you create something that
Speaker 1: really helps the human body flourish rather than has dilatorious
Speaker 1: impact in certain wis when we come back the mad
Speaker 1: scientists who help get Ethan Brown beyond eat. For Ethan
Speaker 1: spending time on the farm as a kid, had a
Speaker 1: huge impact on his personal relationship with animals and meat,
Speaker 1: but it took him a while to get there professionally.
Speaker 1: He went to Connecticut College, where he played basketball, and
Speaker 1: then got his NBA at Columbia. He had always been
Speaker 1: passionate about the environment, so after graduation he got into
Speaker 1: clean energy tech. But it wasn't until he became a
Speaker 1: father that he got the push he needed to get
Speaker 1: into the meatless meat biz. But my kids really young.
Speaker 1: One of the moments I did have was my wife
Speaker 1: und I necessarily weren't on the same page at first.
Speaker 1: Where she grew up. She grew up in the country,
Speaker 1: her father hunts and things like that, and so you know,
Speaker 1: our kids when they were really little would have animal protein.
Speaker 1: Uh And I can remember being on the Jersey Turnpike
Speaker 1: driving up to probably see my family up here, and
Speaker 1: uh um, stopping at a fast food restaurant and the
Speaker 1: kids were ordering something and I just felt so uncomfortable
Speaker 1: with right, and it was at discomfort and they were
Speaker 1: really small. So I gotta go start this business. I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about it for getting what a happy meal
Speaker 1: or something. I won't say where it was, but it
Speaker 1: really gave me. It wasn't that, but it gave me discomfort.
Speaker 1: And it's that sense of inside that if I don't
Speaker 1: express this, then I'm going to let my life go
Speaker 1: by without doing it. Let's talk about this idea that
Speaker 1: you brought to the University of Missouri. You went to
Speaker 1: a lab there and you met two kind of mad scientists, right,
Speaker 1: and they were working and they would provide the perfect
Speaker 1: recipe for the beyond meat product, so um in Layman's terms,
Speaker 1: what were they doing? It was so interesting. So I
Speaker 1: looked for years for something that would do this. I
Speaker 1: looked at lab row eat a lot, and sort of
Speaker 1: mid two thousands, someone asked about that, and I felt coming.
Speaker 1: I was in the fuel cell sector, which is a
Speaker 1: great sector for for replacing the internal combustant engine UM.
Speaker 1: But if you look at um lab ow meat, it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to see when it's going to become commercially available.
Speaker 1: But what these scientists were doing was essentially taking the
Speaker 1: protein from plants, and let's say it organizers like this
Speaker 1: in a plant, right, we need to basically break its
Speaker 1: bonds and reset it so it takes on that texture
Speaker 1: of muscle that you're so familiar with when you bite
Speaker 1: into a piece of meat. So they were doing that
Speaker 1: and they had found a way to do it better
Speaker 1: than anybody else. And so I called them up and
Speaker 1: just said, hey, can we can we work together? And
Speaker 1: they really needed an entrepreneur because they were more propos
Speaker 1: oial than entrepreneurial. And we started working together and it
Speaker 1: worked out. So what exactly is in beyond me? Sure? Sure,
Speaker 1: and it's we get a lot of questions about that,
Speaker 1: and so it's a really good opportunity me to talk
Speaker 1: about it. So it's the core parts of meat. It's protein, fat,
Speaker 1: and water. And so the protein is harvested directly from
Speaker 1: a plant. And when you when you think about this,
Speaker 1: so you have let's say a p or we can
Speaker 1: use any any lagoon really works right, and you're you're
Speaker 1: extracting the protein from it. So we millet. We have
Speaker 1: a producer millet for us, and then we separate by
Speaker 1: changing the pH level and water the protein and the fiber.
Speaker 1: We take that protein and reset those bonds so it
Speaker 1: takes on the former muscle. That's kind of it, right,
Speaker 1: And there are other things we have to add into it.
Speaker 1: There's fats and and and minerals and vite him and
Speaker 1: and things like that. But for me, it's really important.
Speaker 1: You know, I always start with mom, and that's really
Speaker 1: how I think about things. I started so early working
Speaker 1: in the stores, so I would go to whole foods
Speaker 1: and hand out our products and listen right, and and
Speaker 1: so Mom would often tell me, Hey, this is what
Speaker 1: I want. Dad would tell me this is what I want.
Speaker 1: So what else do you put in there other than
Speaker 1: the protein and the fat? And where do you get
Speaker 1: the fat? And for you, it's such a interesting subject.
Speaker 1: And so we're continuing to So the protein, let's say,
Speaker 1: comes from the I'll talk about our Dunking product, which
Speaker 1: is great. If you're walking out the city, you can
Speaker 1: see uh, you know, Duncan selling the product. I would
Speaker 1: really encourage people to go out and get that here
Speaker 1: in New York. It's so good. And so that has
Speaker 1: I bet you would love it. I literally love it.
Speaker 1: And but that one's a really neat one. It has
Speaker 1: it has sunflower seed protein in it. Like who doesn't
Speaker 1: want to get up in the morning and have sunflowers?
Speaker 1: Like you can either have a piece of pork, you
Speaker 1: know something. It's been made from sunflower seed protein, mung bean,
Speaker 1: brown rice and peace, so that creates the protein. And
Speaker 1: by adding all this protein together, we're actually putting more
Speaker 1: protein in it than it is pork. And then you
Speaker 1: have things to create the fatty mouth feels of cocon
Speaker 1: and oil and and uh and canola and things like that.
Speaker 1: And then you have to add the minerals right, and
Speaker 1: the vitamins right. So they're giving people something that satiates
Speaker 1: but also provides nutrition for their body in the same way.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to color, for example, for our products,
Speaker 1: we have to use things like beet juice and pomegranate,
Speaker 1: and we try to find parts of algae that will
Speaker 1: transition from red to black and gray. So you know,
Speaker 1: you can rest assured that we'd have put really strict
Speaker 1: guidelines on what goes into this product, how many calories
Speaker 1: and it be on its It's really not about the
Speaker 1: calories for us. It's the calories are roughly equivalent. If
Speaker 1: you look a regular ham. Yeah, if you look at
Speaker 1: and just goes on the sausage, I'll talk about that
Speaker 1: for a second. That is less fat, it has less
Speaker 1: saturated fat, and we've taken on the nose a lot
Speaker 1: about sodium. That product is thirty seven percent less sodium
Speaker 1: than a normal pork sausage. Now you go to our burger,
Speaker 1: people like, ah, that burger has so much sodium in it.
Speaker 1: But does anyone in the audience know how much sodium
Speaker 1: is in our produ Like, given what you hear, let
Speaker 1: me just take a guess somebody, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: had to confess I didn't see that, okay. So people
Speaker 1: in the media saying, oh, you know as it so yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So it is eighteen of daily value of your sodium, right,
Speaker 1: So that's the same that's in a half a cup
Speaker 1: of Mari narrow sauce for example, or tortilla wraps and
Speaker 1: things like that. So you know, there's an article that
Speaker 1: around the Wall Street Journal and said, oh, bee, I
Speaker 1: mean there's more sodium than a normal burger. Okay, But
Speaker 1: then you gotta unpack that a little bit. What were
Speaker 1: they comparing. They were comparing a season burger, which is ours,
Speaker 1: with an unseasoned burger. So go walk down the island
Speaker 1: the supermarket pick up or preseason burger, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: have more sodium or at least an equivalent amount, right, So,
Speaker 1: lots of games that are being played in print of
Speaker 1: position our product and were you getting a lot of
Speaker 1: pushback from you know, not only some health health food people,
Speaker 1: but you know, for example, John Mackie, the CEO of
Speaker 1: Whole Foods, who was instrumental in your early success, has
Speaker 1: said that quote, if you look at the ingredients, they
Speaker 1: are super highly processed foods, which isn't very healthy. Now,
Speaker 1: I know you want an opportunity to kind of respond
Speaker 1: to some of that. And I imagine some of this
Speaker 1: is being fueled by the cattle industry, the meat industry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a ton to say about this. How
Speaker 1: much time do you guys have? So John Mackie is
Speaker 1: giving me the great gift of like being one of
Speaker 1: my most important customers and then also saying this thing right,
Speaker 1: So I gotta figure out how to walk that line.
Speaker 1: That's a good guy for sure, And you know he
Speaker 1: has his opinion and he's free, free to share it.
Speaker 1: He's wrong for sure. Um, but you know it's it's
Speaker 1: a new day and and uh not everyone grasps us
Speaker 1: So what we what we are doing? And it's really
Speaker 1: a tale of two processes. Which process do you want? Right?
Speaker 1: So the process, in my mind is a series of
Speaker 1: steps to get to an outcome. That's what a process is, right,
Speaker 1: and so is our process better than industrial agriculture? Right?
Speaker 1: And so let me just walk through it. So we
Speaker 1: start with the plants, right. We separate the protein from
Speaker 1: the plant, and then we run it through steps of heating, cooling,
Speaker 1: and pressure which set it into that muscle structure. Right,
Speaker 1: and we present that with fat and and uh and
Speaker 1: and minerals and vitamins as a piece of meat for you. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: you can then look at animal I your culture, right,
Speaker 1: And what's happening there is the animals consuming the product.
Speaker 1: They're also being giving antibiotics, this is industrial agriculture animal product, antibiotics, hormones,
Speaker 1: veterinary drugs right there, being raised in special conditions. Some
Speaker 1: of them are being given so much feed so quickly
Speaker 1: they can't walk uh, and then they're brought to slaughter.
Speaker 1: When they're slaughtered. There's all sorts of contentments and residual
Speaker 1: elements that are in the product that the USDA in
Speaker 1: fact has a program to try to keep those out
Speaker 1: of the food supply. So that's the process that you
Speaker 1: really need to consider. Now, it might be that Michael
Speaker 1: pollen And and Mackie live in a world where they
Speaker 1: can go to Martha's vineyard or to Marin County and
Speaker 1: they can get that grass fed hen that that most
Speaker 1: of us can't have, right, And so that's the world
Speaker 1: where I think people maybe get into trouble. They think,
Speaker 1: you know, if we can all just have this type
Speaker 1: of product, will be fine. But that's not how we eat, right,
Speaker 1: And that's not just that's not a way that we
Speaker 1: can feed the world's population. So we have to develop
Speaker 1: a better process, and that's what we do. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: I know that you're not trying to say to people,
Speaker 1: don't eat meat at all necessarily. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: you're saying you let me read a quote that you've
Speaker 1: You've said, you don't build a business telling people not
Speaker 1: to eat what they love. Um. So, so you're really
Speaker 1: asking them to supplement sort of meat if they can, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, tell me your philosophy, Like, who's your target market?
Speaker 1: How are you trying to really sell the concept to
Speaker 1: consumers who may you be curious but not that jiggy
Speaker 1: with it. As my daughter would say in seventh grade
Speaker 1: about twelve years ago, ahead Will Smith, Um, he's great.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Um, you know it's our target customer is
Speaker 1: the American consumer and the global consumer. It's somebody that
Speaker 1: is interested in consuming meat. But it's beginning to realize
Speaker 1: that there are issues around the levels of me and
Speaker 1: something we're having and I just don't know. I love
Speaker 1: me like I love to have burgers, and I loved
Speaker 1: having fried chicken. It's one of my favorite things, right,
Speaker 1: And so I get it. I'm not in any way
Speaker 1: you love that now, well, I love our products that
Speaker 1: I was going to say, you're vegan, you can't eat
Speaker 1: that stuff? Pick me off the show. No, no, so
Speaker 1: I But but growing up, that's really what I developed
Speaker 1: a taste for and it was really good and I
Speaker 1: understand it, right, and and so this is not about,
Speaker 1: you know, vilifying that decision. It's it's simply about you
Speaker 1: think about the landline. Did anyone get into like a knockdown,
Speaker 1: drag out fight about like you know, the cell phone
Speaker 1: or placed in the landline. It just happened, right. There
Speaker 1: are people like my daddy using landline. I'm always going
Speaker 1: to use the landline, like you're not a man if
Speaker 1: you don't use a landline like that. Never Yeah, but
Speaker 1: there wasn't a whole industry at risk right, A T
Speaker 1: and T provides myself service SERVI. So that's what some
Speaker 1: of the smartest meat companies are doing. So it's really
Speaker 1: not around us versus them, it's around is there, and
Speaker 1: it's I think it's a quintessential American idea is there's
Speaker 1: something that's good, which is meat. Let's make it better. Right,
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and create meat that doesn't have the
Speaker 1: same impact on the environment, doesn't the same impact on
Speaker 1: our bodies. So let's be honest. Those cattle farmers, you know,
Speaker 1: they want people to eat regular beef that they're you
Speaker 1: know that they're raising on their branches and they'll probably
Speaker 1: for a very long time be able to keep doing that.
Speaker 1: But well, that's not good news for you. Well, I
Speaker 1: think there's so much demand and it depends on what
Speaker 1: the consumer wants. So when we go you know, when
Speaker 1: I was I was at a Barclay's conference and the
Speaker 1: audience was probably you know, in their fifties or so,
Speaker 1: and I asked them, ten years from now, you know,
Speaker 1: what percent of the market will be plant based? The
Speaker 1: numbers were extremely low. You go to places, to universities
Speaker 1: and it's like standing them. Only the kids understand this
Speaker 1: and One of the reason to understand it is because
Speaker 1: information is being disseminated so quickly. They can see on
Speaker 1: their handheld phones stat statistic things, see videos. And I
Speaker 1: also think they care more. I hate to say it
Speaker 1: because it's embarrassing for my generation, but they're really committed
Speaker 1: to doing something about climate change. They are, and they're okay,
Speaker 1: boomerang us to death. Have you have you seen? Have
Speaker 1: you seen the stuff that's going on in Sweden with
Speaker 1: this flight shaming? Like that gives me real hope. Like
Speaker 1: so people, if you take a flight somewhere where you
Speaker 1: could have taken a train, you're sort of seen as
Speaker 1: neanderthal like kind of change. What are you doing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I think there's a consciousness that's this rising,
Speaker 1: which just thrills me. It really is. It's an environmental
Speaker 1: consciousness that Ethan built into his own product. If you
Speaker 1: look at our impact, we use less water when we
Speaker 1: create a burger, I mean less land, we use half
Speaker 1: the energy, and we've fewer emissions. So from an environment
Speaker 1: of respect, if we feel great about the products, he
Speaker 1: may be flying high now, but when we come back,
Speaker 1: Ethan talks about almost hitting rock bottom. When Ethan Brown
Speaker 1: started bringing his plant based products to the masses. He
Speaker 1: thought about another mass market food campaign from his childhood,
Speaker 1: Good Milk, Got Milk, Got Milk. When I was growing up,
Speaker 1: they Got Milk campaign was a big deal. You know,
Speaker 1: started with like Bo Jackson and then Derek Jeter and
Speaker 1: and you know, Taylor Swift and all these others. And
Speaker 1: it shocked me that you could be in a school
Speaker 1: and you could advertise for a particular protein in the
Speaker 1: lunch room. And that was what the California that was
Speaker 1: what the Milk Board wasn't able to do right with
Speaker 1: these posters and things that we all grew up with. Uh,
Speaker 1: When it came time for me to build a campaign,
Speaker 1: and said, that's exactly what I want to do because
Speaker 1: I want moms and dads understand that their kids will
Speaker 1: flourish on this right. And so I hired the original
Speaker 1: architect of the Got Milk campaign, a guy named Jeff
Speaker 1: Manning is your first sponsor of California Milkboard. Great guy.
Speaker 1: We still work together, keep in touch. Um he's in
Speaker 1: the seventies now. And I said, can you help me
Speaker 1: do this? So we created a program called the Future Protein.
Speaker 1: Then we hired someone named Beth Moskowitz, who has been
Speaker 1: a rock star. She basically bought all of these NBA
Speaker 1: players into our brand and they live the brand. So
Speaker 1: Chris Paul this summer made a remark to me said,
Speaker 1: you know what, for the first time in years, I've
Speaker 1: forgot to ice after practice because my inflammation is so low.
Speaker 1: And he's running around like a kid. Now, an inflammation
Speaker 1: is such an exciting, relatively new area to really study
Speaker 1: in terms of how it might be responsible for a
Speaker 1: whole host of diseases. It's amazing. Um, if you if
Speaker 1: you look at I mean our understands things people, I
Speaker 1: think maybe miss is that our understanding of our own
Speaker 1: world and the human body is so young, right, We're
Speaker 1: still were three or four years into this where science
Speaker 1: actually had any tools to be able to truly understand.
Speaker 1: This is reading something in Scientific American over the weekend,
Speaker 1: where you know the reading. It's a great magazine, but
Speaker 1: I love that magazine. So a bird brain, this is
Speaker 1: about avian brains. The expression like we got a bird brain,
Speaker 1: like because brains are so small they're finding out is
Speaker 1: that we were wrong about the bird's brain. Up until
Speaker 1: it thousand and four. We thought they've basically had no
Speaker 1: sort of prefrontal cortex type thinking capability. It turns out
Speaker 1: that they do. It's just a different part of the brain,
Speaker 1: so they're able to recognize in the mirror themselves and
Speaker 1: things like that that many other mammals can't even do.
Speaker 1: So I just think it's so interesting that we're not
Speaker 1: only being to understand our own bodies better than microbiome,
Speaker 1: but the bodies of the rest of life we share
Speaker 1: this earth with, and as we get more understanding, we
Speaker 1: realize they're more like us than not. Make no mistake,
Speaker 1: Beef is still the most popular burger on the American menu,
Speaker 1: but more people are trying meat alternatives. According to one
Speaker 1: report commissioned by plant based organizations, in the past two years,
Speaker 1: there's been a surgeon sales of plant based foods, which
Speaker 1: of course is good for Beyond Meat. In May two
Speaker 1: th nineteen, Beyond Meat became the first plant based company
Speaker 1: to go public. It also happened to be one of
Speaker 1: the most successful I p O s in history, But
Speaker 1: Ethan says he wants to push the company further into
Speaker 1: more restaurants in more markets around the world, which is
Speaker 1: a far cry from where he was in two thousand
Speaker 1: nine when he started the company. So people thought you
Speaker 1: were crazy, you know when you came up with this idea,
Speaker 1: and I know you blew through your four oh one
Speaker 1: K your kids savings accounts. It puts a serious strain
Speaker 1: on your marriage. Uh, Entrepreneurship is hard. Was there a
Speaker 1: point when you thought, you know, this isn't worth it,
Speaker 1: I'm going to give up. Uh, you know, it sounds
Speaker 1: really like a false modesty or something. I don't I
Speaker 1: think I was smart enough to even have that thought.
Speaker 1: It was like, really, I'm just not going to fail,
Speaker 1: Like I just didn't. I didn't even just sing so
Speaker 1: my opic. Yeah, I just never occurred to me that
Speaker 1: I would fail. So there was a we started. We
Speaker 1: started this in a building that was on a hill, uh,
Speaker 1: or the town I started in, And I used to
Speaker 1: drive by it and say, I'm either gonna make it
Speaker 1: or break it in that building. And today that building
Speaker 1: has been torn down, but we're still here. So I
Speaker 1: feel good about that. And what's the best advice? I
Speaker 1: wrote a book where I kind of asked people. It
Speaker 1: really was a lazy way of me doing commencement addresses
Speaker 1: to be able to quote people on their life advice.
Speaker 1: But what do you think the best advice you've ever
Speaker 1: gotten is I've been really blessed to have some important
Speaker 1: mentors throughout my life. And the one that I've shared,
Speaker 1: I think is we're sharing is it? Um? My dad?
Speaker 1: When I was coming up, so I was also a
Speaker 1: student of my dad's at his program at Maryland and
Speaker 1: uh um, I was kind of complaining about actually said
Speaker 1: I want to be up in New York, be my
Speaker 1: friends and stuff like that, and talking about my career
Speaker 1: and he said, well, I didn't know what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do. And he said, well, what's the biggest problem
Speaker 1: in the world. And I thought a lot about that,
Speaker 1: and it was climate. I said, because of everything, you know,
Speaker 1: if we don't selve for climate, everything else gets to
Speaker 1: be at risk. And you said, that's really where you
Speaker 1: should focus your career. And so it was an idea
Speaker 1: of combining a calling in a career versus trying to
Speaker 1: approach those two things separately kind of cause right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that lets your life speak in not only outside
Speaker 1: of work, but at work. And I think that really
Speaker 1: helped me a lot. Well, that's great advice and hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll all be better off because of your dad's good
Speaker 1: advice and we've got actually I've never tasted one of these, ethan,
Speaker 1: so this is going to be thank you, So tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit what I'm tasting here. Sure, So
Speaker 1: this is our newest burger. It's been in the market
Speaker 1: for for a little bit, um, and every year we
Speaker 1: come out with a new new version of it. And
Speaker 1: so this one should have a slightly meteor texture and
Speaker 1: taste to it. And so where where can you get this?
Speaker 1: Any real any supermarket like hopefully it's here in the
Speaker 1: city or or uh any any supermarket Relais the a
Speaker 1: s Mr portion of the podcast. And by the way,
Speaker 1: you can get this in the meat case. That was
Speaker 1: a really important thing for us to be able to
Speaker 1: sell it in the meat case where meat is actually sold.
Speaker 1: I like the bond too. It's kind of brioche, you know. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm being serious. It's tasty. We've worked really hard
Speaker 1: on it. So how much with this bad boy being
Speaker 1: calories I'm always especially it's January trying to be good. Now,
Speaker 1: this one looks pretty tough with the cheese and the male.
Speaker 1: You're killing me. It's pretty tough, um, But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's uh I mean, the key here is you're getting
Speaker 1: cleaner fats, you're getting much less fat, you're getting less sorry,
Speaker 1: less saturated fat um. And of course you're getting no cholesterol,
Speaker 1: no hem, iron, no um, you know, T M A O.
Speaker 1: All these other things that you just don't want, they're
Speaker 1: not in there. Well, good luck with everything. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming in, Thank you for the breakfast sandwiches,
Speaker 1: and and that does it for this week's episode. If
Speaker 1: the plant based phenomenon interests you, keep an ear on
Speaker 1: the Next Question feed because later in the season we're
Speaker 1: going to take a closer look at the environmental impact
Speaker 1: of meat. Make sure you subscribe to Next Question on
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. And if you're looking for
Speaker 1: some guidance on your daily news intake, you can subscribe
Speaker 1: to my morning newsletter. It's called Wake Up Call. Just
Speaker 1: go to Katie correct dot com. And of course you
Speaker 1: can follow me on all your favorite social media channels.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening and learning with me
Speaker 1: until next time at my Next Question, I'm Katie Couric.
Speaker 1: Next Question with Katie Couric is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Katie Currik Media. The executive producers are
Speaker 1: Katie Currik, Courtney Litz, and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer
Speaker 1: is Lauren Hansen. Our show producer is Bethan Macaluso. The
Speaker 1: associate producers are Emily Pinto and Derek Clements. Editing by
Speaker 1: Derrek Clements, Dylan Fagin and Lowell Berlante, Mixing by Dylan Fagin.
Speaker 1: Our researcher is Gabriel Loser. For more information on today's episode,
Speaker 1: go to Katie Couric dot com and follow us on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram at Katie Currik. For more podcasts for
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.