It’s a sweltering summer out there, and BBQ season is in full swing.
Plant-based meat alternatives and non-alcoholic beverage options have both seen an upward trend in recent years. Burger King's menu now includes an Impossible Whopper, and Munich is planning an alcohol-free "beer garden" for this year's Oktoberfest.
We were curious: How is this interest in plant-based “meat” and non-alcoholic beverage options playing out among ordinary consumers in the U.S.?
Using Harris QuestDIY, we were able to quickly build and deploy a survey to 998 Americans, receiving results within mere hours.
Let’s take a bite out of the findings and how they might affect the marketing of products in these categories.
There’s plenty of room for growth, especially among an older cohort
Overall, 15% of respondents claimed to be “extremely familiar” with plant-based meat alternative BBQ options (things like faux-burgers or faux-hot dogs).
24% of respondents were “not familiar at all” with such products, suggesting that brands still have a significant untapped market to explore. 27% of respondents said they “rarely” consume plant-based meat alternatives.
Familiarity dipped markedly with age. Only 4% of 55-64 year olds and 6% of those 65+ said they were “extremely familiar” with these meat alternatives.
Plant-based meat has some clear brand-awareness & category winners
Beyond Meat (launched in 2009) was the most recognized brand in this space, with 67% of respondents claiming familiarity with the company.
58% of respondents were familiar with Impossible Foods, founded in 2011.
Of those who have tried meat alternatives in a BBQ setting, faux-burgers are the most popular option (74%) followed by sausages (45%) and ribs (17%).
There’s clearly room here for marketers to expand awareness beyond the burger—now that brands are producing meat alternative versions of everything from crab cakes to salmon.
Plant-based brand Field Roast seizes the zeitgist with a Charli XCX-inspired bratwurst sausage campaign. Photo: Field Roast and No Fixed Address.
There’s no arguing with taste
63% chose “taste” as a factor that is influencing their decision to buy or avoid plant-based BBQ options.
As Vox notes, “the tens of billions of chickens, pigs, cows, and other animals we raise and slaughter for food annually account for around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.”
Yet messaging around this topic could possibly be emphasized, since only 20% of our respondents selected “environmental concern” as a factor when considering meat-alternatives.
Room for improvement
Unsurprisingly, the biggest cited area for improvement with meat alternatives is taste (53% of respondents).
A significant amount cited “less processed” (22%) and “ingredients transparency” (19%), suggesting that brands could do a better job of explaining what’s actually in the products and how they’re made, or reducing the amount of processing.
As one respondent succinctly put it “they taste okay, but I’m just creeped out by the idea.”
Care for an NA beer with your “cheese” “burger”?
38% of respondents said they haven’t tried a non-alcoholic beverage alternative to traditional alcoholic drinks you’d find at a BBQ.
Among those who had tried these alternatives, 16% had drank spirits (like NA whisky or vodka) and 19% had sipped NA wine.
Non-alcoholic beer was the category winner here, with 35% of those who’d tried NA alternatives saying they’d cracked open a bottle.
Appearances matter
As with meat alternatives, non-alcoholic beverage consumers are chiefly concerned with taste (43% of respondents say it’s “extremely important”).
17% cite “health benefits” of NA beverage options as being “extremely important.”
Interestingly, 11% of respondents noted that NA beverage packaging is “extremely important” to them.
Considered within the context of an outdoor BBQ, this makes sense—NA drinkers might not want to stand out, or might be looking for an NA drink that has the same dynamic packaging and marketing as alcoholic beverages tend to have.
This certainly applies to that most classic NA beverage: water. Consider Liquid Death, which packages still, sparkling, and flavored water in raucous cans that have the energy of IPA beers; or Not Beer, whose aesthetic certainly resembles a certain popular American beer.
