Breakfast (or snack) with vegetable meat and coffee. It's the crazy idea of Starbucks, which has just announced a curious partnership with the US startup Beyond Meat, which tripled its turnover in 2019 and became the case of the year on Wall Street: for a few days, in Starbucks stores in Canada, veggie burgers are also served. Beyond Meat, which has its core business in vegetable meat, has designed a special sandwich for the occasion: meat, omelette and slice of cheese, all wrapped up in a soft brioche pan.
Customers are therefore offered tasty and high-calorie breakfasts and snacks, perhaps accompanied by typical American-style coffees, but strictly in the name of health and environmental protection: the ingredients used by Beyond Meat, a company worth $7,1 billion today and which it claims to be able to reduce emissions for meat production by 90%., are in fact almost entirely of vegetable origin, GMO free, soy-free, gluten-free and without artificial products.
The move, which for now is limited to Canada but could soon be replicated in the US and Europe, is part of the new strategy of Starbucks, entirely based on sustainability: “In 2021 we will celebrate 50 years since the foundation and we want to take the opportunity to change ourselves, think big and do much more to take care of the planet we live on,” CEO Kevin Johnson said in January as he presented the goals To be achieved by 2030: 50% reduction in emissions from Starbucks operations, including supply chain; 50% reduction in water consumption for coffee cultivation; 50% reduction of waste production, through a circular economy program in collaboration with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's.
To achieve these objectives, one of the priorities, in addition to for example recyclable packaging and the reduction of plastic, is to avoid animal products. A choice which, moreover, has already been used to prepare drinks such as cappuccino, for which vegetable milk is now used. The vegetable burger, incidentally, is increasingly fashionable: while Beyond Meat signed this important partnership with a brand spread all over the world such as Starbucks, its competitor Impossible Burger has announced one with Disney, to serve healthy meat in the kingdom of junk food: amusement parks in the USA.
