Diners develop a taste for meat substitutes

Beyond Meat holds a tasting event in Shanghai last month, at which a variety of foods made from plant-based meat was on offer. CHINA DAILY

Startups financed

Li Dong, chef at the Jing Yaa Tang restaurant in Beijing, which boasts a Michelin star, is considering creating a vegetarian menu using plant-based meat. He uses Z-Rou products to make dishes.

Plant-based meat products are more suitable for pan-frying or deep-frying at high temperatures to produce an authentic flavor, Li said.

"They are not that suitable for boiling, because the flavor of beans can be detected," he added.

Li said plant-based meat can be made into a range of creative dishes by chefs specializing in Chinese cuisine, which is rich in flavor that can mask the taste of beans.

China has a long history of making and eating meat substitutes made from soybeans, which are known as "vegetarian meat" in traditional Chinese cuisine.

While meat substitutes are nothing new to Chinese customers, plant-based meat startups are relatively new arrivals in the country－many of them founded only last year and collaborating with catering brands on a large scale this year.

Most entrepreneurs specializing in plant-based meat do not have their own facilities and are collaborating with traditional vegetarian meat factories.

In Beijing last month, Mexican restaurant Q Mex Bar& Grill launched a vegan menu in collaboration with Zhen Meat, a Chinese plant-based meat maker founded in the city in August last year.

According to Beijing Daily, the restaurant's purchasing costs for Zhen Meat's products are about the same as those for regular frozen beef. They are also three to four times lower than those charged by international brands Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.

Mainly using protein from peas, Zhen Meat focuses chiefly on Chinese cuisine. For Mid-Autumn Festival, it launched a plant-based meat mooncake, while two new products, plant-based fried pork and cray tail, were introduced in June.

Customized and innovative products are the highlight for Chinese plant-based meat startups.

Starfield, a Chinese company producing such meat in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, is popular for its customized items made in collaboration with restaurants featuring different styles of cuisine.

Such items range from plant-based, strong-smelling preserved bean curd, a popular snack in Hunan province, to Chinese-style barbeque.

In October, Starfield collaborated with fried chicken fast food chain Dicos to launch a plant-based chicken burger in the latter's 2,600 restaurants nationwide. The burgers cost 20 yuan ($3), about the same as a regular fried chicken burger at Dicos.

Starfield's co-founder Liu Shuman said that on the first five days, more than 100,000 of the burgers were sold.

Liu used to run a WeChat account to popularize knowledge and information about vegetarian diets.

She also ran a vegetarian restaurant in Dali, Yunan province, in 2017, but the business failed to attract enough diners.

"I think that in running a restaurant, I failed to fulfill my goal of making a large social impact on vegetarian diets," Liu said.

"However, when I learned about plant-based meat, I realized this could provide an opportunity to start changing people's diets."

Liu joined Starfield in October last year, and the first product was launched later that month.

She said Starfield's research and development department comprises more than 30 experts, including scientists specializing in vegetable protein and flavors, senior food engineers and chefs devoted to Western and Chinese cuisine.

"One of our aims is to make plant-based meat more delicious," she said.

"We use molecular sensory technology to imitate the flavor of chicken or beef," she said, adding that the main ingredients of the meat include soybeans, coconut oil, red beets and wheat.

Liu feels that the development of plant-based meat products is still in its infancy and that there is plenty of room to improve products currently on the market.

She believes there are two research and development goals for such products. One is to imitate a certain type of meat, while the other is to create products with a more authentic meat-like experience for customers.

Starfield has attracted three rounds of financing within a year, receiving more than 100 million yuan in one of them during September. According to Liu, the company is also building its own production factory.

"I think the attraction of the Chinese market is that it has the speed of a rocket. For example, it takes a product from an international plant-based meat producer nine to 10 years to reach a major catering brand, but for Starfield, it only took about half a year for our first product to reach a major brand," she said.

Starfield products are sold in more than 4,000 restaurants in China, and the company is aiming to collaborate with over 90 percent of all major catering brands by 2023.

"The potential of the Chinese market is huge and we have already made some inroads to vegetarian diets. We are not obsessed with vegan or vegetarian, but aim to provide the public with a meatless choice," Liu said.

Starfield is working mostly with restaurants. However, Liu said that when customers start to notice plant-based meat is on the menu and want to try to cook it at home or buy some ready-to-eat products, then it will be time to enter the retail market.