TIME magazine’s “Best Inventions of 2018” spotlights inventions carefully picked to make the world a better place. Now the list includes an all-vegan food product.
After soliciting nominations across a variety of categories from editors and correspondents around the world and through an online application process, TIME evaluated each contender on originality, creativity, influence, ambition, and effectiveness. Their list of 50 inventions is “changing the way we live, work, play, and think about what’s possible.”
So which vegan food innovation caught TIME’s attention? Beyond Sausage. It’s no surprise, seeing as Beyond Sausage can hardly ever stay on supermarket shelves.
Beyond Meat, the company behind Beyond Sausage, has made history yet again. According to author Alejandro De La Garza:
In recent years, alternative beef—aka real-seeming burger patties made from plant oils and proteins—has started popping up on menus at restaurants from Bareburger to White Castle. Now Beyond Meat, the company behind the Beyond Burger, is experimenting with a different alternative-meat product: sausage. Its new Beyond Sausage looks and tastes surprisingly close to the real thing.
The company sells a variety of tasty products, including Beyond Chicken grilled strips, the Beast Burger, Beyond Beef crumbles, and the famous Beyond Burger. The products are so popular, Beyond Meat had to open a second production facility in Missouri specifically to keep up with demand for its products, creating 250 jobs in the process. The new production facility increased the company’s manufacturing footprint more than threefold, from 30,000 to 100,000 square feet.
Backed by high-profile investors, such as billionaire Bill Gates; actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio; business experts Suzy and Jack Welch; venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins; and America’s largest meat producer, Tyson Foods, Beyond Meat is changing the game for vegan food as the first publicly traded plant-based meat alternative company.
The Beyond Burger debuted next to its meat-based counterparts in 2016 and is sold at thousands of restaurants and grocers. Beyond Meat recently announced a partnership with A&W Canada, which frequently sells out of the burger.
And A&W isn’t the only company to partner with Beyond Meat. Chains like Veggie Grill and TGI Fridays serve Beyond Meat products, and the company plans to distribute the Beyond Burger in 50 countries across six continents. Right now, Beyond Meat products are all the rage in Hong Kong, where sales have quadrupled since April.
Beyond Meat’s rapid growth reflects the rising demand for vegan food. According to GlobalData, there were six times as many vegans in America in 2017 as in 2014, and Allied Market Research predicts that the meat substitute market will grow 8.4 percent from 2015, potentially reaching $5.2 billion globally by 2020.![]()
The popularity of Beyond Meat’s products is good news not only for the vegans who love them but for the billions of animals who suffer at factory farms. From throwing chicks into macerators to tearing baby cows from their mothers, factory farmers routinely abuse animals. Even worse, they are legally permitted to do it.
Fortunately, you can end your support of this inhumane industry by making the compassionate decision to leave all animal products off your plate and purchase vegan products like Beyond Meat’s Beyond Sausage. Get started today!
Can’t find Beyond Sausage where you live? Check out these seven recipes for the Beyond Burger.
