• Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness said alternative meat was sold the wrong way.
• He said that plant-based food “became woke and partisan.”
• Partially as a result, the market for alternative meat has fallen.

Plant-based food is struggling to meet this political moment, Impossible Foods CEO Peter McGuinness said.

“It became woke and partisan and political and divisive,” McGuinness said during an appearance at Semafor’s World Economy Summit in Washington, DC.

McGuinness said plant-based food is “not in vogue right now” and it’s “not our cultural moment,” but companies like his can’t afford to give up on the US market.

“We can’t give up on the US, because it’s a massive, massive market,” he said.

According to The Good Food Institute, plant-based meat and seafood dollar sales decreased 7% in 2024. The decreasing consumption of meat alternatives is partially based on a correction from the initial hype, McGuinness said.

Impossible Foods’ CEO also said the current trend is partially a result of how the original marketing alienated a whole class of potential consumers.

“If you want to use less water, and have less GHG emissions, and use less land, you don’t target vegans, obviously,” McGuinness said. “You have to target meat eaters and get them to try your product, but you don’t get them to try your product by insulting them,” he said.

McGuinness said that the original leaders were “zealots.” At the time, he was working at Chobani. He left the yogurt producer for Impossible Foods in 2022.

“In the beginning, it was like you were a Neanderthal if you ate animal meat,” he said

Now, McGuinness said his company has reoriented its marketing to be more inclusive by focusing on the quality of what people are eating.

“Marketing 101, you want to be for something,” he said. “We want to be for better food, we want to be good options.”

McGuinness is also trying to help Impossible Foods’ bottom line by pursuing international expansion in places like the United Kingdom, where he’ll be next week.

“For whatever reason, consumers there are much more open to eating plant-based,” he said. “And you can look at it in fast food, you can look at it in universities, high schools. You can look at it in just general grocery stores like a Tesco versus a Walmart or a Tesco versus a Kroger. So those markets are pretty ripe and we’re just now entering them.”