Beyond Meat Ceo Ethan Brown On A Plant-based Future, Climate Change And Returning To The Office

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Ethan Brown, the chief executive officer of Beyond Meat, is eager to work with his colleagues in the office again. “I have very strong feelings on this,” he said in a recent interview from the company’s headquarters in El Segundo, Calif. “It’s time. It’s past time.”

Along with being the CEO, Brown is also the founder of Beyond Meat, a leading player in the up-and-coming plant-based-meat category. “We have a massive undertaking that we’re doing, in terms of the complexity of it, and it’s really hard to do that when people are remote,” he says. The company continues to expand its growing line of popular burgers, sausages and meatballs, recently adding a plant-based “chicken tenders” offering. “I need to have people here because Zoom is an amazing technology, conference calls are great, emails are good, but this is intense stuff, and we need to be together, looking eye-to-eye.”

Despite the limitations of remote work (Brown continued to go to the office throughout the pandemic, and the company’s research-and-operations centers remained open as well), Beyond Meat made steady progress in its efforts to push plant-based meat into the mainstream in the past 15 months. Since January 2021, the company has announced major partnerships with McDonald’s, on its McPlant burger; PepsiCo; and Yum! Brands. It also opened a factory near Shanghai, where it has a partnership with Yum China.

Brown, whose Beyond Meat shares are worth more than $500 million after the company’s 2019 IPO, also discussed how plant-based meat became a flashpoint in the culture wars, the environmental benefits of producing less beef and how the labor shortage is affecting his business.

By Eben Shapiro
Source: time.com
July 13, 2021