JUST Egg cracks the substitute category wide open | Food Dive

JUST Egg cracks the substitute category wide open. The mung bean-based vegan breakfast item is taking grocery shelves by storm, reinvigorating the category and aiming at new markets with big manufacturing and distribution partnerships.

AUTHOR

Megan Poinski@meganpoinski

PUBLISHED

Feb. 21, 2019

If 100 chickens were laying JUST Egg, it would take them more than 12 years to produce the same amount of mung bean-based egg replacement that has sold in the United States, Hong Kong and Singapore in four months, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics.

JUST Co-founder and CEO Josh Tetrick told Food Dive the company recently crossed the benchmark of selling the equivalent of 3 million eggs. The equivalent of the last 1 million was sold in the previous 30 days, he said at the beginning of February. The strong consumer desire and the transformative possibility of a vegan egg substitute have driven rapid growth of the product, Tetrick said.

“It’s pretty fun to see because, the truth is, you never know (how popular an item will be) until it’s out there,” Tetrick said. “You can do all sorts of consumer studies and tests and invite people to your headquarters and try. But, actually, until it’s out there in the wild, you don’t actually really know.

“After appearing on restaurant menus for a few months, the San Francisco-based food tech company’s JUST Egg first appeared on grocery shelves in September. The product has already been picked up by Aramark, which serves the egg substitute in patty form at some hospital, college and corporate cafeterias. Late last month, it rolled out nationwide at grocery stores owned by Albertsons.

But all of the growth isn’t just in the United States. Earlier this month, German poultry provider PHW Group announced it was entering into a partnership to sell and distribute JUST Egg to retailers and foodservice providers across Europe. Last summer, JUST entered into a partnership with Italian egg company Eurovo to manufacture and distribute the product in Europe.

“It makes me really optimistic about the food system generally, not just about what we’re doing, that one of the biggest poultry companies in the world and the biggest egg processor in the world are the building blocks of what we’re trying to do in Europe. I think that’s a pretty extraordinary thing.” Josh Tetrick Co-founder and CEO, JUST…

FINISH READING: JUST Egg cracks the substitute category wide open | Food Dive

 

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