Beyond Meat Loses in North, Wins in South

Beyond Meat got hit with bad news in the Great White North, but took a big step forward in the South.

The meat-analogue company had been providing plant-based breakfast sausage patties and hamburgers to Tim Horton’s, the Canadian fast food chain. Horton’s started a test market in May, and by summer, Beyond Meat hamburgers were sold at Horton’s nationwide, and sausage patties at 4,000 locations.

But enthusiasm waned, and Horton’s started scaling back its Beyond Meat offerings, eventually confining them to restaurants in Ontario and British Columbia. The company announced earlier this month that those locations will also stop selling Beyond products.

“Ultimately, our guests choose to stay with the meat option in their breakfast sandwiches,” a spokesperson for Horton’s parent company told Canadian Manufacturing.

On the other hand, Beyond Meat scored a coup with KFC in Tennessee and North Carolina. It will start supplying plant-based fried chicken analogues to dozens of restaurants in the Nashville and Charlotte areas. The nugget-like product is about 80 calories apiece.

KFC did a one-day test of the nuggets in August at a store in suburban Atlanta, which sold out in less than five hours. Stores in Nashville and Charlotte will start selling the product in February.