Minding the taste gap
Exploring recent research on how plant-based meat stacks up to conventional meat on taste and sensory features
The plant-based meat category in the U.S. has undoubtedly transformed over the last decade, emerging from just a handful of items positioned toward vegans and vegetarians into a billion-dollar category with its sights set on appealing to the broader market of meat-eaters.
A tide of innovation has enabled the category to better appeal to meat-eating consumers, and key players in the wider food industry have taken note. We’ve witnessed giants like Tyson Foods, Nestlé, Burger King, and Starbucks, to name a few, invest in new products, supporting the mainstreaming of the category.
Yet it is clear that key barriers to widespread adoption remain. Considerations like health, availability, convenience, and brand positioning will impact the growth of this category—but there are two factors above all else driving consumer decisions: taste and price.
Making meaningful progress on sensory and price parity would enable the broader adoption of plant-based meat. Measuring the state of product prices is fairly straightforward, and it's clear that more action is needed to close the price gap. In the U.S., plant-based meat products still sit at a significant premium to their conventional counterparts in both retail and foodservice. It’s trickier to measure the sensory gap between plant-based products and their conventional counterparts, but several recent studies have stepped up to help illuminate the challenge.
How do today’s plant-based meat products stack up when it comes to taste?Â
Let's dive into the latest research on plant-based meat to see 1) who is currently purchasing (or not purchasing) plant-based meat, 2) how important taste is to consumers, and 3) how consumers currently rate products across plant-based meat segments.
The role of taste and texture
The plant-based meat market has evolved immensely over the last decade, growing from niche to notable. In 2023, the retail category in the U.S. was worth $1.2 billion, nearly double the size of the 2017 market. However, this is down from the peak of $1.4 billion two years ago, as macroeconomic pressures and consumer behavior shifts have influenced sales trends.
A December 2023 survey conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of GFI found that 51 percent of consumers reported having never tried plant-based meat, another 7 percent had tried it before but not in the past year, and 11 percent had eaten the products a few times or just once in the last year. This means that 7 in 10 U.S. adults have either never tried plant-based meat or have eaten it no more than a few times. In other words, there is a massive untapped market. And it’s clear that a key product opportunity is taste.
When consumers who had either never tried plant-based meat products or only tried them once but not eaten them again were asked about their reasoning, the top cited factors were taste, a preference for conventional meat, and texture. But what if these products could close the taste gap with their conventional counterparts? Sensory improvements could encourage more people to try plant-based meat for the first time and potentially make it a regular part of their diets.
Consumers say the number one factor that would motivate them to buy plant-based meat is if the taste and texture were similar to conventional meat. This underscores the opportunity for products to reach greater penetration and repeat rates.
The current state of plant-based meat taste and texture
In June 2024, NECTAR, a Food System Innovations (FSI) initiative, released its inaugural Taste of the Industry report detailing the findings of blind sensory panels conducted during the summer of 2023 that studied nearly 50 plant-based meat products with a U.S. representative sample of 1,150 omnivore participants. The results provide a valuable snapshot of how plant-based meat products today compare to their conventional counterparts on various sensory attributes, including taste and texture, while also highlighting key areas for research and development to hasten the path to parity.
The average plant-based product has room for improvement
The study looked at various product characteristics, including flavor, texture, appearance, other sensory attributes, and, most notably, overall satisfaction or liking on a seven-point scale from ‘Dislike very much’ (1) to ‘Like very much’ (7).Â
For each category, the average satisfaction score across all products and the score for the category leader were compared against the animal-based benchmark.Â
Category leaders were liked by a meaningful share of consumers, with between 37 percent and 53 percent of participants rating them at ‘like very much’ or ‘like’ (except in the plant-based hot dog category).Â
However, on average, plant-based products are meaningfully behind the animal-based benchmark with scores roughly two points below the conventional product for burgers, bacon, and tenders and three and a half points below the conventional product for hot dogs.
Chicken nuggets were the only category to have reached the same satisfaction as the conventional benchmark—both the category leader and the average product met or exceeded the satisfaction of the conventional product.
With half of U.S. adults reporting never having tried plant-based meat products and with taste perceptions as a leading reason for not doing so, delivering on consumer expectations across different product types is critical. Closing the satisfaction gap is challenging, yet possible, as demonstrated by leading products across multiple categories, as well as the plant-based chicken nugget category in general.
Parity is achievable
As previously noted, in the NECTAR study, plant-based chicken nuggets were the only category in which the average plant-based product satisfaction score surpassed that of the animal-based benchmark score. This was also the case for several specific attributes, including texture, appearance, and breading flavor.
Further evidence of taste parity progress for plant-based nuggets
Clear progress on closing the taste gap in the nugget category was further supported by sensory panel data and consumer preferences on plant-based and animal-based chicken nugget and tender products conducted by Givaudan and Ingredion Incorporated in collaboration with The Good Food Institute between 2020 and 2022. That analysis found that several plant-based nugget products met or exceeded conventional counterparts on liking upon consumption. In that study, the overall liking, flavor liking, and appearance liking scores for the highest-scoring plant-based nugget were statistically similar to those for the highest-scoring conventional nugget.1 Additionally, 85% of consumers stated they were interested or very interested in purchasing plant-based nuggets.2
The analysis also identified several key sensory opportunities for the category:
Increased flavor intensity and a more authentic chicken flavor with enhanced white meat chicken and crispy skin or oven-roasted notes.Â
A low background flavor that does not distort the relatively mild flavor of chicken, potentially achieved through innovation in the base protein ingredient.
An accurate representation of chicken nugget texture that has a crispy/crunchy breading, with a firm bite and lower chewy/rubbery texture than many current plant-based commercial products.
(1) Source: GivaudanÂ
(2) Source: Ingredion Incorporated
In the NECTAR study, plant-based chicken nuggets demonstrated the ability to match and, in some cases, exceed conventional nugget satisfaction—and other categories also show the potential to do the same. Category leaders in plant-based tenders and bacon were within one liking point of the animal-based benchmark. The top plant-based burger product had a gap of one and a half points.
These results demonstrate that there is not only an open opportunity for the average plant-based product to improve, but that closing and even surpassing the taste parity gap to achieve greater liking than conventional meat is also on the table.
Meaningful opportunities remain to improve taste
Despite some top plant-based products nearly matching their animal-based benchmark on taste, the existing gaps remain significant and have a large impact on purchase intent.
NECTAR found that products should strive to achieve the ‘like very much’ (7) rating as purchase intent falls below ‘probably would buy’ when satisfaction ratings fall to ‘like’ (6).
This makes it critical to continue striving for products that don’t just come close but match or surpass their conventional counterparts in overall satisfaction. Even a category like plant-based chicken nuggets that was rated at or above conventional chicken nuggets can benefit from shifting more consumers into the ‘like very much’ bucket. Specifically, 34 percent of participants ‘like’ (6) and 20 percent ‘like somewhat’ (5) the leading plant-based chicken nugget item. Shifting even a small share of these consumers into ‘like very much’ (7) could result in a significant growth in those likely to purchase.
Opportunities are even more pronounced for categories in which the average plant-based product scored two or three points below the animal-based benchmark.
The NECTAR research also provides some tactical insights into areas for improvement. Specifically, participants were generally looking for bolder profiles (meatier, saltier, juicer, etc.) in the plant-based products. (Note: In GFI’s studies with Givaudan and Ingredion Incorporated, there was a similar opportunity for higher flavor intensity in the plant-based nugget category.) NECTAR provided specific product development guidance, which varies across categories, in the full report.
The Givaudan and Ingredion Incorporated analyses also found that, for plant-based chicken nuggets, which plant protein base was used (e.g., soy, pea, wheat) showed no correlation with flavor quality. This suggests that there could be diverse base ingredient approaches that could be effective as companies are pursuing sensory parity.
The path ahead
The road to widespread adoption of plant-based meat products hinges on appealing to consumers on a number of fronts. Price, health, availability, messaging, and more will all play a role, but perhaps no single attribute is more foundationally critical than taste and texture.
The good news is that progress is underway. Today’s consumers have a variety of alternatives that are closer than ever to the conventional meat experience thanks to the last decade of product development. The plant-based chicken nugget category has shown satisfaction parity (and beyond), which is an industry milestone worth celebrating.
NECTAR has plans to continue tracking progress on the sensory performance of alternative protein products with the second annual Taste of the Industry report set to include even more products and categories than the inaugural publication. Annual research will serve as an important measure of key milestones both achieved and still at hand, enabling clear direction for the industry.
Alternative proteins can give us the meat-eating experience we love while also addressing existential threats like climate change and antibiotic resistance. This sensory study illuminates the many opportunities in this industry to bridge the gap across categories and provide a scalable solution that meets consumer expectations and addresses the limitations of conventional meat production.
At GFI, we know that a rising tide lifts all boats. We provide several resources to help industry leaders drive investment, accelerate innovation, and scale their businesses. Take a deep dive into our alternative protein industry resources.Â
**Special thanks to Ben Pierce, GFI’s former Sr. Market Research Analyst for his contributions to this piece.
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