McDonald’s and Beyond Meat announce 3-year partnership with McPlant

Today, the vegan brand Beyond Meat announced that it has entered into a three-year global strategic partnership with McDonald’s fast-food chain. Through the partnership, Beyond Meat will help McDonald’s to develop new plant-based menu options through its newly announced McPlant platform. “Our new McPlant platform offers customers more options when they visit McDonald’s,” said Francesca DeBiase, executive vice president and director of McDonald’s supply chain. “We are excited to be working with Beyond Meat to drive innovation in this space and entering into this strategic agreement is an important step on our journey to bring delicious, high-quality plant-based items to our customers.”

McDonald’s goes all-in based on plants

In 2019, McDonald’s began testing the PLT (Plant, Lettuce and Tomato) hamburger made in partnership with Beyond Meat at select locations in Ontario, Canada. Shortly after the test was completed, McDonald’s announced that it was launching the “McPlant” platform, which will be used to develop future vegetable items for its menus worldwide, starting with the McPlant burger. This month, McDonald’s launched McPlant hamburger at test locations in Sweden (Linköping and Helsingborg) until March 15 and at selected locations in Denmark by April 12, with the goal of distributing the meatless burger to McDonald’s locations in markets. While McDonald’s initially hesitated to confirm that Beyond Meat was behind its McPlant burger, the new partnership has consolidated Beyond Meat as the chain’s preferred vegetable supplier.

Under the agreement, Beyond Meat and McDonald’s will also explore co-development options, such as chicken, pork and plant-based eggs, on the McPlant platform. “We are proud to enter into this global strategic agreement with McDonald’s, an exciting milestone for Beyond Meat, and we look forward to serving McDonald’s as they bring expanded menu options around the world,” said Beyond Meat founder and CEO Ethan Brown. . “We will combine the power of Beyond Meat’s fast and relentless approach to innovation with the strength of the global McDonald’s brand to introduce new plant-based menu items that consumers will love.”

KFC, Pizza Hut and Pepsi go further

Brown announced the partnership with McDonald’s during the Beyond Meat results conference call today, where he also revealed that the vegan brand had a similar partnership with Yum! Brands. Under this agreement, Beyond Meat will also work with Kum and Pizza Hut owned by Yum! To develop options based on future plans. Last month, Beyond Meat also created a joint venture, The PLANeT Partnership, with food and beverage giant PepsiCo. Through the venture, Beyond Meat and Pepsi will develop, produce and commercialize plant-based snacks and drinks.

“These deals are huge,” said Brown during the call. “These are the biggest deals you could do with food in our industry.”