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To me, seeing YuppieVCFoodStartup brand names in a restaurant is akin to the restaurant advertising they’re selling me Lays(tm) chips as the side to my burger.

To me, seeing YuppieVCFoodStartup brand names in a restaurant is akin to the restaurant advertising they’re selling me Lays(tm) chips as the side to my burger. While I have no urge to eat food for its ability to imitate meat (so I’m not the target audience anyway), I think these products belong in a grocery or convenience store, not a dining establishment. It feels to me like paying a premium to eat frozen store-bought dinners, and as bonus points, they’re the vegetarian equivalent of over processed mystery meat. Can’t wait for this hype to level off or for the trend to go the way of shilling Soylent. Sorry to be a downer, but anything remotely touching alt-food startups on HN is hyped with positive sentiment to the point where any criticism gets discouraged.

core-questions 7y ago
Absolutely. It's one thing for fast food service to do this, quite another for a real restaurant - which is presumably making their own burgers from ground beef, maybe butchering sides of beef, etc. - to be advertising retail-grade consumer products.
astura 7y ago
Do you also object to the entire concept of ordering a Budweiser™ beer at a restaurant or bar? I mean... You can drink that at home for a quarter of the price. Somehow I don't feel the urge to tell someone enjoying a Budweiser™ beer at a bar that their drink "belongs" for sale only at a grocery/convenience store for at-home consumption only. I buy sandwiches from a place that advertises they use Boar's Head meat. Shrug
- onion2k 7y ago
  Do you also object to the entire concept of ordering a Budweiser™ beer at a restaurant or bar? Yes. Budweiser is terrible beer.
- ljcn 7y ago
  That's not a fair comparison, unless the restaurant also brews its own beer. A better drinks comparison would be choosing from the menu between a 'Jose Cuervo Authentic Margarita' and a margarita mixed fresh by the bartender. I agree with the OP - in a restaurant I would always order a made-from-scratch dish (the house margarita) than a factory-made burger (the premixed margarita).
  - cyxxon 7y ago
    Actually drinks were the first thing that came to my mind as well. With drinks it is basically normal to order by brand (several brands of beer on tap for example). But there are also restaurants and bars that brew their own beer, and people go there for exactly that purpose. So it is not directly comparable, maybe, but at least comparable and a good example on how you actually think about this with other parts of your diet...
cwyers 7y ago
Nothing different than extolling that you're using Wagyu beef, or anything else where you're citing a specific supplier.
nikkwong 7y ago
On the contrary, to me it would be a net positive if a restaurant was going to advertise their sources. I for one am highly skeptical of the perverse incentive between restaurantees and restauranteurs—restauranteurs being incentivized to buy the cheapest ingredients possible to minimize cost. That doesn’t align with my goal as a consumer to nourish myself with the best quality food. If the restaurant can assure me they only use organic/high quality ingredients that gives me some peace of mind and is a +1 in my book. And this isn’t just fearmongering. For most restaurants it is uneconomical to cook with anything but the cheapest vegetable oils which are guaranteed to oxidate/become carcinogenic at the temperatures required to cook the food they’re serving. So if you eat out often, being informed about a restaurants sourcing and cooking habits is definitely worth knowing about.
- p1necone 7y ago
  Sure, but I still expect the things a restaurant is sourcing to be ingredients, not products.
  - mcv 7y ago
    Restaurants source lots of products. Certainly in the drinks department, but I've often come across some form of branded meat, usually to show their meat is better than just your standard random meat.
dpods 7y ago
What about ordering Mary’s free range chicken? Lots of restaurants advertise that on the menu. Sounds better than a normal chicken sandwich. Or Coca Cola braised short ribs from your favorite food truck? Sounds better than cola braised short ribs. Some people wouldn’t even consider a veggie burger on the menu, but an impossible burger? Sure. It’s about _branding_. The first time I tried impossible meat I was eating dinner with my old boss and he’d asked if I had heard about impossible meat. I’d heard about it but never tried it, so I ordered it and it was honestly better than I expected. I never would have tried it if it wasn’t for word of mouth marketing because it was on the menu. Restaurants are in the business of selling food. It’s their job to make items on their menu sound appealing. Just like those Michelin star restaurants including ingredients I’ve never heard of, let alone can’t pronounce. I could never find that ingredient at my local store. Maybe I should try it. Based on your tone it sounds like you’ve never tried “imitation meat” as you describe it but i can see why people are hyping it. I eat plenty of meat but have started buying beyond meat patties at the store every now and then. It’s magnitudes better than your run-of-the-mill black bean veggie burger.
- saurik 7y ago
  Honestly, that branding for actual meat also makes me feel like I am getting a commodity product: I start to associate the food item together with all of the other food items I get which are "this same thing with different condiments" as opposed to "this unique meal that is notable for being from this restaurant". I actually really like the Impossible Burger, but it now feels like I am ordering the exact same product from every single restaurant... and this is not at all helped by how, to maintain the strength of their brand, they insist on certain kinds of preparations of their patties.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  > I eat plenty of meat but have started buying beyond meat patties at the store every now and then. Pretty off-topic, but a question: after seeing so many mentions on HN, I was pretty interested to give it a try after seeing Beyond Burgers appear in my Dutch grocery store recently. One thing that struck me, though, was that they were twice as expensive as the A brand plant-based burgers we already had, and over three times as expensive as the cheap ones. How expensive are they in the US? (i.e. are they just this expensive because they're from outside the EU?)
p1necone 7y ago
Agreed, all other things being equal - a restaurant serving me a product that someone else made, rather than something they created from ingredients is strictly worse. Things like beer are a bit more understandable - not every restaurant can have a brewery out the back. (although the ones that do are pretty nice)
nonrecursive 7y ago
Are you a vegetarian? I am! And as a vegetarian, I can tell you that I love it when restaurants sell Impossible Burgers. First, I don't cook (unless you count making a bowl of cereal cooking), so it's not like I'm going to make it for myself. Second, restaurant dining is about more than just calorie intake - sometimes I want to go to a restaurant, and as a vegetarian I appreciate when they have tasty things for me to eat. Third, if I'm going to a restaurant as part of a larger social gathering, or as a company outing or whatever - in other words, if I'm at a restaurant when I would not have otherwise chosen to (which I'm sure doesn't happen to just me!), then I appreciate it when there are options for me.
- randomsearch 7y ago
  I’d add to that: big brands make vegetarianism more palatable to everyone. If I’m stuck ordering a salad at a bad restaurant, I’m more likely to be mocked by meat eaters than if the restaurant sells good burgers (esp in the US). When I was in the states recently and the restaurant had an impossible burger, instead of people saying “why are you vegetarian? Where do you get your protein?” people said “oh, the impossible burger, yeah I tried that recently and really liked it”. It was a very pleasant change.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    > I’m more likely to be mocked by meat eaters Sounds like you need better friends.
    - randomsearch 7y ago
      I didn't say they were friends!
jogjayr 7y ago
> I think these products belong in a grocery or convenience store, not a dining establishment I heard somewhere that the fake burger companies sold to restaurants first because the parameters for cooking it well are much narrower than a regular burger (for now). They didn't want to ruin their products' reputation because of mistakes people made cooking the burgers at home, whereas restaurants will probably do a better job.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  You're probably right, and I do expect at some point to see Impossible on grocery store shelves. I tried it in a restaurant once and liked it, and wouldn't mind having it as a quick option at home, but until it shows up in the freezer section I'll probably stick with the stuff the restaurant makes from scratch.
looeee 7y ago
> While I have no urge to eat food for its ability to imitate meat (so I’m not the target audience anyway) That's a very short sighted view. This isn't about vegetarianism. It's about the environmental crisis, and the overfishing crisis, that we're currently experiencing at a global level. I don't care whether you are vegetarian or not, we are all in the target market for solutions to these problems. That's what replacement meat and fish are about.
- vibrato 7y ago
  I disagree, and I’m worried that this view will prevent adequate nutrition for children more and more frequently (meatless Monday etc). The next step is then preventing adequate nutrition for myself from special taxes or regulations on meat.
  - ido 7y ago
    Your children will survive not eating meat one day of the week - in fact it's probably beneficial to only eat meat every other day or less (not by eating processed food like beyond/impossible etc just eating "normal" vegetarian meals).
    - mcv 7y ago
      I know a lot of people who eat meat twice a week. That seems like a very good balance.
    - vibrato 7y ago
      They would also survive a beating one day per week. I would prefer that their life is optimized for the good.
  - mattste 7y ago
    If you believe that a vegan or vegetarian diet can't supply adequate nutrition, then your information is outdated. Source: my wife who is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist.
toper-centage 7y ago
On the other hand, beyond meat has quickly become a household name and the trademark is losing meaning quickly.
rb666 7y ago
Great, you have no urge to be a part of saving our planet, good for you, I'm sure you're old and wealthy enough to think this way. But there's already a gazillion ways to do as you do, let's support the small efforts being made to offer alternatives.
- shusson 7y ago
  How exactly are any of the `beyond` foods saving the planet? Do you know how much waste/CO2 they produce?
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  Not wanting to order pre-packaged frozen meals when I go out to eat is different from not eating vegetarian at all, for what it's worth. Why would me paying extra for an Impossible brand name in a restaurant save the planet more than ordering a vegetarian meal prepared locally from local seasonal ingredients? Are you saying I should go out of my way to find a Burger King that serves Impossible burgers in order to maximize my saving the planet? The environmental cost of shipping that product all over the country isn't free.
  - natrik 7y ago
    Eating vegetarian isn't entirely based on saving the planet/environmental issues. Think of it this way, if we could make it so eating meat had 0 environmental impact and eating vegetarian/vegan had 0 environmental impact would there still be major reasons to be vegetarian/vegan? I'd say the main reasons for being vegetarian include not wanting to contribute to raising animals just to slaughter them, or eating other "living" beings and objecting to the conditions in which they are raised before they are slaughtered. Paying extra for the Impossible brand name is mainly for those wanting to switch from meat yet still yearning for the texture/taste of meat. A brand like Impossible foods ensuring consistency across restaurants would contribute to people choosing to switch from meat knowing they are getting a product they have had (and enjoyed?) before.
    - ilikehurdles 7y ago
cnda 7y ago
I think "Ycombinator" funds one of these. It is amusing that the U.S. discovers soy etc. burgers 20 years late. The only tasty vegetarian food is Indian and Italian anyway.
empath75 7y ago
I’ve got news for you — a significant portion of food you get from chain restaurants is from Sysco, a lot of it prepackaged.

core-questions 7y ago

Absolutely. It's one thing for fast food service to do this, quite another for a real restaurant - which is presumably making their own burgers from ground beef, maybe butchering sides of beef, etc. - to be advertising retail-grade consumer products.

astura 7y ago

Do you also object to the entire concept of ordering a Budweiser™ beer at a restaurant or bar? I mean... You can drink that at home for a quarter of the price. Somehow I don't feel the urge to tell someone enjoying a Budweiser™ beer at a bar that their drink "belongs" for sale only at a grocery/convenience store for at-home consumption only. I buy sandwiches from a place that advertises they use Boar's Head meat. Shrug

onion2k 7y ago
Do you also object to the entire concept of ordering a Budweiser™ beer at a restaurant or bar? Yes. Budweiser is terrible beer.
ljcn 7y ago
That's not a fair comparison, unless the restaurant also brews its own beer. A better drinks comparison would be choosing from the menu between a 'Jose Cuervo Authentic Margarita' and a margarita mixed fresh by the bartender. I agree with the OP - in a restaurant I would always order a made-from-scratch dish (the house margarita) than a factory-made burger (the premixed margarita).
- cyxxon 7y ago
  Actually drinks were the first thing that came to my mind as well. With drinks it is basically normal to order by brand (several brands of beer on tap for example). But there are also restaurants and bars that brew their own beer, and people go there for exactly that purpose. So it is not directly comparable, maybe, but at least comparable and a good example on how you actually think about this with other parts of your diet...

cwyers 7y ago

Nothing different than extolling that you're using Wagyu beef, or anything else where you're citing a specific supplier.

nikkwong 7y ago

On the contrary, to me it would be a net positive if a restaurant was going to advertise their sources. I for one am highly skeptical of the perverse incentive between restaurantees and restauranteurs—restauranteurs being incentivized to buy the cheapest ingredients possible to minimize cost. That doesn’t align with my goal as a consumer to nourish myself with the best quality food. If the restaurant can assure me they only use organic/high quality ingredients that gives me some peace of mind and is a +1 in my book. And this isn’t just fearmongering. For most restaurants it is uneconomical to cook with anything but the cheapest vegetable oils which are guaranteed to oxidate/become carcinogenic at the temperatures required to cook the food they’re serving. So if you eat out often, being informed about a restaurants sourcing and cooking habits is definitely worth knowing about.

p1necone 7y ago
Sure, but I still expect the things a restaurant is sourcing to be ingredients, not products.
- mcv 7y ago
  Restaurants source lots of products. Certainly in the drinks department, but I've often come across some form of branded meat, usually to show their meat is better than just your standard random meat.

dpods 7y ago

What about ordering Mary’s free range chicken? Lots of restaurants advertise that on the menu. Sounds better than a normal chicken sandwich. Or Coca Cola braised short ribs from your favorite food truck? Sounds better than cola braised short ribs. Some people wouldn’t even consider a veggie burger on the menu, but an impossible burger? Sure. It’s about _branding_. The first time I tried impossible meat I was eating dinner with my old boss and he’d asked if I had heard about impossible meat. I’d heard about it but never tried it, so I ordered it and it was honestly better than I expected. I never would have tried it if it wasn’t for word of mouth marketing because it was on the menu. Restaurants are in the business of selling food. It’s their job to make items on their menu sound appealing. Just like those Michelin star restaurants including ingredients I’ve never heard of, let alone can’t pronounce. I could never find that ingredient at my local store. Maybe I should try it. Based on your tone it sounds like you’ve never tried “imitation meat” as you describe it but i can see why people are hyping it. I eat plenty of meat but have started buying beyond meat patties at the store every now and then. It’s magnitudes better than your run-of-the-mill black bean veggie burger.

saurik 7y ago
Honestly, that branding for actual meat also makes me feel like I am getting a commodity product: I start to associate the food item together with all of the other food items I get which are "this same thing with different condiments" as opposed to "this unique meal that is notable for being from this restaurant". I actually really like the Impossible Burger, but it now feels like I am ordering the exact same product from every single restaurant... and this is not at all helped by how, to maintain the strength of their brand, they insist on certain kinds of preparations of their patties.
Vinnl 7y ago
> I eat plenty of meat but have started buying beyond meat patties at the store every now and then. Pretty off-topic, but a question: after seeing so many mentions on HN, I was pretty interested to give it a try after seeing Beyond Burgers appear in my Dutch grocery store recently. One thing that struck me, though, was that they were twice as expensive as the A brand plant-based burgers we already had, and over three times as expensive as the cheap ones. How expensive are they in the US? (i.e. are they just this expensive because they're from outside the EU?)

p1necone 7y ago

Agreed, all other things being equal - a restaurant serving me a product that someone else made, rather than something they created from ingredients is strictly worse. Things like beer are a bit more understandable - not every restaurant can have a brewery out the back. (although the ones that do are pretty nice)

nonrecursive 7y ago

Are you a vegetarian? I am! And as a vegetarian, I can tell you that I love it when restaurants sell Impossible Burgers. First, I don't cook (unless you count making a bowl of cereal cooking), so it's not like I'm going to make it for myself. Second, restaurant dining is about more than just calorie intake - sometimes I want to go to a restaurant, and as a vegetarian I appreciate when they have tasty things for me to eat. Third, if I'm going to a restaurant as part of a larger social gathering, or as a company outing or whatever - in other words, if I'm at a restaurant when I would not have otherwise chosen to (which I'm sure doesn't happen to just me!), then I appreciate it when there are options for me.

randomsearch 7y ago
I’d add to that: big brands make vegetarianism more palatable to everyone. If I’m stuck ordering a salad at a bad restaurant, I’m more likely to be mocked by meat eaters than if the restaurant sells good burgers (esp in the US). When I was in the states recently and the restaurant had an impossible burger, instead of people saying “why are you vegetarian? Where do you get your protein?” people said “oh, the impossible burger, yeah I tried that recently and really liked it”. It was a very pleasant change.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  > I’m more likely to be mocked by meat eaters Sounds like you need better friends.
  - randomsearch 7y ago
    I didn't say they were friends!

jogjayr 7y ago

> I think these products belong in a grocery or convenience store, not a dining establishment I heard somewhere that the fake burger companies sold to restaurants first because the parameters for cooking it well are much narrower than a regular burger (for now). They didn't want to ruin their products' reputation because of mistakes people made cooking the burgers at home, whereas restaurants will probably do a better job.

ilikehurdles 7y ago
You're probably right, and I do expect at some point to see Impossible on grocery store shelves. I tried it in a restaurant once and liked it, and wouldn't mind having it as a quick option at home, but until it shows up in the freezer section I'll probably stick with the stuff the restaurant makes from scratch.

looeee 7y ago

> While I have no urge to eat food for its ability to imitate meat (so I’m not the target audience anyway) That's a very short sighted view. This isn't about vegetarianism. It's about the environmental crisis, and the overfishing crisis, that we're currently experiencing at a global level. I don't care whether you are vegetarian or not, we are all in the target market for solutions to these problems. That's what replacement meat and fish are about.

vibrato 7y ago
I disagree, and I’m worried that this view will prevent adequate nutrition for children more and more frequently (meatless Monday etc). The next step is then preventing adequate nutrition for myself from special taxes or regulations on meat.
- ido 7y ago
  Your children will survive not eating meat one day of the week - in fact it's probably beneficial to only eat meat every other day or less (not by eating processed food like beyond/impossible etc just eating "normal" vegetarian meals).
  - mcv 7y ago
    I know a lot of people who eat meat twice a week. That seems like a very good balance.
  - vibrato 7y ago
    They would also survive a beating one day per week. I would prefer that their life is optimized for the good.
- mattste 7y ago
  If you believe that a vegan or vegetarian diet can't supply adequate nutrition, then your information is outdated. Source: my wife who is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist.

toper-centage 7y ago

On the other hand, beyond meat has quickly become a household name and the trademark is losing meaning quickly.

rb666 7y ago

Great, you have no urge to be a part of saving our planet, good for you, I'm sure you're old and wealthy enough to think this way. But there's already a gazillion ways to do as you do, let's support the small efforts being made to offer alternatives.

shusson 7y ago
How exactly are any of the `beyond` foods saving the planet? Do you know how much waste/CO2 they produce?
ilikehurdles 7y ago
Not wanting to order pre-packaged frozen meals when I go out to eat is different from not eating vegetarian at all, for what it's worth. Why would me paying extra for an Impossible brand name in a restaurant save the planet more than ordering a vegetarian meal prepared locally from local seasonal ingredients? Are you saying I should go out of my way to find a Burger King that serves Impossible burgers in order to maximize my saving the planet? The environmental cost of shipping that product all over the country isn't free.
- natrik 7y ago
  Eating vegetarian isn't entirely based on saving the planet/environmental issues. Think of it this way, if we could make it so eating meat had 0 environmental impact and eating vegetarian/vegan had 0 environmental impact would there still be major reasons to be vegetarian/vegan? I'd say the main reasons for being vegetarian include not wanting to contribute to raising animals just to slaughter them, or eating other "living" beings and objecting to the conditions in which they are raised before they are slaughtered. Paying extra for the Impossible brand name is mainly for those wanting to switch from meat yet still yearning for the texture/taste of meat. A brand like Impossible foods ensuring consistency across restaurants would contribute to people choosing to switch from meat knowing they are getting a product they have had (and enjoyed?) before.
  - ilikehurdles 7y ago

cnda 7y ago

I think "Ycombinator" funds one of these. It is amusing that the U.S. discovers soy etc. burgers 20 years late. The only tasty vegetarian food is Indian and Italian anyway.

empath75 7y ago

I’ve got news for you — a significant portion of food you get from chain restaurants is from Sysco, a lot of it prepackaged.