Beyond Meat has appointed an interim chief transformation officer from consultancy AlixPartners to “aggressively” reduce operating costs, amid plummeting revenues and continued losses.
John Boken, managing director of consulting firm AlixPartners’ turnaround and restructuring department, is charged with strengthening the balance sheet at the struggling meat alternatives business.
Second quarter results at the group showed revenues of $75m in the three months to 28 June 2025, down 19.6% year on year. Volumes were down 18.9% overall, with US retail volumes falling nearly a quarter (24.2%) as consumers’ appetite for artificial meat faltered amid high costs and trends toward natural foods.
Despite a gross profit of $8.6m, operational losses came in at $38.8m, representing an operating margin of –51.8%. Operating losses now total $95m for the year to date.
Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown said the team was “disappointed” in the results, which reflected weak demand in US retail channels and falling demand in international foodservice markets.
“We are responding by accelerating our transformation activities, including more rapidly and aggressively reducing our operating expenses to fit anticipated near-term revenues; prioritising increased distribution of our core product lines; and investing in margin expansion initiatives across these core products,” Brown said.
Appointing Boken on 6 August, Beyond Meat management approved a plan the same day to make 44 employees redundant, cutting the company’s overall workforce by 6% and saving $5m-$6m in cash over the next 12 months.
The cost-cutting action followed the 2024 closure of Beyond Meat’s Chinese operations and two prior rounds of redundancy in late 2023 and early 2025.
Bernstein analyst Alexia Howard said it was hard to see how the company could bounce back, given consumers’ newfound enthusiasm for meats.
“There seems to be some resignation that they will simply need to ride out the storm of weak category dynamics as a renewed consumer interest in animal protein plays out,” Howard said.
“This, in turn, is attributed to misinformation about the relative merits of animal meat vs. plant-based options, as well as the relatively high price of their own plant-based proteins compared to animal alternatives.”
She added it seemed a “stretch” for management to downsize operational costs to fit an imagined, “stabilised” level of revenue, especially with products relegated to low-traffic frozen vegetable aisles.
A looming £1bn in debt maturity due in 2027 has only added further pressure on management, which was “taking quite some time to navigate”, Howard said.
Beyond Meat turned over $326m in 2024, down consecutively on $343m in 2023 and $419m in 2022. Its share price has fallen 98% over the past five years.
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