Interview with Tim Dale

Transcript

[Sheldon Young]
Welcome to No Footprints, a podcast brought to you by Alfa Laval. I am Sheldon Young.

[Jason Moreau]
And I am Jason Moreau.

[Sheldon Young]
We’re here to talk about impact and to share the efforts and people behind making sustainability real. Yes, we are.

[Jason Moreau]
All day, every day.

[Sheldon Young]
Another great day. Another day in the neighborhood. I mean, I think summer is here in full swing, Jason.

You know, it’s been a hot one in Richmond for the most part. The last couple of days have been a little bit more brief, but I’ll tell you, it’s been an elevated temperature summer here. I’m just going to say that, put it that way, and it certainly feels rough.

[Jason Moreau]
Yeah, I’m just glad that there’s been a few different like movies that have come out, which is, you know, it’s at least something to do when it’s too hot to be outside and working in the yard or whatever I normally do in the summer. So yeah, definitely. I’ve definitely been going to the movies more than I have in the recent past.

[Sheldon Young]
What’s the, without getting into a movie discussion, what’s the best thing you’ve seen recently?

[Jason Moreau]
Oh, uh, well I haven’t seen the Odyssey yet. That’s this. Okay.

[Sheldon Young]
That’s this weekend. That’s on the docket. Okay.

[Jason Moreau]
That’s on the docket, but I would say of the summer movies, I still have to give it to Project Hail Mary.

[Sheldon Young]
Oh yeah. Yeah. That was a good one.

I haven’t seen too many others. I’ve seen a couple of them, but that was a definitely a great one. So it’s definitely on, on my recommended list as well, uh, for sure.

So let’s talk sustainability stories coming from out of nowhere, from the man, out of nowhere. It’s like Project Hail Mary.

[Jason Moreau]
Project Hail Mary.

[Sheldon Young]
Project Hail Mary Sheldon sustainability edition. Uh, okay. From the man that brought you delivery of everything and anything to your door to sustainable protein acceleration, the Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein has launched an accelerator in, uh, in, in Europe, in London.

Uh, yeah, it’s like a 12 month, a hundred thousand dollar kind of no equity free funding for the people that are in it to get that get in. I think, uh, applications are due sometime in August, but it’s really to kind of accelerate and take a concept of a, you know, kind of sustainable protein and you’ll take it from idea to concept and that kind of lab stage, pilot stage and get it to production stage quickly. That’s their goal.

Um, again, what happened? Yeah. What happens is a lot of things can, uh, can kind of get in that way of when you have a great idea, like how do you get the evidence for it so you can get venture funding?

How do you get the data on all the things you need? That’s usually the hard part. And so this is kind of greasing those skids a little bit and, and giving exposure so they can quickly validate, get documented the information they need.

And it’s also giving them access to some investors that can say, okay, based on that, we, here’s some money, let’s rock and roll. Right. So awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. There’s great stuff in, you know, uh, happening in, in the protein space.

You know, if you haven’t seen good food Institute, definitely check them out. They, they have a lot of great information out there. I just happened to see this story as a, as a recent development, I’m like, okay, let’s talk about this and, and, uh, get in front of folks and say, look, if you’ve got a great idea and looking for an accelerator, particularly if you’re in the, in the London area, uh, give it a check.

I mean, give it a checkout and apply, uh, my, by all means, try to get, let’s get more great ideas on the table.

[Jason Moreau]
Absolutely. Um, mine is a news item as well. Recent news item, I think within the last month or two and, uh, related to the topic of, uh, balanced proteins, but sustainable proteins, and it relates to a past guest of our program.

Who’s that? Yes. Yes.

Number one, Mr. Paul Shapiro.

[Sheldon Young]
Yes. I saw this story, but please tell us more.

[Jason Moreau]
So, uh, like I say, I think it was just within the last month or two, they rebranded the company. So yeah, the better meat company is now BMC ingredients. And um, uh, what I thought was great, uh, I have a quote here from Paul and Paul is great at like metaphor and analogy.

So he did it in the press release too. So I’ll just read it. He says, yeah, Paul compares the shift to discovering new uses for an agri to an agricultural crop.

And so the quote is imagine you were the first person to start growing wheat and you think you’ve got a bread company, but then you realize that we can also make pasta and pancakes and so many more foods. That’s what happened with rise of mycelium. So they are still obviously using the micro protein in, uh, in meat and, you know, balanced protein, but they’re going to be using it in bakery goods and as, um, protein powder.

And so like they found more and more uses for it and, uh, couldn’t be more happy that, you know, Paul’s company now BMC ingredients continues to, to build and thrive. And it’s almost the bookend to the story you did, right. The people who were in pilot stage figuring out how to scale.

And Paul is kind of like right there. Like he’s, he’s right there at that industrial threshold in terms of the amount of a protein that they’re producing. So I was super excited to see that.

And it was a really cool to know like, oh, yeah, that’s number one.

[Sheldon Young]
I know him.

[Jason Moreau]
Waves. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Sheldon Young]
It is very fun. I mean, it’s really interesting because I did see, I saw the article come through on LinkedIn as well, but I didn’t get a chance to really read it. So I’m like, I mean, I knew it was made sense.

Oh yeah. It makes sense. Better.

BMCs and better meat company. We’re more than me. It’s kind of what they’re saying.

Totally. That’s a really great. You think with all the different, this protein craze we’re kind of in right now, right?

[Jason Moreau]
Yeah.

[Sheldon Young]
I think that’s really interesting because it creates so many more avenues. People putting protein in literally everything. Like I saw protein ice cream and like I’ve seen all kinds of stuff that just adding protein.

And again, the sources of protein, you have numerous ones, but this could be a really interesting one, particularly for someone that’s like vegan or whatever, right? It’s really interesting, you know, pathway to go. And so I think, I think it says a lot, it’s a really smart pivot now.

[Jason Moreau]
And it’s, it’s it’s still a whole food, so it’s still going in as the full, like, you know, mycelium protein, which means it’s not just the protein, it’s the fiber and it’s all of the other sort of benefits of that whole food. So yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s really smart and yeah, I was super excited to see that come across the wire as well.

[Sheldon Young]
Really cool. Great story. That’s a, that’s a fun little, little nugget, chicken nugget, non-chicken nugget.

[Jason Moreau]
Chicken nugget plus.

[Sheldon Young]
Chicken nugget plus. Right. Yeah.

We’ll talk about that. Our guest today, again, speaking of past guests, this guest today came through another guest. One of those ones that a former guest posted something on LinkedIn, had a couple of interesting people.

We’re going to be interviewing both of them actually. And so really connected with, with, with Tim via, via that, and it’s a great story. I’m like, let’s talk balanced protein.

I think this is really interesting. It’s the, the, you’re going to love the story around how we get to the name balanced protein. To me, that was one of the fascinating parts of the interview.

We’ll recap on that. But I think, you know, having someone like this, that’s been in this world and from a marketing perspective, now in this world from a little slightly different perspective with a consortium, he’s going to talk about really focused around bringing that world of traditional and alternative proteins together, which I think is, is a great way you would kind of, how do you move the needle? Move us forward.

You do it through pathways of, of, of mutual benefit. Right. Absolutely.

And this is, he has a great job. And I, for one, I’m very excited to “meet” him. Oh, I did it Jason, I landed the plane, terrible pun, plane landed.

[Jason Moreau]
In the transcript for this episode, I’ll put the “meat” in quotes.

[Sheldon Young]
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

[Jason Moreau]
Yep. No problem.

[Sheldon Young]
Without further ado, let’s go talk to Tim.

[Jason Moreau]
Let’s do it.

[Sheldon Young]
Today’s guest on No Footprints is Tim Dale. Tim works at the intersection of sustainability and consumer behavior, which we know can be a bit tricky. In his role as category innovation director of balanced proteins for food system innovations in San Francisco, he works to help the meat industry evolve in ways that are practical, profitable, and grounded in how people actually eat.

Drawing from experience at places like Impossible Foods and Prime Roots, he seeks to understand this evolving and sometimes elusive market of balanced proteins and bring more to the world in his own quest to help make sustainability real. It’s my pleasure to welcome Tim to No Footprints.

[Tim Dale]
Thank you so much for having me Sheldon and Jason.

[Sheldon Young]
So happy to have you here. Yeah. So as we always like to kick off with like, you know, give us kind of like your journey, your world to, I say, sustainable meat and proteins.

Tell us how you got there.

[Tim Dale]
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

So I started my career in advertising. I was working at different media agencies in Chicago and in San Francisco and doing that for a number of years. And eventually I was starting to feel like the work I was doing was not necessarily fitting with my values.

It wasn’t really contributing to a world that I wanted to see out there. Not that it was not that it was bad or, you know, I was advertising for for evil corporations, but it just felt like it was a time of life where I wanted to do something, put something out in the world that felt like it was pushing it in the right direction. And so that was also the time where I think sustainability, education, what I was learning more about it, I was understanding where things were like, what was driving climate change more and more.

And I’m originally from St. Louis, Missouri.

[Sheldon Young]
So I was just there, actually. Yeah.

[Tim Dale]
Oh, really? Nice. Great town.

And like, probably a little hot at this point in time. But I was back home in twenty nineteen and the Impossible Whopper was actually first trialed in St. Louis and all the Burger Kings there. So at that point, you know, the hype was already out there about the burger that bleeds and everything.

So I stopped by a Burger King to try it out for the first time. And I took a bite and I just felt like. This is the future, you know.

And as a consumer marketer, I felt like this was an area where I could contribute my professional skills to actually building towards a vision of something that I believe in. So luckily, later that year, I was able to land a job at Impossible Foods on their marketing team where I joined them on the.

[Sheldon Young]
That’s quite the manifestation there, right? It’s like I took a bite and now I’m part of it. Right.

[Tim Dale]
I know. I know. Yeah.

Yeah. I was just kind of like following along, just kind of stalking Impossible after that to see if a role ever opened up. And yeah, one did.

So I joined their Consumer Insights team. And then was that Impossible for about four years, bopping around different roles on the marketing side. And then after Impossible, I decided to move over to Prime Roots, which is a plant based deli meat company.

It was based out of Berkeley, California, where I led their marketing team for a year. And after a year of startup work, I felt that I wanted to explore the nonprofit side of things to see if there was more of a systemic impact I could make on the entire category. So I reached out to some former Impossible colleagues who are now at the Good Food Institute to see what does life look like on that side of the world.

And they were actually the ones that introduced me to Food System Innovations. So I had some conversations with my current organization. And yeah, I stepped into that role about two years ago.

[Sheldon Young]
Fantastic. And so tell us, what is Food Systems Innovations? What do they do?

What’s their part in the ecosystem here?

[Tim Dale]
Yeah. So Food System Innovations is a philanthropic impact platform that’s investing towards a more sustainable food future, mainly around the transition to more sustainable protein options. So the philanthropic impact platform, what that means is that part of the organization is dedicated towards grant making.

So we will take a look at what’s going on in the landscape and find other nonprofits that are doing great work, doing really novel interventions to help move towards that more sustainable protein. And we’ll help accelerate that through grant making or other support that way. But then if we see a gap or something, a really strong idea that’s not necessarily being supported at the institutional level, we’ll take some of our philanthropic funding and actually stand up our own initiative that’s run by an in-house director.

So right now, I want to say we have… It’s growing. We’re definitely growing.

So I think we probably have about four initiatives. Don’t quote me on that. But I lead one of them, and we call that the Balanced Protein Consortium, which is working towards trying to support products and companies that are producing combinations of animal protein and other complementary.

[Sheldon Young]
So that’s what a balanced protein means. Okay. Yeah.

That was one of my questions. Yeah. To explain that a little bit.

So what are they mixing?

[Tim Dale]
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, maybe I’ll step back.

I’ll give you the definition of balanced proteins. So we consider a balanced protein, a meat, dairy, egg, seafood product that swaps at least 30% of the animal protein for ingredients made from plants, made from cultivated animal cells or microbial fermentation. So we see a full range of products and formats that are coming to market.

Some are using whole cut vegetables and mushrooms or surplus vegetables, upcycled vegetables. Others are using more, I would say, traditional plant-based meat products like pea protein or soy protein. Yeah.

And then others are using more like novel whole food ingredients or ones that with supply chains that are still maturing like jackfruit or mycelium increasingly as well.

[Sheldon Young]
Our first guest on No Footprints was Paul Shapiro of Better Meat Company and their rhizoprotein basically. And his whole thing, he was talking about it then, it’s like, you know, it’s really not this as a product standalone, it’s an ingredient that lowers, you know, increases the sustainability of the product that’s in and it improves the, like the health of it in a lot of ways. Yeah.

Yeah. So that was the interesting, I hadn’t really heard of that until we interviewed him.

[Tim Dale]
Yeah. Yeah. Mycelium is amazing.

Have you ever gotten a chance to just try the mycoprotein plain?

[Sheldon Young]
I’ve not. No. And I can’t say as I have.

[Jason Moreau]
I have. I mean, plain, it had seasoning. So it was like made almost like a, like a, like a taco as a substitute for like a ground beef taco.

And it was great texture, taste, everything. Yeah.

[Tim Dale]
I know it’s, it really feels like a super food where when you hear Paul and the Better Meat Co just list out the nutritional facts, it’s, it’s incredible in terms of the protein content, the fiber content, and then you eat it. And like, you know, if you have a plan, it feels like this could be a snack, put some, some seasoning on it. It’s like a Cheeto.

[Sheldon Young]
Interesting.

[Jason Moreau]
Yeah.

[Sheldon Young]
Oh, wow.

[Jason Moreau]
Um, I wanted to, uh, just for maybe the people who don’t follow the space as closely, what are some of the biggest sustainability challenges in, in the protein space? Maybe, you know, I guess what, what we now deem as like traditional protein where, where we’re trying to move towards more of a, of a balanced protein in terms of our buying options.

[Tim Dale]
Yeah. I’d say to summarize the entire sustainability problem in the protein space is that global demand continues to rise, but just the way that we’re producing animal proteins today is incredibly resource intensive. Um, and if you look at the range of protein options unequivocally, the biggest offender is cattle and beef.

So I think when you look at a kilogram of beef, uh, it produces the carbon dioxide equivalent of like a hundred, a hundred gram or a hundred kilograms, sorry, uh, compare that to poultry or fish and that’s 10 to 14 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of actual, you know, animal protein produced. So it’s just on another scale of where, where the actual issue lies. Uh, and yeah, like I mentioned, it’s because of just the production practices are just very resource intensive.

So I think in the U S, uh, about 30% of all the land is used for cattle grazing, which is kind of a staggering number. Um, when you think about how much water is needed to produce, uh, some, some cattle, it’s also like extremely staggering. It’s contributing to issues in the Colorado river.

Uh, and you know, most of that is for the feed that is required, um, to raise, raise cattle. Um, but it’s, yeah, it’s just very intense over there. Um, another, another stat that I like to quote is from Michael Grunwald’s book.

We are eating the earth where this is just agriculture more broadly, but, uh, we are losing a soccer field worth of tropical forest every six seconds for agriculture. Uh, just because that’s how, that’s how quickly the demand is rising and how, you know, our production practices sort of start to eat into the re our natural resources and biodiversity.

[Sheldon Young]
Wow. That’s, that’s powerful. That’s a powerful visual.

Right. And when you think about it, you know, look, the world needs food of all kinds. The challenge is demand, right?

And the, the, what is going to be able to supply that demand? We have to start being smarter. I mean, look, I eat meat.

I wouldn’t eat at my meat person. That, you know, I have no problem eating other things as well. We have to say, okay, look, that may not be there or that may be at a, at a, at a scale where demand is so high, the costs are going to go up quite a bit, right?

So we have to be smart and start thinking about what are the other levers that we have and you know, things like this. I mean, you have lots of people that struggle to make the transition. Maybe this balanced protein is, is a way to say, look, let’s, let’s take a step in the right direction, right?

If we can, you know, you said you were replacing 30%. Okay. That’s a third less meat.

And so the impact of that while either enhancing or not changing the flavor and taste profile of a product is pretty, pretty impressive, right? The, the impact that’s going to have, you still, of course it takes resources to produce that, that balanced part, but it’s a different level of resource. It’s not even, you know, from a land perspective and a scope perspective.

And a emissions perspective, I’m sure it’s, it’s, it’s a much different ball game and, and the impact has, it’s going to be pretty impressive. So it’s really a fascinating field. But I started to point a little bit challenges, part of it being human resistance to things and change.

But what are some of the challenges that, you know, this industry faces, particularly the, let’s, let’s focus on balanced protein. That’s where your world is, right? Sure.

[Tim Dale]
Yeah.

[Sheldon Young]
What, what are the barriers? What do you think needs to happen to get past those barriers?

[Tim Dale]
Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, the barriers that balanced proteins face are similar for the wider alternative protein category, as well as just sort of any novel food.

Generally the things that are necessary to be successful anywhere are performance. So it needs to taste good. These products need to taste good as table stakes and price.

They need to be affordable. You’re not going to opt to switch products from something, you know, that, you know, in love if it’s more expensive and then perceptions, I think they need to be they need to overcome some of that, like othering feeling that sometimes plagues novel, novel products needs to be perceived as familiar and they need to have clear and compelling value propositions to the customers or the consumers that they’re ultimately feeding. So I feel that balanced proteins are uniquely suited to overcome all three of those obstacles that we, in a way that we haven’t seen really with other sustainable protein options.

[Jason Moreau]
That was three out of the four classic marketing piece. Yeah. I love that.

I love that.

[Sheldon Young]
Oh boy. Here we go. He’s nerding out.

[Jason Moreau]
Well, I mean, the, the only one, I mean, it’s, but those are the three, but I mean, the one that wasn’t mentioned was the grocery store, right? Correct.

Yeah. Yeah. But that’ll, that follows if the product is good.

If the demand is there, the price is right. Yeah. Channels become much more open to like, yeah, we want to carry this.

We’re going to devote shelf space to it. Right.

[Tim Dale]
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think it’s a really strategic choice also for where these products are choosing to enter the market. The divide between retail and food service seems to be that, you know, early on and maybe some of the plant-based spaces, you see the split between impossible and beyond where beyond started in retail and possible started in food service. So I think, but eventually COVID happened and possible then really moved more heavily into the retail side.

And that’s a very visible area to monitor. It’s really trackable. And also you just see it when you’re out and about at your grocery store, you see the shelf space shrinking, you see the placement moving from the fresh to the frozen.

So I think there is this sort of narrative out there of how alternative proteins, plant-based proteins are, are struggling in retail specifically.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah.

[Tim Dale]
And I think that is, that’s true to a degree because of just how brutal the retail environment is in terms of margin, competition and everything. But we are seeing with balanced proteins that most of the success is happening in the food service side. Oh, say more about that.

Yeah. So it’s, it’s less demand side intervention almost. It’s like less consumer pull driven and it’s more of a supply side intervention where your large food service operators are seeing that their animal protein prices are volatile.

They are continuing to rise. It’s hard to plan a business around when you don’t know if there’s going to be a supply shack because of a drought or something like that.

[Sheldon Young]
Or there’s one right now, right? In Texas, they have the screw worm, right? I think that’s what it’s called.

That’s a big deal. And you know, it’s like, okay, that’s going to shock the system. What do you do about it?

What’s your alternative? What’s your lever?

[Tim Dale]
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, balanced proteins, it’s, it’s not just, you know, a sustainability intervention. It’s also just a supply chain resilience intervention where just like you would diversify your portfolio, if you are not reliant on one source of ingredients, then when those supply shocks hit or the prices on the animal side spike, your overall ingredient costs are going to be lower.

So we’re seeing, you know, large food service operators. Be very interested in this type of product and this category because it can deliver the same or better taste, it can have a strong nutritional story, but then it’s also helping preserve and control costs.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah, for sure, I can easily see that, particularly if you’re, you know, you’re a volume producer and, you know, you, you have a, you have an option and you can almost like turn the valve. How much of this substitute do we use? Right.

To a certain degree, right? I’m sure there’s a taste issue they have to think about and just experience issue. But I imagine it’s like, okay, well, wow.

Okay. It’s almost like commodity for them. Okay.

Look, we can utilize this commodity. We’re having supply shock here. All right.

Turn the, open the valve. Let’s put more of this in and it gives them flexibility as, as a, as a retailer, as someone that’s producing a product, that’s gotta be something that’s attractive. Right.

[Tim Dale]
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think the only, only thing that we want to avoid in that sort of scenario is the perception that this is an extender, or this is something that sort of takes away from your enjoyment or your meat eating experience.

And I think that’s really one of the larger flips that this category has made. Because the concept of mixing in ingredients into ground meat products is not new at all. This has been around forever.

But we’re seeing now that, I guess, with the animal ingredient costs and then with the ingredient innovations that you can mix in new or different ingredients and you’re actually improving the taste and the umami and the moisture retention of some of these ground products. So it’s delivering a better burger for cheaper price rather than, you know, stealing or cheating or sneaking in less meat to sort of like, you know, take away from the consumer experience. So, so one part, oh, sorry, Jason, jump in please.

[Jason Moreau]
Oh, sorry. Well, just maybe on that. Can you just talk a little bit about the research that you did to land on the term balanced protein?

Uh, I thought, I thought that was fascinating and, um, I would love to know what were some of the other terms or monikers tested that were just bottom three.

[Tim Dale]
Bottom three. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, that’s good.

Uh, yeah, so we, one of the first things, um, that was on my plate when I started this role is trying to determine what we should call it. The, there was a feeling that the common ways that people refer to this category today were not helpful in market. Um, so commonly you’ll hear about it discussed as either hybrid meat or hybrid protein or blended meat and blended protein.

And that was just more of like a gut feeling that we thought that these probably aren’t doing well. So we should test this, explore this, see if there’s a better way to talk about, uh, these products. Um, with the assumption being that, you know, how you talk about a category, even if it’s on the business to business side is eventually going to make its way down to consumers and change their opinion, or it’s going to impact the buyer’s perception of the product.

Um, you’re not, you’re not going to have as open of a chef or as open of a category manager. If they’re bringing in their own perceptions of sub quality kind of scientific meat. Um, so we went about and we tested over 40 different names, uh, for this category nomenclature using a variety of different methods.

We had interviews with just experts in the field, food historians, um, other market researchers, advertising executives, things like that, just to come up with a pool of options. Uh, then we did a series of, uh, quantitative studies where we were doing, um, uh, tests where we would, we would say, Hey, we are examining names for a new category of meats. Um, what do you think of this, this name here?

And then we’d give them a series of questions to examine it on appeal, trust, uh, descriptiveness, uh, purchase intent, all these things. We would then reveal that this category of meat is describing products that replace, you know, a significant percentage of the animal, um, ingredients for ingredients made from plants, et cetera, et cetera. And then ask them those same questions again to see if once they have full information, do their perceptions change or does it sort of even out?

Uh, we found that the names that score the highest on that first stage, they carry positive perceptions over into that second stage. So if you hear about the term balanced proteins, uh, and then you discover a little bit more about what that is, you still feel that positive perception that you, you carried with you in the beginning. And that carries over into purchase intent or likelihood to try, or just general appeal and taste perceptions.

Um, if you have a bad first impression or a bad gut reaction and you learn about it, it’s, yeah, it’s not going to help you. And you’re going to see a really low purchase intent. Uh, so bottom three names.

One of them was hybrid, which is, yeah, because it is the most common, uh, sound a little, I don’t know, like a science experiment. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Um, yeah, I think people are skeptical of things coming into their meat. You know, there’s a history of extenders and scandals, um, and hybrid sounds like that’s what it’s doing. It sounds like it’s mixing in a science experiment into your burger, which people don’t want.

Uh, so on the appeal and the taste, uh, I perceptions, I think it was down to like 15% or something like that. But for balanced proteins, it was, you know, in the seventies about how people felt about it in the beginning. So it was very significant.

Um, other bad ones.

[Sheldon Young]
Where did Frankenburger land?

[Tim Dale]
That’s what I’m yeah. What do we, I mean, after, when you come up with 40 names, some of them are pretty goofy.

[Jason Moreau]
Yeah.

[Tim Dale]
Yeah. Uh, so there was like Veat, like, oh gosh. Okay.

That’s like, yeah. I don’t know what is this? I don’t, I don’t know.

[Sheldon Young]
Like, is it like feet?

[Tim Dale]
Yeah. No, that’s a good question. I need to pull out the worst performers.

[Sheldon Young]
That’d be a fun LinkedIn post for you to say, you know, uh, the value of perception. Uh, so you mentioned this earlier, we didn’t dive into it yet. The, the balanced protein consortium is kind of the project you’re running there.

Um, first of all, can you just tell us what it is, what it involves and what are their goals?

[Tim Dale]
Sure. Yeah. So the balanced protein consortium is a coalition of food manufacturers, researchers and educators and civil society organizations that are all interested in seeing this category do well and accelerate.

Um, so we have a lot of some of the, uh, early adopters of these products or early manufacturers of these products, um, in this group that we come together and we, uh, raise collective challenges and try to help honestly guide me and our philanthropic efforts to understand where we can, uh, help lower the barriers of business and make these products more successful. Um, but through the balanced protein consortium, we produce research and guidebooks, so we help sort of understand what is the business case and how can operators or retailers more successfully introduce these products into their operations. Uh, and then I also do a fair amount of industry engagement or industry education.

So I’ll go to conferences. I will have a table at, in a food exhibition hall where we’re sampling products, we’re talking to manufacturers or retailers and, um, just sharing what we’ve learned and how these products can help them meet their own business needs or address some of these consumer issues that we see in the market.

[Sheldon Young]
Very interesting. Very interesting. So, um, for someone that’s entering this or interested in this industry and wants to be successful in, in, in driving sustainability and lowering the impact of, of, uh, the protein space, what are the three things that you think are, I say three, what are, what are some things that need to be true to, for this to be a winner, right?

To, to push through and improve the sustainability of the protein field. What do you think needs to happen to, for this to start to, instead of doing this, to do that?

[Tim Dale]
Yeah, I would go back to those three P’s again. So I think, you know, it’s incredible what we’ve seen in this category in terms of taste performance. Uh, the fact that we are seeing products that are achieving taste that is as good or better than the leading conventional products is a great sign, um, and really promising.

[Sheldon Young]
Are you allowed to say some of the, what the winners are? Some of the, some of the more. Ones that are starting to see great success that are in this blended character, because I’d be honest, I don’t know them.

[Tim Dale]
Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I believe you had Caroline Cotto on, on the show, um, in the past and she runs this program called Nectar, which is affiliated with food system innovations.

It’s one of the initiatives. Uh, they do a large scale blind taste test comparing different sustainable protein options to the leading conventional meat and dairy option.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah.

[Tim Dale]
Uh, they, they, in 2024, they did a study looking at a US based balanced protein products. Uh, so it was 22 products across eight different categories. Uh, and with Nectar’s methodology, they have three tiers of consumer acceptance.

The easiest bar to clear, uh, is called ready for mass adoption, which means that at least 50% of the respondents either preferred the sustainable option or couldn’t tell the difference between the two, um, that next bar up in the ladder is taste parody. So it’s a coin flip, whether or not, you know, the person’s going to like the sustainable option or the conventional option. And then that final, uh, bar is taste superiority, where it’s statistically likely if you just took a random, uh, taste tester and ask them which one you would prefer that they would pick the more sustainable option.

[Sheldon Young]
Okay.

[Tim Dale]
So in that study, there were four products that achieved taste parody or taste superiority. Okay. Um, it was the both burger fable food, uh, duo, and then Purdue chicken.

Okay. Okay. That’s good.

Okay.

[Sheldon Young]
So for me, that, that, that to me is a takeaway is I want to go see if I can find these products and try them myself. Cause frankly, it’s like, you know, I, it’s the, the tasting is a little bit important to me, right? And, and so I’m like, I definitely want to have a product that I feel like I’m not sacrificing.

And so I’m going to go, it’s one takeaway. So sorry to start a sidebar. And so I’m like, I really want to pull that one out because if it’s important, you know, that’s the bar, right?

[Tim Dale]
And so, all right.

[Sheldon Young]
So that was the first peep I’ll let you get back on your, on your.

[Tim Dale]
Yeah. And my point to that also is that, um, yeah. So it’s great that we are seeing products that are hitting taste parity or taste superiority, but the category at large is not there yet compared to conventional meat.

So, um, it, there is this effort and this feeling that, you know, if we, we can’t afford to release subpar products any longer, uh, that was an issue that we’ve seen with other categories. And then you, you know, it builds up a perception of the space. If you do try one, you go out of your way.

You maybe stretch your comfort zone and you try this new burger, this new chicken nugget, and then it’s not as good as the conventional, that’s just going to stick with you and make it that much harder for the next product. It might be better to actually convince you to opt in and try it.

[Sheldon Young]
Do these, do these companies that have won, I’d say this, uh, you know, this parity or better, do they have like an ad or like a, like some kind of stamp or some kind of like advertising they can do say, you know, as good or better per taste test or something like that, have they gone that route?

[Tim Dale]
Um, yeah. So the, so Nectar, they released the tasty awards, which are celebrating all these products. And with the tasty awards comes some marketing credentials that you can put on your website.

I’ve seen a few of them adopted on, you know, you’ll be shopping online and then you’ll click through. And all of a sudden the tasty award is there, which is very cool. Uh, but yeah, I mean, it is, it’s, it’s a big thing to try to convince consumers that like, well, how do you convince consumers that like, trust us, this tastes good.

[Sheldon Young]
Then you get it home and it tastes like you eat in the box. Right.

[Tim Dale]
Yeah.

[Sheldon Young]
That’s what you want to avoid. Cause again, it’s like, you can’t control that sometimes you’re, you’re taking a gamble the first time out.

[Tim Dale]
Mm hmm.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah.

[Tim Dale]
Um, yeah. So category wide, uh, taste perceptions need to improve. Price is also extremely important.

So we need to see the partnerships, the manufacturing capacity, uh, that would increase production and an effort to lower the prices, uh, that’s improving on the beef side of things because the bar to clear continues to get lower or like, you know, animal prices continue to raise. So, uh, it’s easier to provide products that are at par or actually driving that discount for consumers and for customers. So that’s good to see on beef specifically.

Um, and with that, I think, you know, now I’m starting to go off on tangents myself, uh, but we see, you know, we need industry buy-in we, we find that right now in this moment, because the category is still re-emerging, we’re still. Building out business cases and proof points for why these products should be adopted at large. Uh, where we are seeing growth is that’s being driven by an internal category champion.

So someone says that yes, sustainability is important to our organization. Um, or we need to find cost-saving solutions and we believe that this category can be a fix, can be a fit. Uh, and we will, we will take a risk.

We’ll, we’ll go on out on a limb and actually help de-risk this for the rest of the industry by doing it first. And, uh, if we’re lucky doing it in a public way where we can garner insights and share them more broadly.

[Sheldon Young]
Very good. Very good. Jason, any other questions from you?

If not, we can roll to the credits.

[Jason Moreau]
You can roll the credits. Although I did see a picture of the Both box, but not, I haven’t seen it in person. So I might need to do some shopping locally.

And I thought they did a great job on the packaging because it’s, it screams like it’s 50% beef, it’s 50% plant. Like it’s, there’s no mistaking it. So like, in terms of, uh, being a good, I guess, like category standard bearer, like I, it was like visually attractive.

It was the, the messaging was clear. I really liked it. So if I can find it, I’m definitely trying it.

[Tim Dale]
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, Both does a great job.

I also, I, I love telling the story of Purdue chicken plus, which I think has, is, I think it’s a recipe for how these products can succeed in the future. Um, because it is, it’s just talking about a specific consumer job to be done. It’s not necessarily saying what it is in a way, you know, it’s saying what it can do for you.

Um, the, what they advertise is that they sneak or, you know, it’s stealth health. They put in a third of a cup of vegetables into every serving or, um, so it’s speaking to the parents of picky eaters. Right.

That’s me.

[Sheldon Young]
I’m a picky eater. Jason knows this. Yeah.

[Jason Moreau]
Well, I mean, parents are basically like we, we subscribe to Disney plus we might as well get the chicken plus too, right?

[Sheldon Young]
Like we’re just a plus. I was like, that’s what we’re doing. Oh boy.

Very cool. Well, Tim, how can people learn more either about you yourself or the initiatives that you’re working on?

[Tim Dale]
Sure. Yeah. You can find all of our resources on balancedprotein.org.

[Sheldon Young]
Um, follow is it balanced or balanced with a D balanced with a D okay. Balance.

[Tim Dale]
.org. Balance proteins that arc, uh, follow us, the balanced protein consortium on LinkedIn, uh, or connect with me directly at Tim at balanced protein.org love it.

[Sheldon Young]
We thank you so much for joining us on the, on the No Footprints and, uh, appreciate your time.

[Tim Dale]
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[Sheldon Young]
Absolutely. Here we come. We’re back.

Never really left. Interesting. Balance of discussion, balanced protein discussion.

[Jason Moreau]
Correct. Correct. Yeah.

Tim was a really, really fun conversation. Yeah.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. I think, um, I like this path again. I was, I know it seems like sometimes you’re a cliche question.

It was told us how you got here. I’m always fascinated. I always learn a ton when people tell us how they got somewhere, because you kind of learn where the mind goes and you, you, you meet people that have just kind of found their way into the thing that they’re passionate about, because I think that’s something consistent with our guests.

We’re often finding people that have a true, true passion about what they’re doing. Uh, I don’t think there’s been one yet that I have certainly not found that about, and when you hear Tim’s story about, Hey, I just decided I wanted to do something more meaningful.

[Jason Moreau]
Well, and I think that’s really important, right? Because he kind of identified like, you know, am I doing the most with like my time and my talents? And he wasn’t, you know, unhappy, but he was like, I don’t know, maybe there’s something else out there.

And then he goes into a Burger King and has an Impossible burger. And he’s like, this is it, right? Like, this is, this is the horse I need to be riding now.

And so I just, I think it’s always cool when people identify those, we’ll call them areas of opportunity, but then kind of like they’re open to like, just kind of almost letting the universe speak to them a bit and go, how about this? And it’s, he’s like, yeah, maybe that.

[Sheldon Young]
And now he’s on that.

[Jason Moreau]
Yeah, exactly.

[Sheldon Young]
It was an interesting manifestation, right? Just kind of like, you know, advertising to working with one of them, uh, by basically saying, okay, I found something interesting. I’m in and that’s really good.

Yeah. I mean, I love that, that shift to a values oriented kind of career path. Um, for those that have that passion and it’s being able to find it is, is a true gift and, uh, I always like to, to hear their, their little, uh, journey.

Um, another statistic. I mean, I love, I love when I say I don’t love when I hear bad statistics, but I love when I hear statistics that people can relate to. Um, because it really kind of emphasizes the magnitude of the challenges that we have.

And the one he wrote down, he, he told us that we were losing a soccer field of tropical forest every six seconds for agriculture was kind of, uh, you know, and I’m like, okay, so let me think that through. It’s 10 per minute. That’s 600 per hour.

It’s 14,400 per day. Right. 5.2 million soccer fields of land a year.

[Jason Moreau]
Uh, that’s crazy, right? Yeah.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. I just said that, you know, again, I’m sure the numbers of a relative number and it’s maybe not every, that’s a lot of land. That’s just a lot of lands.

Let’s just understand that we’re losing that. Tropical forest to just to grow more food. And so that takes us back to our last episode of food waste.

Hey, if we could have the land area, the size of China back, maybe we wouldn’t have to be cutting down 5 million soccer fields of tropical forest to grow food.

[Jason Moreau]
Right.

[Sheldon Young]
Exactly. Just some food for thought for the lack of a better term. Right.

Oh yeah. But anyways, learning from him around this, the, uh, I don’t know what, where, what struck you during the conversation? most Jason?

[Jason Moreau]
I thought it was interesting that a lot of the, a lot of what, um, his organization has identified as it’s, it’s more of a supply side intervention and the demand side. And, um, I feel like that’s come up on a few different sort of past episodes, but it’s, it always strikes me every time because it’s like, again, when you’re looking at, well, how do we, how do we influence behavior? How do we, how do we sort of like make change happen?

You kind of go to like, who’s, who’s facing a more sort of like critical or painful situation in their current reality that that person or entity is more likely to let, yeah, let me try something new, right. What’s what I currently have isn’t working. And on the, on the supply side, and he specifically mentioned food service, they’re, they’re feeling a little bit more of a pinch or a pain, right?

Like as the, as like volatility and their pricing impacts, you know, them trying to have a good business model. Um, I think even use the term, uh, supply chain resilience, right? Like typically if you’re running a business, you don’t want to have, uh, some sort of critical input to your business only come from one vendor.

You want a few different vendors to sort of mitigate that risk of if one vendor is out or they go out of business or they jack up their prices. Right. So, um, I thought framing it in that way as business resilience, and it was specifically on the, um, the supply side was really interesting.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It was certainly is surprising to hear kind of the, or just surprising. I guess it’s interesting to kind of dive in and really look at the levers and drivers of this particular, uh, product that they’re trying to, to, to bring out there, this balanced protein. I love the, I love the, uh, the story of how they got to the answer, uh, of, of using that term.

Right. It’s totally just how branding matters. Right.

It’s, it’s, it’s interesting from the seats we sit in, it’s like, oh, hybrid, hybrid could sound interesting. I guess I’d be protein. People hate it.

Why do you hate that term? And I’m like, oh, I guess I can kind of see why. I guess I never thought of it.

It doesn’t bother me, but it’s just like some, there were certain words that, that trigger people. You know what I mean? Um, and so this seems like, how do you, from a topic that’s already has some pushback and, and I’m not gonna use the word controversy, it’s not really a fair word, but has some, some pushback.

How do you make it as low friction as possible to introduce it to someone? And like, it’s all about in the branding. It’s all about in, in how the words matter.

And so the fact that they’ve actually taken the time to understand and, and craft that a little bit to, to help the industry remove this, that even if that’s 5% of the friction, it’s 5% of the friction, how do you get rid of it? Right.

[Jason Moreau]
Right. And you can see how that would have been like the first label we put on this, right, because what do we want to call this? If it’s some percentage of traditional protein, some percentage of, you know, new alternative protein hybrid.

Okay. Where did that come from? Well, think about cars, right?

Like you have your typical like internal combustion engine, you have electric, but then you have hybrids where you have gas and battery. Right. And it’s like, for some reason, consumers accept that when it’s a machine.

Oh, there’s, there’s two energy sources hybrid. When it’s something I’m putting in my body and it’s food. It’s like what science experiment escaped the lab here, right?

Like it’s just the same word has a different connotation. And I mean, it was, I think he said the lowest performing options that they tested, you know, they were like 15% likely to buy, but you know, the blended was like 70%, 80%, I mean, it was orders of magnitude better in terms of like. The label or how you would describe this to somebody who, who hadn’t bought it yet and that they would still be likely to buy after tasting the product.

So yeah, fascinating.

[Sheldon Young]
It really was. I thought it was a super interesting conversation, but again, a very important one, right. And I love that he also shared some, we kind of asked him what products are kind of clear winners and stuff like that.

I certainly got myself a couple of answers to go check out. Um, I mean, for me, it’s like, I have to get my brain into the mode of going to look for this stuff now. Cause I think I get stuck in the, you know, I can, I kind of know what’s out there, at least from the past.

And, uh, you know, it’s, it’s just the product that I’ve always kind of gone to, um, but it’s not one I go to regularly. Right. I mean, as I said, I kind of, I do eat a fair bit of me.

I’m like, okay, maybe I need to start rethinking this. Or the product better. Are they different?

Hybrid hybrid. I use the word a product, a blended product like this, right. Is one that I think makes sense.

And I’m like, I’m like, okay, maybe I’ll adopt more of that. Maybe I can also get other people in my life to adopt that a little bit easier. Right.

Uh, you know, I have my passion around it, but okay. It’s probably easier lift for me than other people. It’s like, oh, if it’s actually kind of already get a lot of the stuff I like in it, maybe it’s going to taste a lot better.

[Jason Moreau]
And so I think it’s, yeah, I think it’s a lot of, it’s, it’s just, um, it’s habit though, right? Because it is, you know, going to the grocery store is a chore. And so you tend to sort of like, just turn off a bit of your brain and you kind of like run the, run the store, you know, map on autopilot.

You’re like, yep. So like, if you’re intentionally wanting to buy something new sample, something new sample, a balanced protein burger, or he mentioned, I think the, uh, the Tyson’s chicken plus, right. Like you kind of need to like go into the store with like, that’s the intent.

Like I’m, I’m going in there to, to find these so I can, I can actually give them a try.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah.

Fun stuff. I love those conversations. And so, all right.

So if you want to learn a little bit more about, uh, the world of balanced protein and Tim’s world, you can reach out to him directly is an email was he gave was Tim at balancedprotein.org. The balancedprotein.org website has some great information on it. Recommend you check it out, learn something about what they’re doing over there and try to support it any way you can, and, uh, get yourself educated on this stuff.

I think, um, again, we, the way we change the world and change the, um, impact we have is one step at a time. And every one of us can make that step. At least to give it, at least give it a try.

That’s, that’s all we can ask, right?

[Jason Moreau]
Who doesn’t like trying new food? I like trying to eat.

[Sheldon Young]
I don’t usually like trying.

[Jason Moreau]
No, I knew when I, as soon as I started asking that question, I’m like, I’m looking at one person. That’s correct.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah.

[Jason Moreau]
You’re let me try it at least once. And that’s all you, that’s all you got to do. Yeah.

[Sheldon Young]
Okay. Let’s wrap this thing up. If you’d like this podcast, please follow, like share, subscribe.

Tell everyone, you know, cause this stuff really matters to the success of our show. Uh, also if you want to, you can check out nofootprintspodcast.com. If you have an idea for a topic or a guest, reach out to us at nofootprints.podcast@alfalaval.com.

And with that, we’d like to say goodbye and we’ll see you next time.

[Jason Moreau]
Bye everybody.

[Sheldon Young]
Our guests come from many industries and companies, as we’re talking about how the world makes sustainability real.

Our company Alfa Laval is a global supplier of process solutions. So it’s very possible that the organizations our guests are with may use Alfa Laval or even our competitors’ products. This does not mean that we, the hosts or Alfa Laval are endorsing any of the companies, guests, or the specific ideas that we discuss.