Beef, poultry, and pork have long been at the center of dinner plates, and global demand for meats is rising. Despite a boom in plant-based protein alternatives that led Jonathan Safran Foer to opine in the New York Times, “the end of meat is here” in 2020, animal meat sales in the United States hit a record $104.6 billion in 2024 while purchases of soy burgers and the like fell 5 percent. Part of the problem for the plant-based sector is price. The alternatives to meat have always been more expensive, and today’s dizzying food inflation means many grocery shoppers are reaching for what’s cheaper and more familiar. The bigger concern, though, is consumer disappointment: Buyers just haven’t felt that imitations live up to the real thing.
The sector has a “history of broken promises and disappointed expectations,” says Jan Wilmking (MBA 2010). He and other entrepreneurs view those consumer complaints as a challenge.
After a stint at McKinsey and six years in e-commerce at Zalando, Wilmking cofounded Project Eaden in 2022. Based in Berlin, Germany, the company adapted technology from the textile industry to create realistic plant-based cold cuts. Just as cotton is spun into yarn that is woven to make fabric, Project Eaden spins protein from wheat, peas, and fava beans into fibers that are compounded into analogs that can pass for the real meat. “Oftentimes, there is a very artificial off-taste and off-smell with meat alternatives,” Wilmking says. “With our technology, we get a more neutral base flavor. We can then very subtly paint aroma on top. We don’t have to mask anything.”
The company’s Lekka brand deli ham hit European grocery shelves in April 2025. (The name is inspired by the Danish lækker, which means “delicious.”) The key to consumer acceptance of products like theirs is what Wilmking refers to as the “yummy formula”: look, scent, taste, and chew. “If you go through that formula yourself with the existing meat alternatives, how many actually come up with a net positive?” he asks. The goal, he says, isn’t to create something that’s good by plant-based food standards: “The goal is good, period.”
While Wilmking is courting everyday grocery shoppers, Pappudu Sriram (MBA 2001) is aiming to make meat-free restaurant dining more ubiquitous. She is the CEO and cofounder of [MOCK], which sells direct to the United Kingdom’s hospitality sector and restaurants; chefs can replace conventional meat in their dishes with the company’s plant-based lamb and chicken. [MOCK] combines some traditional manufacturing technologies with proprietary techniques to create products that can be frozen, defrosted, marinated, and prepared in a variety of ways.
[MOCK]’s partner chefs, who represent global cuisines from East and South Asian to European and Mexican, can sauté, bake, braise, grill, or pressure-cook the products. “Very few alternative proteins have the molecular structure and the robustness to handle those cooking techniques. And very few of them can absorb flavor like ours can,” Sriram says.
Like Wilmking, Sriram sees plenty of room for improvement in the market: “In the UK, the majority of people say they’re willing to eat less meat, as long as the option is compelling.” Even Americans, who lag behind Brits and other Europeans in embracing plant-based diets, are game. A recent Good Food Institute survey in the United States found that more than one-third of people who try meat mimickers actually crave a meal that tastes, cuts, and chews “exactly like conventional meat.”
By impressing first-time buyers and converting them into lifelong customers, Wilmking says he thinks the sector can recover from the recent dip and surpass the heady sales of 2020. Even the most pessimistic outlook for the global meat alternative market is $250 billion by 2050. Sunnier projections run to $1 trillion.
In the long term, a cultural shift will be key to meat substitutes’ staying power, akin to the move from gas-powered to electric cars. “You need to get people to really change their behavior, not just do it as a fad,” Sriram says. In Germany, Wilmking pins his hopes on Generation Z’s embrace of plant-based eating. “Many are earning money and building families,” he says. “There will be a tipping point, most likely in the next decade or two.”
Six months out from launch, Project Eaden’s Lekka deli meats are sold in more than 4,000 grocery stores across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Sriram says [MOCK] has tripled its independent UK restaurant customers in the last few years, and the company is on track for double-digit growth year on year. She and Wilmking both see the American market as an opportunity for plant-based meat sales, but because exporting their brands from overseas manufacturers wouldn’t make financial sense, such a move would likely come in the form of partnerships.
Food prices will continue to be a concern. Today, Lekka is competitive with premium deli meats at about $6 per half pound, and Sriram says [MOCK] pricing is level with high- quality organic lamb and chicken.
But the way forward is a focus on the senses, Sriram says: “We will have done our job if people are just enjoying the food and saying, ‘Wow, this is really tasty,’ and not even thinking about the fact that this is fake meat.”