Dive Brief:
- For the first time ever, cultivated mat products will be sold at retail in Singapore. Alameda, California-based Good Meat has partnered with premium grocer Huber’s Butchery to sell its new product, Good Meat 3.
- The new offering uses just 3% of cultivated chicken, combined with plant proteins. The company said this allowed them to lower production costs and offer the product at a competitive price, which has been one of the main challenges for scaling the industry.
- The retail partnership comes as the cultivated meat industry has been facing obstacles in the U.S. This month, both Alabama and Florida passed bills banning the sale of the novelty product as a means to defend the cattle industry.
Dive Insight:
Since Good Meat along with Upside Foods were granted regulatory approval from the USDA and FDA in July 2023, the products have been slow to hit grocery store shelves.
Consumer education, along with price, have been hurdles for the industry to scale. Up until a few months ago, both Upside Foods’ and Good Meats’ cultivated products were available in the food service space — Upside’s cultivated chicken at Bar Crenn in San Francisco, and Good Meat chicken at one of José Andrés’s restaurants in Washington.
Neither restaurants serve the products any longer.
Good Meat has been producing and selling its chicken in Singapore in fine dining establishments, food delivery apps, hawker stalls, and at the Bistro of Huber’s Butchery. But this new step is the first time the cultivated meat will be available for customers to buy and prepare at home.
“Tasting is believing,” Good Meat said in a statement, and Huber’s Butchery’s executive director Andre Huber said that “having the latest version of GOOD Meat 3 cultivated chicken available for retail is another step in this journey to make cultivated meat available to a bigger audience.”
“This year, we will sell more servings of cultivated chicken than have been sold in any year prior. At the same time, we know there is much more work to be done to prove that cultivated meat can be made at large scale, and we remain focused on that objective,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder of Eat Just, the parent company of Good Meat.
This Spring two states in the US have banned the sale of cultivated meat. Alabama and Florida banned products made from animal cells, playing into claims the product is a threat to livestock farming.
“The bans are disappointing, but they’re a distraction from our primary focus right now, which is commercialization. We’re currently focused on scale and bringing our next-generation products to market,” said Sean Edgett, chief legal officer at Upside Foods, in a statement sent to Food Dive.
Upside’s new products include ground-textured cultivated meat products, such as chicken sausages, sandwiches, and dumplings, Edgett said. But the process for producing these products is still undergoing regulatory review.
