Morning Folks,

This week, I want to dig into a topic that keeps coming up as we get yet another round of post-mortems on plant-based meat (including saying bye to meat-free restaurant Clover Food Lab): the idea that the plant-based meat category has lessons to learn from plant-based milk.

On the surface, that sounds neat. Plant-based milk is often held up as the great success story of the wider plant-based category—at its peak, it accounted for around 15% of US milk sales (and 41% of total sales in the natural category). Brands like Oatly showed that when you combine a genuinely good product with a clear use case — in their case, climate plus barista culture — you can build real traction. But the comparison is largely a mis-equivalence. Plant-based milk and plant-based meat are solving fundamentally different problems.

Plant-based milk is, first and foremost, a replacement. For many people, it exists because of a health/medical need: they are lactose intolerant, allergic to dairy proteins, or simply can’t comfortably consume conventional milk. That creates a much clearer and more urgent reason to switch. In that context, plant milk is not just a lifestyle choice; it’s a practical necessity, whether the plant-based milk substitute that’s available is an entirely equivalent replacement or not. It’s true that the category has improved enormously with genuinely excellent, tasty, high-performance product ranges from folks like Califia, Silk and Alpro. But even if it hadn’t, consumers who can’t digest animal milk would still make do with whatever dairy-free alternatives were on the shelf.

Meat is different. Meat carries a different kind of meaning on the (center of the) plate. It is tied to status, habit, identity, and tradition in ways milk simply is not. And crucially, most people do not experience meat as something they are physically unable to consume. They may be told to eat less of it. They may be persuaded to think differently about it. But they are not, in the vast majority of cases, being forced to find an alternative because their body cannot tolerate it.

That is the real difference. If a consumer chooses to eat less meat, they are much more likely to see the choice as optional. Further, their making that choice does not automatically mean they want to switch to plant-based meat alternatives. They may just reduce portions, eat it less often, or choose something else entirely. They can swap it out sometimes, but they are not usually starting from a position of necessity. That makes the plant-based meat challenge much harder.

Plant-based milk also wins because it shows up in high-frequency, habitual moments — coffee, cereal, tea, smoothies. Those are everyday touchpoints where substitution feels natural. Meat is different. It is more loaded, more symbolic, and more often part of a deliberate meal decision.

Plant-based milk’s success is not about animals or the climate. It’s about health, and the fact that the category solves a real, everyday problem for a broad audience. That audience is much wider than the core vegan market that plant-based meat still tends to speak to. The plant-based meat industry has to be careful not to overlearn from plant-based milk. The categories are related, but the consumer logic is not the same. And if we want to understand why one scaled more easily than the other, we need to be honest about that difference.

-Sonalie

 💡 Only on Green Queen

🧀 Exclusive: Formo Cleared to Sell Cow-Free Casein in US After Ending Koji Protein Cheese Run
Germany’s Formo has obtained self-affirmed GRAS status for its precision-fermented casein protein in the US and established a partnership to commercialise the ingredient.

🌱 Industry Insider: How HappyVore Overtook Nestlé to Become France’s Best-Selling Plant-Based Meat Brand
HappyVore is now the top-selling plant-based meat brand in France, surpassing Nestlé’s Garden Gourmet. Its co-founder and CEO, Guillaume Dubois, explains how it got here.

📚 Book Excerpt: Agriculture Risks Erasing ‘Generations of Knowledge’ Across Central Asia
Ryan Huling is a senior writer at the Good Food Institute Asia Pacific and the author of the new book The Hidden Nations of Animals, from which this guest essay was adapted.

 ✅ Must-Read Headlines

💶 The Proscale project has received €8.5 million in funding, most of it from the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking, to scale up single-cell proteins using food industry waste and continuous fermentation.
💡The initiative has received a STEP Seal award from the European Commission, a rare honour for biotech projects that recognises high-quality innovation aligned with the EU’s economic and climate goals.

🍺 Protein Industries Canada has invested in a new project to upcycle beer industry waste into high-value ingredients, including sustainable proteins, fibres, and cocoa extenders.
💡“This project is a strong example of how Canada can make more food here, creating more value from the crops and co-products we already produce,” said Protein Industries Canada CEO Tyler Groeneveld.

🏭 UK biotech Sun Bear Biofuture has completed the first run of its yeast-derived cocoa butter alternative in a €25,000 custom-built pilot plant which cost less than 10% of the industry standard.
💡The company’s low-capex approach will enable it to expand production and develop a range of future-friendly lipids, including a palm-oil substitute.

👩🏻‍🌾 RespectFarms has joined forces with the South Holland province to launch the first Cell Farmers Symposium, highlighting how the cultivated meat industry can help farmers.
💡Through the initiative, RespectFarms aims to strengthen the dialogue among science, agriculture, industry and regional innovation ecosystems regarding future foods.

 ✅ Mergers, Acquisitions & Collaborations

🇸🇪 Swedish vegan food distributor Kale Foods, owned by Kale United, has acquired the Färsodlarna brand of plant-based meat from investment company Novax.
💡Kale United owns a range of plant-based brands in Sweden, including Lily & Hanna’s, Astrid & Aporna, and VegMe, and this acquisition will further consolidate its foothold in the country.

🇫🇷 French malt giant Soufflet Malt has teamed up with research initiative Ferments du Futur to develop high-value ingredients through fermentation, starting with cocoa substitutes.
💡The company is well-placed to capitalise on the alt-cocoa movement, given its extensive footprint – it operates 40 malting plants in 20 countries with an annual production capacity of 3.7 million tonnes. 

🍼 Nestlé has partnered with US startup Helaina to advance research on bioactive proteins and develop infant formula using the startup’s precision-fermented human lactoferrin, effera.
💡The collaboration can help Nestlé overcome supply challenges and deliver a formula product that matches breast milk.

🌱 Matthew Mills, co-owner of UK startup Allplants, has bought Fairoak Foods out of administration, a move he made with his wife, Ella Mills.
💡The deal will offer Allplants a way to expand its portfolio and production footprint by bringing manufacturing in-house.

🚀 Everything Else In Future Food

👨🏻‍🍳 Spanish-American chef José Andrés, one of the food industry’s most outspoken advocates for climate action, has partnered with Wildtype to serve its cultivated salmon at two-starred eatery Barmini in Washington, DC.

💪🏼 Finnish gas fermentation startup Solar Foods’s Solein protein has entered the US with the launch of a new protein powder by Ambrosia Collective’s Planta brand.

🏀 Beyond Meat has begun rolling out its Beyond Immerse line of protein drinks in over 26,000 locations in New York, with NBA star Josh Hart joining as the product’s brand ambassador.

🍔 US fast-food chain White Castle debuted a Southwest Veggie Slider made with Dr Praeger’s meat-free patty, months after discontinuing the Impossible Foods version, citing consumer feedback.

🐈‍⬛ A feeding trial shows that BeneMeat’s cultivated hamster meat is well-accepted and digested by cats, who leave significantly fewer scraps than when they eat conventional chicken.

📉 US meatless restaurant chain Clover Food Lab closed all its 11 locations this week, after failing to find a buyer for the distressed business.

📊 Only three major dairy and coffee producers have published methane targets, despite recognising the link between agriculture, livestock and climate change, reveals new analysis by Changing Markets Foundation.

🌱🍔  Future Food Quick Bites 

In our weekly column, Future Food Quick Bites, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Rafael Nadal’s Alpro shoutout, Matthew Kenney’s new plant-based eatery, and an LCA for Prefer’s bean-free coffee.

📆 Scene & Heard

🚀 Catch Up With Sonalie Figueiras At Bridge2Food Europe 2026

💡 Green Queen’s founder and editor-in-chief Sonalie Figueiras will be speaking at Bridge2Food Europe 2026, happening 9-11 June 2026 in Copenhagen, where she will give a keynote titled “The Global Politicization of Food and the Influence on Consumer Choices”. Catch her live to unpack how geopolitics and consumer behavior are increasingly intertwined in the future of food. Register here, and use code GREENQUEENMEDIA to get €200 off your ticket.

🇮🇳 Since 2019, the Vegan India Conference has been building India’s plant-based ecosystem from the ground up— addressing critical issues such as climate change, the right to nutrition, animal agriculture, and food security. The 5th edition, taking place 6th-7th June, will focus on systems. Find out more here.

🇦🇹 Meet 280+ carefully selected suppliers from across Europe and beyond, showcasing thousands of retail-ready products in high-growth categories such as free-from, plant-based, organic and functional food, at the Free From Food Expo in Vienna on 16th-17th June. Register here.

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