Beyond Meat has brought in corporate restructuring expert John Boken from consultancy AlixPartners as interim chief transformation officer and cut 44 employees in North America (6% of its global workforce) as it seeks to cut operating expenses amid disappointing sales.
The firm, which posted a 19.6% year-over-year (YoY) decrease in net sales to $75 million in the second quarter of 2025, blamed “ongoing softness” in the plant-based meat category, with especially weak results in the US retail channel.
“We are responding by accelerating our transformation activities, including more rapidly and aggressively reducing our operating expenses to fit anticipated near term revenues; prioritizing increased distribution of our core product lines; and investing in margin expansion initiatives across these core products,” said CEO Ethan Brown.
“The reason that I wanted him [John Boken] to come on as interim manager of the business is to really drive two major outcomes. One is to get the operational footprint into the current revenue environment… in a way that doesn’t break things. And then the second is around margin. I wanted someone like John to… make sure that we can become EBITDA positive within the second half of next year.”
Part of the work involves “exiting certain product lines and reconfiguring others,” he added: “We are super focused on slowing the rate of cash burn… Bringing in John, I think, is a symbol of the level of urgency and seriousness that we’re placing on ensuring that we are able to drive out cost from the business as quickly as we can.”
Q2, 2025 by the numbers:
- Net revenue: -19.6% year over year (YoY) to $75 million, volumes -18.9%
- Net loss: $33.2 million
- Gross margins: 11.5%
- US retail revenue: -26.7% YoY to $32.9 million; volumes -24.2%
- US foodservice revenue: +6.8% YoY to $11.1 million; volumes +2.3%
- International retail revenue: -9.8% YoY to $15.9 million; volumes -13.1%
- International foodservice revenue: -25.8% to $15.1 million YoY; volumes -21.6%
- Full year 2025 outlook: Not provided given the “elevated level of uncertainty.”
- Balance sheet: As of June 28, 2025, Beyond Meat’s cash and cash equivalents balance was $117.3 million and total outstanding debt was $1.2 billion
$1.2 billion debt
The loss-making firm, which has debts of $1.2 billion thanks to an offering of convertible notes made in March 2021 that will mature in 2027, is “continuing to focus on strengthening our balance sheet, including evaluating potential transactions to address our existing convertible notes prior to maturity in 2027,” said CFO Lubi Kutua.
In the meantime, however, the firm has closed on a financing facility providing up to $100 million in new senior secured debt from Unprocessed Foods, an affiliate of the Ahimsa Foundation, a nonprofit focused on advocating for plant-based diets. Under the deal, Unprocessed Foods receives warrants in proportion to the amount drawn down on the facility.
‘Tepid consumer spending’ in US retail
In the US retail channel, which represents the firm’s largest and poorest performing segment, sales were down 26.7% to $32.9 million in Q2. Several factors were to blame, including higher prices relative to animal meet, which is “particularly detrimental in a prolonged environment of tepid consumer spending,” noted Brown.
Other factors to blame included the “negative narrative surrounding our category” and ongoing disruption arising from a move from retailers’ refrigerated aisles to their frozen aisles, he added.
“We’re finally now starting to get our bearings in the frozen section, where we can build brand blocks, and where we have those brand blocks, you’re starting to see much better velocities.”
‘It’s not the moment for plant based right now’
The lackluster results notwithstanding, he said, “We believe the factors that encumber our success today are transient. Just as we recognize that we are a higher priced item in a period of economic uncertainty and stress, we know that on a material basis, our cost structure will change as we achieve scale.
“We are, in fact, already in one limited but important instance, producing and supplying product at a cost price that is roughly equal to the corresponding animal protein equivalent. As we get to much higher volumes across our core products, the efficiency of our system will prevail.”
However, asked by one analyst how Beyond can win back consumers that have left the category, he said: “It’s not the moment for plant-based right now. You’ve got these cultural moments that occur, and we happen to be on the other side of the particular moment. And what we shouldn’t do is use a lot of dry powder trying to force growth.”
Right now, the focus has to be on “stabilizing the business, getting operating expense to where it needs to be, and fixing the margins,” he said.
Going Beyond: ‘We’re widening our aperture beyond animal protein replicates’
As he teased in a recent interview with Fast Company, Brown said: “Going forward, we intend to increasingly use ‘Beyond’ as the primary brand. We have been formally using the shortened mark in certain instances for some time now, and believe it provides for reduced emphasis on facsimile, a now complicated frame that overshadows the real high quality protein offerings we provide to consumers.
“We’re widening our aperture beyond animal protein replicates so we have the freedom to, as and when appropriate to do so, meet broader consumer protein needs.”
