McDonald’s and Beyond Meat Announces 3-Year McPlant Partnership

Today, vegan brand Beyond Meat announced that it has entered into a three-year global strategic partnership with fast food chain McDonald’s. Through the partnership, Beyond Meat will help McDonald’s develop new plant-based menu options through its newly announced McPlant platform. “Our new McPlant platform is to give customers more choices when they visit McDonald’s,” said Francesca DeBiase, McDonald’s executive vice president and chief supply chain. “We are excited to partner with Beyond Meat to promote innovation in this space, and entering into this strategic agreement is an important step in our journey to provide our customers with delicious, high-quality vegetable items.”

McDonald’s goes all in on plant-based

In 2019, McDonald’s first began testing the PLT burger (plant, lettuce and tomato) burger made in partnership with Beyond Meat at certain locations in Ontario, Canada. Shortly after the test was completed, McDonald’s announced that they were launching the “McPlant” platform, which will be used to develop future plant items for its menus worldwide, starting with the McPlant burger. This month, McDonald’s launched the McPlant burger at test venues in Sweden (Linköping and Helsingborg) until March 15 and at select locations in Denmark until April 12 with the aim of rolling out the meatless burger to other McDonald’s venues in other markets. While McDonald’s initially hesitated to confirm that Beyond Meat is behind its McPlant patty, the new partnership names Beyond Meat as the chain’s preferred plant supplier.

Under the agreement, Beyond Meat and McDonald’s will also explore co-development options such as plant-based chicken, pork and egg under the McPlant platform. “We are proud to enter into this strategic global agreement with McDonald’s, an exciting milestone for Beyond Meat, and look forward to serving McDonald’s while offering extensive choices in menus worldwide,” said Ethan Brown, Founder and CEO of Beyond Meat, said. “We will combine the power of Beyond Meat’s rapid and relentless approach to innovation with the strength of McDonald’s global brand to introduce busy, new plant-based menu items that consumers will love.

KFC, Pizza Hut and Pepsi go further

Brown announced the McDonald’s partnership during Beyond Meat’s earnings call today where he also revealed that the vegan brand has written a similar partnership with Yum! Trademarks. Under this agreement, Beyond Meat will also partner with the Yum! Chains KFC and Pizza Hut are working to develop future plant-based options. Last month, Beyond Meat also formed a joint corporation, The PLANeT Partnership, with food and beverage giant PepsiCo. Through the venture, Beyond Meat and Pepsi will develop, manufacture and market plant-based snacks and beverages.

“These transactions are huge,” Brown said during the call. “These are the biggest deals you can possibly put together in food in our sector.”