Beyond Meat Enters China As Starbucks Revamps Menu

Beyond Meat Inc (BYND) will enter the Chinese market for the first time on Wednesday.

What Happened

Starbucks Corporation (SBUX) announced late Monday it will introduce three Beyond Beef items in Mainland China across more than 3,300 locations, CNBC reported. Starbucks has also partnered with Omnipork, a plant-based pork alternative brand.

Following the COVID-19 shutdown of its coffee shops, Starbucks has reopened most of its stores in China and will also introduced non-dairy lattes using oat milk from Swedish brand Oatly.

Beyond Meat has previously partnered with Starbucks to launch sandwiches in its Canada outlets.

Beyond Meat Viewpoint

"Today we mark an important milestone as Beyond Meat launches in China, advancing our goal of increasing accessibility to plant-based protein globally," Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown said in a statement to MarketWatch.

With its foray in the Chinese market, Beyond Meat also plans to launch a local language website and through social media channels will seek to spread out to other Asian markets as well.

Meat alternative products have not gained as much popularity in Asia as they have in the United States and parts of Europe.

Price Action

Beyond Meat's stock, which hit the public market in May 2019, closed Monday's session higher by 2.8% at $79.12 per share. The stock has a 52-week high of $239.71 and a 52-week low of $45.