To help plant-based players close the sales gap with animal products, the non-profit Nectar tapped a diverse group of more than 2,600 omnivores to blind taste test and assess 122 meat alternatives across 14 categories, the results of which helped create a roadmap for all plant-based meat manufacturers to improve their taste and texture compared with their animal-based counterparts.
Insights from the competition are outlined in Nectar’s Taste of the Industry 2025 report published earlier this month, and include what is working and what is not in plant-based meat.
The findings also serve as the foundation for Nectar’s Tasty Awards, which industry celebrated earlier this month in San Francisco and included dozens of emerging and established plant-based products that meet mainstream consumers’ taste expectations.
Accelerating the ‘alternative protein transition with taste’
The awards and report are part of Nectar’s broader mission “to accelerate the alternative protein transition with taste,” which Nectar Director Caroline Cotto explains is “the biggest driver of purchase for products across the board.”
On the flip side, “poor taste is the biggest reason that people cite for not repurchasing plant-based meat after trying it once,” she said. “So, if we really want plant-based products to grow and take true market share away from animal meat, we really need to prioritize taste.”
To fairly assess how plant-based products stack up against their animal counterparts, Nectar invited thousands of omnivores to restaurants where they tried plant-based products in “natural presentations” and filled out a survey on their phone about different sensory attributes.
“On the back end, we take all of that data and map it so that we have a category level view of how these different plant based categories are performing, as well as for individual products, a very specific roadmap on how they can improve their flavor, texture and appearance,” said Cotto.
While this type of research historically is very expensive and out of reach for smaller brands, brands are able to participate and access select data for the cost of supplying samples. In exchange, brands receive their scores in comparison to the average of their category as well as the leading product in the category and the animal-based benchmark. They can opt in for additional data that provides a detailed product roadmap to improve their products and the qualitative responses from the survey.
Most plant-based products are ‘not good enough quite yet’
Out of the 122 products Nectar tested, only 20 cleared Nectar’s high-bar for top performance, which required at least half of the consumers who tried the product to rank it the same or better than the animal-based product against which it was tested.
While there were not many winners, those who passed the taste test also are winning in the market.
“We saw that there’s also a correlation between top sensory performance and real sales data. So, the best performing products in our sensory study are also capturing more market share than the average products in the category about one and a half times more than the average product. For categories with better tasting overall products, those categories are capturing, on average, 10 times greater market share than the categories with lower overall average products,” said Cotto.
Recipe for success: Consumers demand more than bold flavor
Most winners in Nectar’s taste test delivered flavor and taste consumers expected, but successfully mimicking texture remains a challenge for many products, according to Cotto.
She explained many of the categories with winning plant-based options have textures that are easier to mimic – such as burgers or breaded and fried nuggets. But the categories without plant-based winners have more complicated texture expectations – such as bacon and whole cut steak, pulled-pork and bratwurst where consumers expect the skin to snap when they bite into a link, she said.
The type of fat and production technique also influenced taste perception, said Cotto.
She explained consumers perceived coconut oil as a fat source more favorably than seed oils, “which is not surprising given the current context around those ingredients.”
Likewise, consumers found mycelium and mushroom products appealing conceptually, but those products received overall lower liking scores from a sensory perception, she reported.
Beyond taste and texture
Beyond taste and texture, common themes among the winning products reveal other consumer priorities when selecting plant-based products, as well as areas for improvement.
For example, Impossible Foods, which won in multiple categories, including burger, meatballs, nugget, hot dog, sausage patties and unbreaded chicken fillet, underscores the importance of delivering on the overall experience, including aroma and the cooking process.
“We are trying to make something that approximates the animal as best as possible,” said Jason Casolari, senior director of R&D at Impossible Foods. “We have a lot of folks who are working on texture or working on what is the finished product going to look like when you experience it? Is it aroma? Is that something where we need to work? Is it how it cooks? Is it the mouthfeel? You experience it, and we want the entire experience to be as good as, or possibly better than, the animal counterpart.”
Convenience and familiarity matter
MorningStar Farms also won in multiple categories with products that delivered not just on taste and texture but also convenience and familiarity.
“MorningStar farm has been leading the plant-based movement for decades, for over 50 years, long before it became mainstream. But what’s really changed is that plant-based eating has moved from a niche choice to a mainstream lifestyle shift. And it’s not just vegetarians anymore,” which means brands need to deliver products that are “better, tastier and more convenient,” said Jessica Watson, director of brand marketing frozen food innovation at Kellanova, which owns MorningStar Farms.
“Consumers tell us they want plant based burgers that truly taste like real meat with better texture, simple prep and more protein, and that’s exactly what we’ve delivered in our MorningStar Farms Stakehouse Style Burger,” which won a Tasty Award, she said.
She added the company also sees “huge opportunity in familiar favorites, foods that people already love, just made plant based. Our chicken nuggets, for example, which is also a Tasty Award winner, are a great example of this. They bring the crispy, golden, nostalgic experience of the classic nugget, just with the plant-based ingredients. We’ll continue to listen to consumers, and we’ll continue to bring that innovation forward that they would expect from MorningStar Farms.”
Technological advancements unlock taste and texture enhancements
Advances in technology also played a pivotal role in determining which products best met mainstream consumers’ demands as seen by the recognition awarded toSwap Food for its unbreaded chicken fillets and Redefine Meat for its burger.
Swap skips extrusion to make its plant-based meat in favor of mechanical steps and temperature changes that allow it to mimic the texture of chicken, beef, scallops and more with clean ingredients that “even a 4-year-old child” could recognize, said Tristan Maurel, CEO and co-founder of Swap Food.
The technology also allows the company to offer a high protein product at a higher throughput per line and with lower production costs than some competitors, he added.
The company entered the US market six months ago and already has agreed to be on the menu of 300 restaurants, he said.
Redefine Meat also stands out in the plant-based meat segment thanks to its technology. It has created an industrial-sized 3D printer that creates whole meat cuts layer-by-layer. While the technology is used exclusively for plant-based products, it could use cultured or precision-fermented ingredients to create other meat alternatives, said company investor Costa Yiannoulis, who is a managing partner and co-founder of Synthesis Capital.
As an investor in the alternative protein segment, Yiannoulis acknowledged the category has seen a “dip” in recent years, but he said the pendulum is moving in the other direction again and predicts an uptick “ticking upwards” in the space.
To fully seize that potential, companies must close the taste gap compared to animal-protein, he said, echoing Cotto.
To help companies do that, Cotto encourages category players to download Nectar’s Taste of the Industry reports and consider participating in future annual taste tests, which she said will expand into new categories in the coming years.
Nectar can also help retailers and foodservice buyers improve their selection of plant-based protein to meet consumer needs, she added.
“If you’re a manufacturer in the space and you’re looking to improve in a category, we provide detailed information on where to start. If you’re looking to launch a new product in a new category, we’re hoping that we can help you start at one instead of zero, and then if you’re a retail buyer or food service buyer looking to bring new alternative proteins to your menus or to your shelves, we hope that you can look at the award winning products to help guide your decision. And we’ll be creating guides for those specific groups based on the data as well that we will be disseminating following the awards,” she explained.
