Who Is Gonna Eat Cultivated Meat?
Cultivated meat is an exciting and ambitious project with many challenges, such as regulation, cost, scaling, flavor and texture development, and bioreactor optimization. However, the greatest challenge may be consumer acceptance.
It’s unclear who will buy cultivated meat. Meat eaters often lack strong motivation to choose it, especially if it’s more expensive or not significantly better than traditional meat at a similar price. Many vegans and vegetarians are also unlikely to eat it—those who have never eaten meat feel no desire to start, while others prefer plant-based options like tofu, edamame, Impossible Foods, and Beyond Meat. For a portion of this group, the very idea of cultivated meat is even repugnant.
As a vegan myself, I wholeheartedly support the development of cultivated meat for its potential to address critical issues like global warming, animal welfare, and food safety. But I’m not sure if I would personally want to eat meat again—at least until I try it.
In the long term, cultivated meat could potentially scale to become cheaper than traditional meat, which might encourage consumers to switch. However, this assumption may be overly optimistic. It seems even more unrealistic to expect such a breakthrough without generating profits along the way, given the high production costs associated with cultivated meat.
Thus, they need to start with finding initial target customer until they scale at least to the cost level of traditional animal meat.
How can we address the dilemma where cultivated meat fails to meet the needs of either meat eaters or vegans/vegetarians? Given the high cost of production, who would be willing to pay a premium for cultivated meat?
There may be a subset of meat eaters who are conscious of environmental impact and animal welfare. Some of them may already be flexitarian, while others may struggle to stop eating meat simply because it tastes so good.
Paul Shapiro, author of Clean Meat, shares an intriguing consumer insight from a study conducted by Kristopher Gasteratos, founder of the Cellular Agriculture Society, in collaboration with New Harvest and the Good Food Institute.
Gasteratos’ study reveals, “People still seem to be generally unaware of this topic, but what really shocked me was our finding about how higher self-reported meat consumption correlated with higher cultured meat acceptance.” Shapiro concluded that “the people who say they eat the most conventional meat tend to be the most receptive toward a cultured alternative, while those who say they eat little meat, especially vegetarians and vegans, are the least interested.”
Assuming that the initial customers will come from this subset of meat eaters, what products should we focus on building?
For high-cost products like cultivated meat, it might make sense to focus on high-end items such as wagyu beef, otoro, and foie gras. Although replicating wagyu beef or otoro remains technically challenging, some startups are already working on cultivating foie gras.
Tesla famously employed this top-down market penetration strategy, starting with luxury sports cars that targeted customers willing to pay a premium, then moving downmarket to achieve higher unit volumes and lower prices. I assume the motivation of their early customers was to support environmentally friendly technology. Similarly, I wonder if producing high-end cultivated meat could attract meat eaters who care about global warming and animal welfare.
However, cars and meat are vastly different. For car purchases, consumers can easily signal their status and values by driving the vehicle. In contrast, meat purchases are unlikely to serve as effective status symbols or easily communicate shared values. Additionally, the car industry is relatively high-margin and low-volume, whereas meat is traditionally low-margin and high-volume, even for luxury products. Convincing consumers to repeatedly buy cultivated meat at a premium may prove more challenging than persuading them to purchase a luxury car once.
Simply focusing on high-end items may not be enough. The initial product must address a significant pain point for desperate customers. Maybe it could be designed to be nutritionally complete, catering to busy individuals by providing nutrients that conventional meat lacks. Or it could be developed specifically for people with meat allergies or digestive issues. Another idea is tapping into entirely new markets, like space food.
While these markets may be small and have limited growth potential, but the bigger point is that cultivated meat needs to get creative if it’s going to take over the meat market.