Beyond Meat - our inspiration

On October 2, 2019, the Co-founder of Beyond Meat and Founder of Perennial, Brent Taylor, came to speak to our class. The topic was how to launch a brand and your products. This sounded stressful at first considering my group still didn’t have a set product idea, but little did we know that this session would change everything.

My favorite thing that Taylor taught us was to

Start with a meaningful purpose and a vision. It will keep you grounded through the good and the bad.

When a business is less about profits and more about doing good, it will keep you motivated to work hard. The purpose positively changes people’s lives and may be something personal and inspiring to you.

I was surprised how hard it was for Taylor and his partner to get Beyond Meat up and running. Now, plant-based products are everywhere and widely accepted. However, in 2009 when Beyond Meat began, there was a lot of controversy around their product. No one really knew if it would be successful and the general audience did not believe a plant-based meat could truly taste and look like meat. Taylor spun this as a positive thing saying that not all controversy in creating a product is a bad thing – sometimes, that controversy can lead to discussion and value around your product. And with more people perplexed and curious about a plant-based meat that tastes and looks like meat will make more people want to try it themselves. In fact, I didn’t believe it myself until I tried it – and loved it.

Another thing that Taylor said that caught the attention of my group was that people are increasingly caring more about what they eat, leading us to ask the question, do people care about what their dogs eat? And thus, the very beginning of Dogmatic Treats was born, although it would take a couple more weeks to come up with the name.

These are the first ideas of a logo (see bottom right post-it) and motto (later changed as a secondary benefit to "Paws for the Plant") for Dogmatic Treats. The box with the dog was our idea coming into class about the subscription box as mentioned in my prior blog that we presented to the class before being inspired by Brent Taylor.

From our qualitative research, we knew that dog owners loved their dogs so much, they considered them part of the family. People care about what they eat and what they feed their families, so wouldn’t their dogs apply? This was backed up by our quantitative research with statistic after statistic about how dogs have a negative impact on the environment due to their high meat consumption, and how many treats branded as healthy were not in fact healthy at all.

Thank you to Brent Taylor for an inspiring session! Both for the content we needed to launch our brand, and for the inspiration of what our product could become. And thank you for the Perennial drink! It was very tasty. :)