Walmart adds more Beyond Meat products

Beyond Meat is selling more products at Walmart, the latest in a wave of expansion for the brand.

Starting this week, over 400 Walmart stores are adding Beyond Sausage Hot Italian, a plant-based sausage, to their portfolio of Beyond Meat products, which already includes the Beyond burger and Beyond breakfast patties. Roughly 500 Walmart stores are also adding the Cookout Classic value-pack, which includes plant-based burger patties, as a permanent item. The cookout pack was first sold at Walmart last summer as a limited-time offering.

Beyond Meat, which makes plant-based alternatives to meat that are designed to look, taste and cook like animal protein, has been rapidly growing its reach at a time when the appetite for plant-based protein is high.

Walmart started selling Beyond Meat in 2015. As of September of last year, Beyond products were available in about 800 stores. Now they’re available at about 2,400 nationwide. Altogether, Beyond products can be found in about 28,000 retail outlets across the country, according to the company.

Customers have been turning to plant-based products as a healthier alternative to processed red meat and as a way to shrink their environmental footprints. Interest has held strong during the pandemic, when prices for animal meat supply spiked at times and people are eating more meals at home. In the United States, Beyond’s net revenues grew 104% in retail in 2020.

In addition to expanding in retail, Beyond has also been striking deals with major companies in the food space.

In January, Beyond announced that it’s joining forces with PepsiCo to develop and distribute snacks and drinks made with plant-based protein. And last month, the company announced partnerships with McDonald’s and Yum Brands, which owns KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Beyond had been working with the brands on menu items prior to the announcements. McDonald’s collaborated with Beyond Meat on the plant-based patty for its upcoming McPlant line of plant-based products. KFC has tested out Beyond’s plant-based fried chicken, and Pizza Hut serves Beyond’s plant-based Italian Sausage as a topping.

The plant-based meat seller has also partnered with coffee chains like Peet’s Coffee and Dunkin’ on plant-based sausages for breakfast sandwiches.

— CNN’s Jordan Valinsky contributed to this report.