It’s official! Beyond Meat (NASDAQ:BYND) is just clocked in the best IPO day since the financial crisis with its astounding 163% single-day pop. The Los Angeles-based producer of plant-based meats with a similar taste and texture to real meat has disrupted the aisles at the supermarket and various fast-food joints.
Having tried the Beyond Meat burger from my local A&W (that’s the A&W Revenue Royalties Income Fund (TSX:AW.UN) for all your Canadian investors), I was shocked and awed by the meatless patties made of plant-based meat substitutes and tasted the potential that the disruptive product could have on the entire food industry.
Who could have known that the meat industry could face such a massive technological movement?
Beyond Meat has reverse engineered a product that could not only enrich the diets of vegetarians, but could also actually profoundly affect the eating habits of non-vegetarians.
If you’re a meat eater, you’d probably scoff at the idea of converting to vegetarianism. After trying some of Beyond Meat’s products, which may be healthier for you than actual meat, becoming a vegetarian may not be as difficult as it used to be when veggie meat burgers tasted more like cardboard than they did actual meat.
With a ton of funding secured (sorry, Elon Musk), Beyond Meat now has the financial means to pour cash into R&D efforts to expand its portfolio of non-meat meat products further. Such food innovations could leave a permanent dent in the meat industry as we know it with Beyond Meat leading the charge and competing products like “Impossible Foods” breathing down the necks of the supposed leader in the plant-based meat substitute space.
As a Canadian, you’ve probably missed out on the IPO of a lifetime with Beyond Meat, but don’t fret. There is a TSX-traded stock that can allow you to profit big-time from the continued proliferation of plant-based meat substitutes. Enter A&W.
As a Canadian, you’ve probably seen those Beyond Meat burger commercials. You may have even tried one yourself. As a burger fanatic who’s tried the A&W Beyond Meat burger, I must say the Beyond Meat burger had me fooled initially. It tasted like meat, smelled like meat, and even felt like meat, so I was flabbergasted to discover that what I just ate was a vegetarian-friendly product.
Soon after, the Beyond Meat burger was a hot topic at the water cooler among us non-vegetarians. The A&W commercials were cheesy, but they were definitely onto something as one of the first Canadian burger joints to adopt the meat substitute in their burger lineup. A&W stock has been rocketing higher over the past year thanks to its beyond incredible menu innovations led by Beyond Meat, a real winner of a product.
“The burger tastes so much like real meat that it’s not only a main attraction at A&W for vegetarians, but it’s also now a go-to place for anyone interested in tasting the next big thing in strange, but satisfying food tech!” I said in a prior piece. “The burger is that good, and although A&W doesn’t own the producer of the Beyond Meat patties, I think A&W’s management team deserves a round of applause for being one of the first popular Canadian burger chains to discover and incorporate the meat alternative into its menu.”
A&W income fund has been picking up a considerable amount of traction recently, and with a 4.1% dividend yield that’s as juicy as the company’s burgers, the income fund is looking pretty tasty at these levels. As a quick adopter of Beyond Meat’s products, I’d say that A&W is a safer way to play the plant-based meat substitute trend without having to speculate on overly frothy IPOs that tend to go bust as quickly as they boom.
Should Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods or any other food innovator cook up a new and improved line of meatless patties or sausages, you can be sure that A&W will be among the first of fast-food chains to advertise its latest offering to Canadians with the A&W guy and plenty of folks to try the new products out.
Stay hungry. Stay Foolish.
Fool contributor Joey Frenette has no position in any of the stocks mentioned.
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