Hybrid plant-based strategy shifts: summary
- Plant‑based declines push suppliers toward meat‑forward hybrid formulas for stability
- Emerging hybrid ratios favour 70–90 percent meat for better product quality
- Stepwise formulation changes help consumers accept gradual reductions in meat
- Brands avoid the word hybrid to prevent confusing or alienating shoppers
- Taste texture and functionality now outweigh sustainability in driving hybrid success
Plant-based is struggling, and has been for years. As the casualties among meat alternatives pile up – Hooray Foods, Nowadays, and JBS-owned Planterra Foods in the US, and most recently Sweden’s plant-based seafood start-up Hooked Foods – ingredient suppliers now risk facing a supply landscape that no longer matches demand.
Plant-based dairy is no different. Supermarket aisles that once showcased a full suite of alt‑dairy products – milks, ice creams, cheeses, even crème fraîche – have noticeably thinned out. Recent discontinuations include Mighty Drinks and Arla Foods’ Jörd in the UK, as well as Stockeld Dreamery in the US.
So what happens next? Increasingly, ingredient suppliers – and, to a lesser extent, brands – are turning to a new channel for plant‑based: hybrids.
No, hybrids haven’t yet delivered major commercial wins. And no, the positioning still isn’t fully defined – are they targeting dairy loyalists or plant‑based adopters? But the strategy is shifting, and that evolution is giving the hybrid category a fresh source of momentum.
Here are four emerging strategies for hybrid plant‑based meat and dairy that experts say offer the strongest chance of success.
1. Move away from a 50/50 hybrid split
The first iterations of hybrid products leaned heavily on plant-based ingredients, often shouting about formulations that swapped out 50% meat or dairy for alternatives. In Europe, Danish Crown’s range of blended products, whether made with beef or pork, is a good example. The brand is called 50/50, clearly delineating the split between meat and vegetables.
But increasingly, that 50/50 split is being reimagined. What if meat accounted for a higher proportion of the finished product, and the plant-based ingredients were secondary?
That’s Franco-Belgian start-up Maash’s approach. Although the business works in the fungi kingdom with mycoprotein rather than plants, it still advocates for final products to predominantly contain meat. In hybrids, Maash says the ideal ratio is 10-30% mycoprotein, and 70-90% meat, for optimum quality on taste and texture.
2. Start small and get bigger
There’s also no need to start out with a 70/30 split of animal and plant-based ingredients. Another approach would be to start out small, with, say, a meat patty containing just a few percentage points of meat-free ingredients, and build up.
That’s what ingredient supplier Beneo suggests. For CEO Olivier Roques, making hybrids work relies on a step-by-step approach to formulation. The supplier tells its customers to take it slow, acknowledging it can be asking too much of consumers to swap out large proportions of meat for plants.
In this way, the approach is not dissimilar to that used in salt or sugar reformulation. In nutrition, this is coined “health by stealth”. Although “hybrid by stealth” doesn’t have the same ring to it, the approach is the same. “It’s like sugar reduction,” says Roques. “Do it progressively.”
3. Don’t push hybrid messaging - it’s not a car
One of the biggest hybrid dairy players of the moment is Danish operation PlanetDairy, which sells its Audu hybrid cheese brand in the Netherlands, and through a partnership with Dutch retailer Albert Heijn is selling a private label hybrid milk range.
As much as it’s tempting for a brand to boast about its hybrid products’ USP – notably, the fact they blend dairy with plants – that may not be the right messaging for consumers. Of this, PlanetDairy is convinced. Not only does the company not shout about its products’ hybrid format, but it chooses to avoid the term completely on-pack. The “hybrid” concept, in the eye of the consumer, is most closely tied to cars, after all.
“Most hybrids that we studied haven’t worked‚” says co-founder and chair Jesper Colding. “Our immediate conclusion is that you fall between two stools: you’re not a dairy product, you’re not a plant product. So who are you really talking to here? We call it the ‘hybrid trap’.”
That’s not to say there is any misguidance on-pack. Audu products do communicate that they’re made with cheese and plants front-of-pack, but they don’t carry images of plants. The packaging largely mimics that used for conventional cheese. For these reasons, consumers are more likely to associate the product with cheese rather than plants.
4. Taste and texture is key, sustainability is not
PlanetDairy also avoids other descriptors like “more sustainable” or “green”. For retailers and brands, producing fewer CO2 emissions is crucial, but for consumers these days, it’s taking more of a backseat.
What’s more important is taste and texture, and that’s a major focus for hybrid operators like PlanetDairy. So much so, that when plant-based cheese maker Stockeld Dreamery announced it was shutting up shop, the Danish hybrid player announced it would acquire Stockeld’s IP – notably “selected production equipment” and “technical know-how”.
This could give PlanetDairy an advantage in the hybrid dairy space, particularly given Stockeld’s prowess in plant-based cheese “meltability” – the holy grail of plant-based dairy. “Meltability of the cheese is one of the elements we will be able to take advantage of,” says PlanetDairy founder and CEO Jacob Skovgaard.
Technical functionality aside, PlanetDairy is concentrating efforts on taste and nutrition, which are other key elements of hybrids capable of setting the category apart from pure-play dairy or plant-based. And for today’s consumer, which refuses to compromise on taste for sustainability or even nutrition, that sounds like a smart move.
