![](https://bluegrassingredients.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/BLUE_ThinkingBanner-Plant-Based-Cheez-Sauce_V1A2-375x250.png)
Plant-Based Cheez Sauce
The days of vegans avoiding cheesy foods and flavors altogether are gone.
It’s been a tumultuous 2024 for the plant-based meat industry, and we’re only half-way through the year. Here’s what happening:
The headlines haven’t been great, but the plant-based category is not just meat mimics. There’s a whole world of plant-based foods, including cheeses, dips, milks and baked goods. We scoured Good Food Institute’s 2023 State of the Industry Report, Plant-based: Meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy, and found some good news in an eye-opening chart that showed dollar and unit sales growth for 16 plant-based food categories for the 52-week ending December 3, 2023. There were three big bright spots:
What do these three categories have in common? For many consumers, they are necessary indulgences that warrant paying a premium price. Coffee needs cream, fitness enthusiasts will pay for quality protein powders, and everyone wants to indulge in baked goods and desserts, even vegans.
Contrast this with plant-based meats. According to the GFI report, there’s a 156% price premium in plant-based chicken compared to chicken. In milk, it’s a 104% premium for plant-based products. Plant-based eggs? A shocking 317% premium. Amid inflationary times, consumers aren’t willing to pay plant-based premiums on products they don’t consider indulgences.
As product development plans for 2025 start to take shape, Bluegrass Ingredients’ Agile Kitchen™ Team is focusing on these three key plant-based categories that are primed for growth.
The plant-based creamer category is booming and diversifying with new players, new products and a greater variety of flavors. According to the GFI report, the category has only a 15% household penetration, so there is significant room to grow. Even better news, there is a 65% repeat buy rate, ranking it only behind plant-based milk in repeat rate.
We’ve seen this growth firsthand with sales and new product developments in two of our key product lines:
Looking to enter the plant-based creamer category? Contact us and we’ll provide your team with trend and product development insight.
Vegans love croissants. And pies. And brioche buns. Sure, that’s most likely an overgeneralization, but the plant-based baked goods and desserts category is showing positive growth behind products that are competitively priced and indulgent.
We’ve been working in two areas to improve the quality of plant-based baked goods:
Maintaining the indulgence factor is key when formulating plant-based bakery foods. Our Agile Kitchen™ Team has developed many plant-based formulas that consumers crave for their indulgence.
We think this is the most interesting category in the plant-based segment. Its performance wasn’t great (2% drop in dollar sales and a 4% drop in unit sales) in 2023, but the potential is massive especially considering the diverse eating occasions in the category.
We’ve been working on a variety of cream-based dips without the cream. Our Creamy Vegan Garlic and Herb Dip uses two of our core plant-based ingredients:
Combined with a vegan mayo base, these two ingredients provide much of the flavor base of the dip. When creating it, our team’s goal wasn’t to mimic a traditional cream-base dip, but to make it better.
Bluegrass Ingredients approaches all of its plant-based product development in the same manner. We’re not looking to replicate traditional animal-based ingredients. We’re striving to make them better. Contact us to get started on your next new plant-based product development.