Supermarkets Are the Next Big Challenge for Meat Reduction

We buy so much meat at grocery stores, so it's crucial to figure out how to lower animal product consumption in retail. I'm not convinced we've found a solution.

Grocery stores are a crucial arena in the movement to change our food habits — in the US, a whopping three-fourths of calories are bought from supermarkets — so we need to think carefully about how to approach them. We have many options in front of us: offering more plant-based meat options, offering discounts, encouraging sales through banners or ads, or even reorganizing the aisles. The good news? This can boost alternative protein sales! The bad news? Meat sales don’t budge.

I think supermarkets are an unsolved problem. Let’s dive into the barriers we’re encountering and some potential ways to overcome them.

You’re reading More than Meat the Eye: a free newsletter on the science of meat reduction strategies. Check out my previous posts on nudge labeling and ratios for more behavioral science explanations!

Plant-Based Boosts Aren’t Enough

It´s difficult to talk about meat reduction in retail without discussing alternative proteins — they´re seen as the easiest way to shift shopping habits. Many supermarkets, especially those in Europe, have pledged to meaningfully boost sales of alternative proteins or reduce meat and animal product sales in the coming years. Lidl, for example, has committed to doubling sales of plant-based alternatives by 2030 and has already surpassed some of its initial targets! Various retailers in the Netherlands have taken a similar pledge, contributing to the decline of meat consumption in the country.

That´s about it for the good news, because there´s one big issue that kept popping up in my research: an increase in plant-based meat rarely occurred alongside a decrease in meat sales.

Most people who buy plant-based meat also buy animal-based meat, as high as 86%. Buying plant-based meat also isn’t associated with a later decrease in meat purchases. In other words, if someone picks up an Heura burger in a grocery store, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s offsetting a meat purchase.

This trend persists when we examine interventions to promote plant-based meats. I charted several of these studies below. Keep in mind that most of these results aren’t statistically significant (meaning researchers aren’t sure whether the results are due to chance). This furthers my point: interventions to boost alternative proteins probably don’t reduce meat sales.

Reading this research was concerning — meaningfully reducing meat consumption in retail is far from being solved. We should also be extremely wary of supermarkets boasting about increased plant-based sales: if those numbers don’t come alongside a decrease in meat, not much is meaningfully being changed.

Why? I suspect one key factor is the consumer's flexibility. Many shoppers walk into grocery stores with a list of the needed items, either written down or implicitly memorized — something uncommon in restaurants. Also, grocery shoppers are often buying for others, such as a parent buying food for their entire family. It’s harder to shift someone into making a new decision for someone else, unlike a restaurant, where you’re just ordering for yourself.

There are benefits to increased plant-based options in grocery stores: they can make diet transitions easier for people and may help normalize plant-based eating. But I don’t see evidence that boosts to plant-based meat sales in retail are a win for meat reduction in and of themselves.

We Need To Arrange Supermarkets Carefully

While reducing meat purchases is far from solved, there is plenty of research on boosting plant-based meat sales.

There has been much debate over whether meat alternatives should be placed in the meat section or in a vegetarian section. According to the research, the answer is… both! One real-world experiment found that having a “vegetarian shelf” and placing meat substitutes in the meat aisle led to a 32% sales boost, better than a veg shelf or meat aisle alone. Putting them in the meat aisle is still better than nothing: one study found that moving meat alternatives to the meat aisle led to a 25% boost in sales compared to the control, while a Lidl experiment showed this intervention boosted sales by 7%.

In other words, the ideal situation is to place meat alternatives throughout the store to encourage all types of consumers to purchase them, but having them just in the meat aisle is still better than segregating them in a veggie section, as most shoppers won´t wander that way at all. (By the way, studies show that consumers aren’t confused by terms like “plant-based meat”, despite what the EU has recently argued. So there is no marketing reason to avoid placing alternative proteins in the meat aisle, but Big Meat’s lobbying arm may make that difficult going forward.)

Some nudge studies also show promise. One online study found that nudges in an online supermarket could increase the percentage of plant-based items sold, but it had very high overall plant-based item availability: around 40%. To me, this suggests that nudges may be more effective if we can increase the ratio of plant-based products in supermarkets (see my earlier explainer for more details on ratios). Another study found that placing sustainable products more prominently and making them more available increased their uptake.

By far the largest sales boost I found was during a UK Veganuary promotion, which led to a 57% plant-based sales increase in January, declining to a smaller but respectable 15% boost in February onwards. This suggests that retail can benefit from aligning with broader cultural shifts, such as Veganuary, other vegan challenges, Meatless Mondays, or other large norm-setting events.

Other methods to reduce meat consumption haven’t found strong results. One experiment in an online supermarket found that adding various nudges (including tags like “increasingly chosen” and “check out these tasty products”) could only reduce meat purchases by 3%, an effect that wasn’t even statistically significant. Another thesis tested various nudges but didn’t find statistically significant results. One real-world study measured the impact of increasing the visibility of meat alternatives and whole foods plant-based options and adding signage throughout the store, even in shopping carts! There was a minor reduction in meat consumption, but again, it wasn’t statistically significant.

Taken together, supermarket nudges have a mixed track record.

Money is Key

The most critical way to influence shoppers is through price — a common theme in my resources! In one study, knocking a dollar off the price tag of meatless products increased their sales in an online grocery store and decreased meat selection (although it’s an online study, so it may not translate perfectly into the real world). Still, this finding matches broader research, like these two meta-analyses, which found that economic incentives worked better than educational or environmental interventions.

Crucially, price is the biggest factor in persuading frequent meat eaters to purchase plant-based products rather than animal-based ones. The same study estimated how much certain groups were willing to pay and found that frequent meat eaters needed far lower prices to consider buying plant-based products.

As I’ve explored before, plant-based diets are usually cheaper than animal-based ones, but alternative proteins are generally more expensive. In some countries, that’s changing. In Germany, plant-based alternatives are now cheaper than the meat they’re replacing. The cheaper they can get, the better.

The Bottom Line

Diving into this research, I hoped to find stronger results on the relationship between supermarket nudge interventions and meat reduction. Unfortunately, this isn’t a solved issue. To fix it, we’re going to research more novel ideas. It’s also going to require buy-in from the supermarkets themselves, which is why I’m hopeful that new organizations, like those that Charity Entrepreneurship are looking to build, can help drive these commitments.

In the meantime, we need to be using every tool in the toolbox simultaneously to achieve real results. Good labels probably won’t be enough. Prices won’t be enough. Rearranging aisles won’t be enough. When it comes to grocery stores, we need to go big or go home.

Thank you