无肉汉堡正在兴起，但这家快餐公司不打算卖

5月22日早上，快餐连锁店运营商Arby’s的总裁罗伯·林奇在看新闻时突然看到一个标题，他还以为自己吃肉出汗过多结果做了噩梦。一家自称“素食终极来源”的网站声称，以“我们有肉”（we have the meats）为口号的连锁店Arby’s正在与素食汉堡初创公司Impossible Foods谈判，菜单上可能增加植物汉堡。

在过去两个月里，肉食者热爱的多家快餐巨头，包括汉堡王和Little Casars（该公司最畅销的比萨裹着约1.06米长的培根）都与Impossible Foods达成了合作，但Arby’s并不打算跟风效仿。

“只要我还掌管公司，就不会有这种事情。”林奇向《财富》杂志说道。“除非我因为什么原因被炒了才有可能。”

林奇回忆称，他在读到失实报道后惊慌了一阵。“拜托，拜托，拜托告诉我这不是真的！”他迅速询问了同事们，大家都向他保证没有人在研究植物食品。

接下来的事情是，这家快餐连锁店的公关团队高呼着“Arby’s没有非肉食品”，一边向记者发起攻击。

林奇表示，如果Arby’s也迎合非肉食品的热潮，餐厅“只提供肉食”的形象将会模糊，而该形象是公司业绩增长的基础。

“一定要有明确的立场。”林奇说道，充满了对动物食品的热爱之情。“我们就是靠巨大、高质量、充满肉香料又足的三明治帮助品牌实现了复苏。肉食是我们的核心业务。”

对于Arby’s正在就合作事宜与Impossible Food接洽的报道，Impossible Foods的一名发言人拒绝置评。该发言人向《财富》杂志表示，素食初创公司Impossible Foods “主要在扩大业务规模，满足对公司产品不断增长的需求，目前从个体餐厅到全国连锁餐厅，共7000多家均有售。”

Arby’s以肉为本的增长之路

2010年，摩根大通的一位分析师称，Arby’s的业绩“在现代餐厅史上属于最糟糕之列”。当年一季度，该连锁店销售额下降了11.2%，之前的2009年和2008年已经分别下滑了8.2%和5.8%。

据CNBC报道，在2013年保罗·布朗出任首席执行官，林奇担任首席营销官和品牌总裁以后，Arby’s推出了牛胸肉三明治，后来成了最成功的产品，经营状况也开始好转。当时公司还开始转向肉食市场（2014年首次推出热爱肉食的口号，现由深沉男低音文·瑞姆斯口述），幽默感也有所提升，代价是放弃了素食主义者。

2015年，Arby’s推出“素食者帮助热线”，专门播放油煎培根的声音，希望能够改变来电素食者的立场。2016年的闰日（2月29日），餐厅提供了全素食菜单，不过只是把三明治里的肉取出来，没有换上替代食材。

“烤牛肉三明治变成了烤芝麻面包，上面什么也没有。”林奇说。在他的领导下，Arby’s的净销售额从2015年的35亿美元增加到了2018年的39亿美元，全球有3300多家门店。“我们这三明治上蔬菜比别家都少，而且很骄傲。”

Arby’s每年销售1.6亿磅（72574吨）肉食，提供各种动物食品，菜单上有烤牛肉、胸脯肉、火鸡、火腿、鸡肉、羊肉、鸭肉、鱼肉、鹿肉和麋鹿肉等。林奇非常在意提供真实的肉类食品（尽管Arby’s也提供一些掺有家禽肉的沙拉），他认为将植物蛋白贴上肉的标签“有点误导”。美国养牛人协会最近发起的一项请愿观点与此相同，该协会请求美国农业部禁止给素食贴标签时出现肉类字样。

Impossible Foods及其竞争对手Beyond Meat则不认同此种观点，Beyond Meat已经与Del Taco、TGI Fridays和Carl’s Jr.等连锁店建立了合作伙伴关系。

“肉是一种由氨基酸组成的食品，可以产生蛋白质，如果我们能复制其营养特性，为什么不能叫做肉呢？”Beyond Mate的执行董事长塞思·戈德曼向《财富》杂志说道。“这不是牛身上的肉，我们也不会叫牛肉。但称之为肉没问题。”

Impossible Foods声称其无肉产品几乎跟肉没有区别，因为同样含有牛体内和植物中能够找到的富含铁元素的分子血红素。“其实，我们认为如果没有血红素，牛身上的肉也不会如此美味。”本月早些时候，公司的首席财务官大卫·李向《财富》杂志说道，当时该公司刚完成一笔3亿美元的融资。Impossible Foods拥有跟植物性血红素生产相关的专利。

虽然植物性蛋白质的目标是满足肉食者的需求，但Arby’s并不相信。

“这就像我把烤牛肉三明治叫做西兰花三明治一样。”林奇说道，他在加入Arby’s前曾经担任塔可钟快餐连锁店的营销副总裁。“根本不是真的。”（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林

When Arby’s president Rob Lynch looked at his newsfeed on May 22nd morning, he saw a headline that made him wonder if he was having a meat-sweats inducing nightmare. A website priding itself on being the “ultimate source for all things vegan” claimed the chain, whose slogan is “we have the meats,” was in talks with Impossible Foods to add a plant-based burger to the menu.

Although carnivore-loving fast food giants like Burger King, and Little Caesars (which has a best-selling pizza that’s wrapped in 3.5 feet of bacon) have embraced Impossible partnerships in the last two months, Arby’s has no intention of following suit.

“It won’t happen on my watch,” Lynch tells Fortune. “The only way would be if I got fired for some reason.”

Lynch recalled his momentary panic after reading the misreport. “Please, please, please say it isn’t so!” he quickly queried colleagues, who reassured their boss no one was exploring plant-based options.

The next step: the fast food chain’s PR team barraged journalists with Arby’s no-meatless-at-Arby’s gospel.

Lynch said Arby’s embracing the meatless craze would muddy the restaurant’s all-about-the-meat image, which has been fundamental to its financial upswing.

“You have to stand for something,” Lynch said, with animal-byproduct patriotism. ” We’ve turned this brand around by making big, high quality, meaty, abundant sandwiches. That’s who we are.”

An Impossible Foods spokesperson declined to speak to media reports of Arby’s approaching them about a partnership, telling Fortune the meatless startup is “currently focused on scaling operations to meet the growing demand for its products at the more than 7,000 restaurants where it is currently sold, from single-unit restaurants to national chains.”

Arby’s Meat-Forward Ascension

In 2010, a J.P. Morgan analyst called Arby’s performance “amongst the worst in modern restaurant history” after the chain’s sales dropped 11.2% in the first quarter of that year—following its already downward tumble of 8.2% in 2009 and 5.8% the year before.

Things started picking up in 2013 after Paul Brown joined as CEO, Lynch as CMO and brand president, and the brisket sandwich was launched, which would become Arby’s most successful product, according to CNBC. The company also began to lean into the meat market (debuting its motto in 2014, now intoned by Ving Rhames’ basso profundo) and its sense of humor, which often came at the expense of vegetarians.

Arby’s launched a “vegetarian help line” in 2015 that tried turning herbivore callers by playing the sound of sizzling bacon as the ultimate gateway meat. It also served a one-day, all-vegetarian menu on Leap Day 2016 that simply extracted all the meat out of its existing sandwiches without offering any replacements.

“Our roast beef sandwich turned into a roasted sesame bun with nothing on it,” says Lynch, who has seen net sales increase to $3.9 billion in 2018 from $3.5 billion in 2015, with more than 3,300 locations worldwide. “We proudly put less vegetables on our sandwiches than anyone.”

Arby’s sells 160 million pounds of meat a year and is an equal-opportunity animal purveyor, having served roast beef, brisket, turkey, ham, chicken, lamb, duck, fish, deer, elk, and more on its menu. With such fealty to meat (albeit with a handful of poultry-accented salads), Lynch considers it “a bit misleading” to label plant-based proteins as meat—agreeing with a recent petition by the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to bar such companies from using the word in any form when labeling their vegetarian products.

Impossible Foods and rival Beyond Meat, which has partnered with chains including Del Taco, TGI Fridays, and Carl’s Jr., disagree.

“Meat is an assembly of amino acids that create the protein, so if we are able to replicate the nutritional properties, why wouldn’t that be meat?” Seth Goldman, Beyond Meat’s executive chairman, tells Fortune. “It’s not meat from a cow and we wouldn’t claim that. But it is meat.”

Impossible Foods touts their meatless products as being almost like meat since they contain heme, an iron-rich molecule found in cows and plants. “In fact, we think the cow can’t turn itself into delicious beef without the heme,” CFO David Lee told Fortune earlier this month after the closing of the company’s $300 million funding round. Impossible has a patent on the plant-based heme process.

Although plant-based proteins aim to satiate carnivores, Arby’s is far from convinced.

“It would be like if I called my roast beef sandwich a broccoli sandwich,” says Lynch, who was Taco Bell’s VP of Marketing before joining Arby’s. “It’s just not the real thing.”