Grocery Stores, Accessibility, and Building a New Food Culture Together

Meati Foods has taken its first step into grocery stores with the debut of our products at three Sprouts locations in Colorado. It is one of several ways we are improving our accessibility to advance a better food system for all.

Meati Foods’ mission is to provide delicious, nutritious, sustainable, and affordable food to everyone around the globe, forever. We’re not the only ones who believe this is an important goal: More and more people (and companies) are looking for ways to improve our food system as they become increasingly aware of its environmental impacts, inequitable outcomes, and nutritional gaps.

A big part of achieving this goal is making sure meati cutlets and steaks are accessible. We mean that in many senses of the word. Are we easy to find in terms of convenience and geography? How about affordability? And culturally? Are we inspiring and informing new and old eating traditions?

Geographic Accessibility: In Sprouts Now

When it comes to getting a hold of our products in terms of convenience and geography, we’ve got great news: We’ve taken our first steps into grocery stores and are now also available at three Sprouts locations in Colorado (Boulder, Denver, and Wheat Ridge).

That’s on top of being able to find us at every Birdcall restaurant and other dining establishments. The increase in this type of accessibility will help address some of the frustration with getting ahold of our products.

Looking at the big picture, this is one step of many toward solving the problem of food deserts, a term that describes areas lacking access to high-quality, nutritious food that — related to our next point — is also affordable.

Financial Accessibility: More and More Affordable

Boosts in one type of accessibility often come with boosts in others. Getting to the stage where we can supply a grocery store like Sprouts involved a lot of work behind the scenes to scale up the growth and harvesting of our mycelium. Higher efficiency means lower costs, and the price of our products at Sprouts reflects our progress on this front.

We’ll continue to improve upon this, particularly later this year, when our Mega Ranch facility starts up. It will annually produce tens of millions of pounds of meati products. That will help us continue to advance our ongoing effort to ensure the availability of nutritious and sustainably produced food that serves people of all income levels wherever they need to buy their meals, whether grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, or websites.

Still, making nutritious food affordable and available everywhere isn’t enough. Even if it protects and preserves our land, water, and air, that doesn’t make the grade. It must be delicious, too. If it isn’t, it won’t make the cut in a very competitive marketplace. Taste is a critical factor — and one of several that fall under the umbrella of cultural accessibility.

Cultural Accessibility: Evolving Food Traditions

What makes a food good? What turns it into a tradition? It involves more than just flavor (a convenient way to encapsulate the complex dance of taste and scent). Texture is a big deal, too (meati cutlets and steaks are enticingly fibrous). People also look at how easy it is to work with a particular food in the kitchen — can it be cooked in different ways without much fuss (meati products can)? How well does it work with spices and marinades (meati cuts love them)? Could I depend on it when I’m in a rush (the Crispy Cutlet is for you)?

We also can’t forget the familiarity factor. Certain types of foods may trigger little reaction in some countries but a bit more excitement (or alarm) elsewhere. That leads us to a question about food and how it fits into the social fabric of our daily lives: Could a meati steak be the centerpiece of a meal I make for my friends and family?

Of course, we say “yes.” By listening to and working with Mother Nature, we have crafted meati products to be culturally accessible in every way possible while also being nutritious, sustainable, and increasingly affordable.

But that’s just half the battle. The rest, in many ways, is up to you — people who want foods that not only protect the planet and provide equitable access to nutrition, but also become a valued part of the eating experiences that often accompany our most meaningful and joyous moments with family and friends. It is your stories — captured in videos, photos, and writing you share everywhere from one-on-one text threads to Instagram posts — that eventually become our shared story, our new cultural tradition.

We love seeing all the creative ways you are incorporating our cutlets and steaks into your lives, from @coastalclink’s pic of meati tacos to @lmatthis’ image of meati with pasta and wine. It is key to building a growing movement to create a better food system for the sake of a better planet. We can’t wait to see more.