No 238: Vegan meat firm CEO loses job after biting nose

BEHIND the quite amusing headline - that the head of Beyond Meat, leading meat substitute producer, has left the company after biting another man's nose (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63260645.amp ) - there is a less flashy but nonetheless interesting Micro story.

As well as their CEO, Beyond Meat have also axed 20% of their workforce. They are blaming the cost of living crisis, saying that customers are switching to real meat, which is in fact cheaper than Beyond Meat products.

This raises a number of QI Micro questions. Does this mean that real meat is an inferior good (a product whose demand increases when consumers' incomes fall) when compared to meat substitute products? Why, during Covid, when many people also had reduced incomes, did the exact opposite happen? Why were people prepared to pay the extra then?

In fact, I had some Beyond Meat burgers recently. They were really good, perhaps the best vegan burgers I've ever had. However, I only bought them because they were 50% off - the original price of £4.50 for two burgers seemed too much to me.....