Carving up the Beyond Meat coverage

This morning’s 8.30am news conference at the Telegraph was busy, with a lot of foreign reportage, business updates and politics rivalry going on as usual. But the subject that really got everyone talking was the news that Beyond Meat has seen its sales plunge by a third. It was leading the Markets liveblog this morning and created a lively discussion among editors as to the exact reasons for the brand being in such trouble.

The challenge now is to carve up the coverage (pun intended). When there’s a food-related story I always think of what the features angle is, and how that can work alongside hard news. It doesn’t help the reader (or our stats) to have several different articles on the same subject floating about all over the website.

It does, however, give the opportunity to update and refresh existing content about veganism and other related topics, so it’s a good opportunity to get in touch with your contacts on newspapers and suggest angles and brands that are relevant. What’s the McDonalds reaction? Which brands have got the best natural swaps for their products? Who’s opinionated and willing to speak out about ultra-processed vegan foods? We often say that anything to do with vegans gets a disproportionate amount of coverage to the number of people it affects, but clearly today demonstrates we want to hear more.

(As a sidenote, this article on the same subject from Grist, an outlet I hadn’t heard of, made me bookmark its site – could be useful for us all.)