Kraft Heinz enters plant-based meats with Oscar Mayer hotdogs and sausages

Kraft Heinz is launching plant-based Oscar Mayer Hot Dogs and Sausages as part of its joint venture with NotCo— the first alternative meat innovation from the joint venture since its inception two years ago.

The Oscar Mayer NotHotDogs and NotSausages — available in both Bratwurst and Italian flavors — offer the savory and smoky experience associated with the Oscar Mayer brand, the food companies said. But unlike the meat varieties, the new products incorporate plant-based ingredients such as bamboo fiber, mushroom, pea protein and acerola cherry.

“This is an attractive space. There is an unmet need,” Lucho Lopez-May, the CEO of The Kraft Heinz Not Company, said in an interview. “We have the right assets and the right equities to go after the opportunity and develop the category.”

The Oscar Mayer NotHotDogs and NotSausages are the fourth innovation to launch since the joint venture was introduced in 2022. Previously, the partnership debuted plant-based versions of sliced cheese, mayonnaise and, in November, Kraft Mac & Cheese.

In rolling out plant-based sausages and hotdogs, The Kraft Heinz Not Company is entering a food sector that has fallen on hard times.

A report from CoBank last August found while U.S. consumers remain interested in plant-based meat alternatives, higher prices and concerns about taste and the ingredients used have caused many people to leave the space or cut back on their purchases.

Last week, plant-based pioneer Beyond Meat, which sells its sausages, burgers and chicken tenders, posted its seventh consecutive quarter of negative sales and announced it would exit certain markets and discontinue some product lines in 2024. Several other companies, including Impossible Foods, also have reset their businesses to match product demand through layoffs, consolidation of their manufacturing bases and overhaul of their executive ranks.

But amid the struggles, Kraft Heinz and the Not Company see an opportunity. 

The food manufacturers, citing data from AMC Global, said hotdogs and sausages remain “underdeveloped and under-consumed within the broader plant-based meat category, largely due to disappointment in existing offerings’ taste and texture.” The plant-based sector as a whole also has been impacted by inflation, which has forced some consumers to shift their spending away from the pricier category.

”This is a short-term dynamic that needs to be acknowledged, but it should not inform the long-term strategy of the company, and that’s what our commitment is,” Lopez-May said. “We are convinced that by 2030 there’s going to be billions of dollars of consumption added to this space, and our customers expect us to also supply offerings” in this category.

Lopez-May said while consumption of plant-based hotdogs and sausages hovers in the low single digits, the reasons people avoid animal-based items — personal health, environmental impact and animal welfare — are not going away. He noted that the U.S. plant-based market is forecast to more than double to $19 billion by the end of this decade, citing data from Research and Markets.

The new offerings tap into a similar playbook Kraft Heinz and NotCo have used before with their prior plant-based launches. In the case of sliced cheese, Mac & Cheese and now Oscar Mayer, Kraft Heinz brings forward powerful brand equity through products that have been kitchen staples for decades. 

NotCo, which is based in Chile, uses a powerful artificial intelligence platform it calls Giuseppe to redesign traditional food products with plant-based ingredients. AI played a key role in helping The Kraft Heinz Not Company mimic the texture, smell, color and flavor, among other attributes, that shoppers expected from the Oscar Mayer brand, Lopez-May noted.

“We set ourselves a really, really high bar in terms of this is the product we need to develop,” he said, noting the low repeat rates in plant-based meat.

Lopez-May added that customers who participated in testing the Oscar Mayer plant-based items were asked before and after they sampled it about the likelihood of them purchasing it. The purchase intent increased, he said, after they tasted it to an “extremely high” level. “We’re really confident with the products we’re launching because of that,” Lopez-May said.

The plant-based Oscar Mayer hotdogs and sausages have a similar look and packaging as Kraft Heinz’s traditional meat varieties. However, instead of only displaying Oscar Mayer in the center of the packaging, it also includes the words “plant based” and “NotHotDog” or “NotSausage.” The innovations will debut at Expo West on March 12 before rolling out to major retailers nationwide later this year.

Kraft Heinz and NotCo waited only four months between the introduction of Kraft NotMac&Cheese and the debut of the Oscar Mayer plant-based items this week. The two companies have shown no signs of slowing down, noting recently that the venture plans to move into additional categories this year and just recently began expanding internationally to Canada.