A question of taste: plant-based meat revolution on the way, says Jack Cowin

Burger king Jack Cowin on why beef needs to change, 3D printing of meat and why fast-food salads will never take off.

V2food supplies plant-based meat to supermarkets.

Rich-lister Jack Cowin says the food industry is heading for a revolution which may radically change the Australian landscape.

Fifty years on from founding his first Hungry Jack’s outlet in Perth, Cowin says last week’s listing of plant-based dairy company Oatly on the NASDAQ exchange is a forerunner.

“It got out of the starting blocks earlier and meat will go down a similar sort of path” he says. The float valued Oatly at $US10 billion ($13 billion).

Mr Cowin, a keynote speaker at The Australian’s Global Food Forum in Sydney on Tuesday, sees pressure around climate change and resource scarcity as a reality check for the beef sector.

“Something like 80 per cent of the arable land that we have is either used for animal production or growing grains to feed those animals. The water for a cow to produce a kilo of beef and arable land that is taken up – anything that is planet friendly, the Millennials are into that with their ears pinned back.”

The can-do Canadian Australian businessman is certainly not giving up on beef however. The man who boasts he has eaten more burgers than any other Australian has private holdings in cattle country, meat processing as well as fast food.

“We have a vested interest in the ‘real beef’ business because we produce 30,000 tonnes of hamburger patties and we export to 26 countries. The beef business is not going away. It will change, but from 1990 to 2018, meat consumption around the world went up 92 per cent and it is continuing.”

As living standards of Asian populations lift, demand for protein is rising and for now, that is animal.

What is more fast food in 2021 is as popular as ever having brushed off attempted healthy makeovers.

“When you do research to find out what drives customers, head and shoulders above everything else is: does it taste good? And that’s the main drive,” Cowin says.

“We do have fashion that comes in like the salad era. We have tried to sell salads over the years with zero success. McDonald’s did the same. People when they want their fix, they want something that tastes good. Speed of service, all these different things pale into insignificance with, does it taste good?”

Landing great taste is still a work in progress for plant based substitutes for meat. In 2019, Jack Cowin and CSIRO launched Australia’s number one plant based meat company V2foods and it now supplies the big supermarkets with V2burgers, V2mince and V2sausages.

Sales are down on what had been hoped but that is because V2food products are parked at the vegetarian counter, says Cowin. As awareness grows, supermarkets will have to put plant based foods in their own space, as Whole Foods and other retailers have done overseas.

“The meat you get from the cow never improves, it’s going to be the same forever” Jack Cowin says.

“But as the refinement in this industry grows, taste will continue to improve. And cell based products where you can make steaks through 3D printing, this is coming and it will be big, but that is 5 years away.

“The reality is, if someone can produce a meat product which tastes as good as if not better than real beef and be able to sell it at a considerably lower price, and have environmental, animal cruelty, and health benefits, common sense there will be a move to more and more plant and cell cultured meats. That is why I’m saying there will be a revolution in the industry.”

Jack Cowin: ‘When you do research to find out what drives customers, head and shoulders above everything else is: does it taste good? And that’s the main drive.’

Happily through Covid, the supply side has not been a problem for the burger king, although he notes that Australia has the most expensive meat in the world today.

“Through the drought the meat price continued to rise, they’ve never been this high before. US beef today is cheaper than we are” he says.

When the pandemic struck in March last year, Jack Cowin thought he was staring down a Black Swan event. As it turned out, Covid-19 has kicked him even higher up the rich list.

“Good luck more than anything else” he says. “The home delivery business boomed and that created a whole new market of people that would never even have thought about home delivery. When they cannot go out of their house, all of a sudden that become the new form of keeping people fed.

“And in the fast food business: arm out the window, drive through, it’s 70 per cent lower customer contact, whereas you can’t even go in the pubs, they shut everything down.”

As a major shareholder and chair of the Domino’s business in Australia, Cowin had some insight into home deliveries.

“Domino’s was lucky in that 50 per cent to 60 per cent of its business was home delivery already before the crisis arrived. The Hungry Jack’s, McDonald’s and KFC business was much lower so we didn’t have the same luxury. We have had to use outside services like Uber because we don’t have the same volume that enables you to have your own employees,” he says.

Longer term, however, Cowin believes the Domino’s global philosophy is likely to win out: that you can’t trust a third party to pick up and deliver food.

“You lose control and in the food business you have to be really diligent about trying to maintain control. The success that Domino’s has had is somewhat illustrative that this is the successful model.”

Cowin also points to growing pressure on food delivery companies to pay the same wage benefits of full time employees.

At 78, Jack Cowin shows no signs whatsoever of slowing down and were it not for border closures, he would be heading across the Pacific where the family has business in both Canada and the US.

“If you look back over the last twelve months, Donald Trump said ‘you’ll all be in church by Christmas’ it will all be gone,” he says. “I have friends in Canada that have been shut down for the last two months. Australia as a whole has done a pretty good job on this whole Covid exercise. Now the next big challenge is how we open that up, how do we get out of jail?”

It is striking that Cowin is still a pioneer in the agrifood sector having operated across the supply chain over five decades as well as several years as a director on the boards of both the TEN Network and Fairfax when it was merged with Nine.

Asked if he thought on reflection that the Nine deal was a good idea he replies: “I guess if you look at the value as a shareholder, you’d say yes. If you put the value of Domain and Nine shares together, value has been created. I was a director of Fairfax and we thought when the merger took place it was somewhat unfair in that they cut something like 80 per cent of the jobs at Fairfax and all the Nine people came in. But as a corporate decision, if you look at (Channel 7 owner) Seven West Media, I think Nine and Domain, they have done pretty well, if you look at the financial results. The whole media industry as you know is tricky.”