Ordinary minced meat has once again got a new challenger.
Finns are a nation of minced meat. Adobe Stock / AOP
Alternatives to regular ground meat seem to be popping up on the market at a steady pace.
It’s not long ago that we were amazed by Snellmann’s Kevyt beef and pea flour with added pea protein.
Snellmann’s marketing director in connection with the novelty ground meat that was introduced to stores in November Juuso Reinikainen stated to Iltalehti that consumer surveys show a very large group of people who would like to use products containing plant proteins similar to minced meat.
Now Atria is launching its own version of minced meat containing vegetable protein.
The chicken-bean powder is seasoned with black pepper, turmeric and onion.
The 300 gram package contains 48 percent chicken fillet and 48 percent Finnish broad bean protein powder.
Minced chicken is the cheapest minced meat. Its price per kilo is around seven to nine euros. The second cheapest end of ground meat is pork and beef, whose price per kilo is pretty much the same as chicken ground meat, even cheaper.
Instead, the price of ground beef is around 12 euros per kilo to 20 euros for organic beef.
Atria’s new minced meat went on sale today in SOK stores. Its price per kilo is currently 15.50 euros. Minced meat can be found in Kesko stores at the end of January.
Hybrid ground meats are not a new phenomenon. Already in 2017, minced meat with carrot entered the market. Head of HKFoods Finnish meat business Mikko Järvinen says that the first year of Popo’s sales was good, in the second year sales dropped significantly and in the third year the consumer returned to regular minced meat.
At the beginning of 2020, the production of Popo was stopped. The Corona that started in the same year revolutionized the buying behavior of Finns anyway, then we went back to the familiar and safe. The more special ground meats remained in the store.
Järvinen states that the Finns are a nation of mincemeat and they buy a lot of mincemeat, but many in the store operate on autopilot, so to speak, meaning they always buy the same mincemeat without even thinking about the whole thing. Because of this, minced meat is a difficult category to introduce new products.
Järvinen states that hybrid food is a bigger phenomenon that has been recognized in restaurants. Vegetable protein alternatives have developed a lot in recent years, so the taste and texture of the products are better than before.
Järvinen thinks that hybrid products will first gain a bigger foothold on the foodservice side, i.e. in professional kitchens. There, for example, nutritional recommendations are taken into account in more detail.