Ethan Brown (businessman)

Last updated
Ethan Brown
Ethan Brown Headshot White (cropped).jpg
Brown in 2021
Born
Ethan Walden Brown

1971 (age 52–53)
NationalityAmerican
Education
Occupation(s)Businessperson, environmentalist
Known forCEO and founder of Beyond Meat
SpouseTracy Brown
Children2

Ethan Walden Brown (born 1971) is an American executive who is the founder, president and CEO of Beyond Meat. [1] Before founding Beyond Meat, Brown worked on alternative energy and electricity grid restructuring at the National Governors Association's Center for Best Practices before joining fuel cell manufacturer Ballard Power Systems. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Brown grew up in and near Washington, D.C., [3] and also spent time during his childhood on his family's farm in Maryland. [4] He is a graduate of George School (Newtown, PA).

Brown holds an undergraduate degree from Connecticut College, a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, a school founded by his father Dr. Peter G. Brown, and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia Business School in 2008. [5]

Career

Early career

Brown served as Vice Chairman of the Board at the National Hydrogen Association and Secretary of the U.S. Fuel Cell Council. [6]

Beyond Meat

In 2009, Brown visited a research center at the University of Missouri that was looking for additional uses for soybeans, a major Missouri resource. There, he met researchers Fu-hung Hsieh and Harold Huff, [7] who were working on technology to replicate the texture of meat using plant proteins. Brown acquired the technology license for the process, [8] and founded Beyond Meat in 2009. [9] On May 2, 2019, Brown rang the opening bell at Nasdaq when Beyond Meat went public under the symbol BYND. [10] Brown is also a director of The PLANeT Partnership, Beyond Meat's joint venture with PepsiCo. [11] [12]

Awards and recognition

In 2014, Brown was listed on Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business 1000. [13] In 2017, Brown was named an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow. [14] In 2018, Brown was selected as one of the UNEP's Champions of the Earth in the category of science and innovation for his "work towards reducing our dependence on animal-based foods." [15] In 2019, Brown was listed on Bloomberg Media's 50 Most Influential ranking. [16] Brown was also named that year to Well+Good's "2020 Changemakers" list. [17]

Personal life

Brown is married to Tracy Brown, [18] has two children, [8] and lives in Southern California. [3] He became a vegetarian in high school [19] and is now vegan. [20] Brown is also an environmentalist. [21]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meat alternative</span> Plant-based food made to resemble meat

A meat alternative or meat substitute, is a food product made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients, eaten as a replacement for meat. Meat alternatives typically approximate qualities of specific types of meat, such as mouthfeel, flavor, appearance, or chemical characteristics. Plant- and fungus-based substitutes are frequently made with soy, but may also be made from wheat gluten as in seitan, pea protein as in the Beyond Burger, or mycoprotein as in Quorn. Alternative protein foods can also be made by precision fermentation, where single cell organisms such as yeast produce specific proteins using a carbon source; as well as cultivated or laboratory grown, based on tissue engineering techniques.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boca Burger</span> Veggie burger by Kraft Heinz

Boca Burger is a veggie burger produced by Kraft Heinz in Chicago, Illinois. Like all of Boca Foods' products, Boca Burgers serve as a meat alternative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morningstar Farms</span> Division of the Kellogg Company

Morningstar Farms is a division of the Kellogg Company that produces vegan and vegetarian food. Many of their offerings are plant-based variations of traditionally meat products. Their products include meatless chicken nuggets, popcorn chicken, corn dogs, breakfast sausage, burgers, hot dogs, bacon, and pizza snack rolls with vegan cheese. Originally, Morningstar offered some, but not all vegan products. In 2019, Morningstar Farms announced all products would be vegan by 2021, but had not yet done so as of December 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lightlife</span> American company producing vegetarian and vegan meat substitutes

Lightlife Foods is a company that produces food for plant-based diets. In 2018, its worth was estimated at $80 million. It is best known for its plant-based veggie dog, Smart Dog, which launched in 1993. In 2019, the company launched a plant-based burger to compete with Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. Lightlife Foods is a carbon-neutral company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vegetarian hot dog</span> Hot dog made with plant-based ingredients

A vegetarian hot dog is a hot dog produced completely from non-meat products. Unlike traditional home-made meat sausages, the casing is not made of intestine, but of cellulose or other plant-based ingredients. The filling is usually based on some sort of soy protein, wheat gluten, or pea protein. Some may contain egg whites, which would make them unsuitable for a lacto-vegetarian or vegan diet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meatless Monday</span> International campaign that encourages people to not eat meat

Meatless Monday and Meat Free Monday are international campaigns that encourage people to not eat meat on Mondays to improve their health and the health of the planet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gardein</span> Line of foods by Conagra Brands

Gardein is a line of meat-free foods produced by Conagra Brands. In 2003, the company was founded by Yves Potvin, who remained as the CEO of Gardein until 2016. In November 2014, Pinnacle Foods purchased Gardein for $154 million. Pinnacle was acquired by Conagra in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vegetarian bacon</span> Vegetarian food emulating bacon

Vegetarian bacon, also referred to as veggie bacon, vegan bacon, vegan rashers, vacon, or facon, is a plant-based version of bacon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beyond Meat</span> Los Angeles-based producer of plant-based meat substitutes

Beyond Meat, Inc. is a Los Angeles–based producer of plant-based meat substitutes founded in 2009 by Ethan Brown. The company's initial products were launched in the United States in 2012. The company went public in 2019, becoming the first plant-based meat analogue company to go public.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Veggie Grill</span> American vegan restaurant chain

Veggie Grill is a fast-casual vegan restaurant chain that operates in California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York. The first restaurant opened in Irvine, California and is operating 29 restaurants as of February 2018. The chain focuses on offering only plant-based food, with no meat, dairy, eggs, LDL cholesterol, animal fat or trans fat.

Impossible Foods Inc. is a company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products. The company's signature product, the Impossible Burger, was launched in July 2016 as a vegan alternative to beef hamburger.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ramon Laguarta</span> Israel business executive

Ramon Laguarta is a Spanish businessman who is the chairman and chief executive officer of PepsiCo. He became CEO on 3 October 2018 after Indra Nooyi stepped down. He is the sixth CEO in the company's history and the first Spanish CEO of a large American multinational company.

McVegan is a veggie burger sold by the fast-food restaurant chain McDonald's. In 2017, McDonald partnered with the Swedish food company Orkla to create a plant-based patty inside a small steel kitchen in Malmö, where they began the creation of the product. In Germany, the chain's vegan burger is sold as the Big Vegan TS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impossible Whopper</span> Veggie burger sold by Burger King

The Impossible Whopper is a veggie burger sold by Burger King. It is a variant of the Whopper, with a burger patty made from a meat alternative provided by Impossible Foods. First introduced in the United States in 2019, it was made available in Canada in 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miyoko Schinner</span> Japanese-American vegan activist

Miyoko Schinner is an American vegan chef, cookbook author, cooking show host, vegan activist, and social entrepreneur, who appears in the 2024 documentary, You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment. She is currently the host of the YouTube cooking show, The Vegan Good Life with Miyoko, and is working on her next cookbook, The Vegan Creamery, which will be released in 2025.

A vegan school meal or vegan school lunch or vegan school dinner or vegan hot lunch is a vegan option provided as a school meal. A small number of schools around the world serve vegan food or are vegan schools, serving exclusively vegan food.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meatless Farm</span> U.K. company making plant-based meat substitutes

Meatless Farm is a British company that produces vegan, plant-based meats which are made primarily from pea protein. It was founded in 2016 by the Danish entrepreneur, Morten Toft Bech.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">McPlant</span> McDonalds vegetarian burger

The McPlant is a vegetarian burger sold by the fast-food chain McDonald's in several European countries. In 2021, McDonald's partnered with Beyond Meat, a Los Angeles–based producer of plant-based meat substitutes, to create the McPlant platform. It features a plant-based meat alternative burger patty made from plant ingredients such as potatoes, peas and rice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lord of the Fries</span> Vegan fast food chain

Lord of the Fries is an Australian and New Zealand casual dining fast food chain, originally based in Melbourne, before expanding into other regions. It serves only vegan dishes including loaded fries, veggie burgers, hot dogs and a number of various sides and breakfast items. Lord of the Fries first started as a vegetarian "mobile chip van" in August 2004 which was driven across the country until late 2005 when the first store location was opened in Melbourne's city centre. Due to the menu consisting entirely of plant-based products, all meals from the chain are Kosher and Halal. The restaurants became 100% vegan in 2018. The founders are vegan as are most of the franchisees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NotCo</span> Chilean vegan food brand

NotCo is a unicorn Chilean food-tech company producing plant-based alternatives to animal-based food products. NotCo was founded in 2015 by Matias Muchnick, Karim Pichara and Pablo Zamora, and utilizes machine learning to replicate dairy products in plant-based forms. NotCo is Latin America's fastest growing food company.

References

  1. ↑ Bhattacharji, Alex (2020-04-29). "Imagining a World of Meatless Eating". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2021-08-28.
  2. ↑ Moore, McKenna (2020-11-24). "Why Beyond Meat's CEO chose to fight climate change by going into business". Fortune. Retrieved 2021-08-28.
  3. 1 2 Bessette, Chanelle (2014-01-31). "10 Questions: Ethan Brown, CEO, Beyond Meat". Fortune. Retrieved 2021-08-28.
  4. ↑ Patel, Nilay (2020-12-22). "The business of meatless meat". The Verge. Retrieved 2021-08-28.
  5. ↑ Villar, Carlos. "Food Tech's Ethan Brown '08 Tackles Sustainability, One Plant-Based Burger at a Time". Ideas & Insights. Retrieved 2022-06-09.
  6. ↑ Sacred, Jean-Francois (2019-05-02). "Ethan Brown, le "Canada Dry" du burger séduit Wall Street". L'Echo (in French). Retrieved 2021-08-28.
  7. ↑ Bronner, Stephen J. (2018-01-22). "With $72 Million in Funding, the Entrepreneur Behind Beyond Meat Pursues Innovation Over Profit". Entrepreneur. Retrieved 2021-08-28.
  8. 1 2 Carroll, Chris (2020-01-17). "Growing Beyond Meat". University of Maryland. Retrieved 2021-08-28.
  9. ↑ Ohanesian, Liz (2019-05-29). "Beyond Burger: The New 'Meat' in Town". KCET. Retrieved 2021-08-28.
  10. ↑ Darmiento, Laurence (2020-01-08). "Ethan Brown went vegan but missed fast food. So he started a revolution". Los Angeles Times.
  11. ↑ "Ethan Brown | Management | Beyond Meat, Inc". investors.beyondmeat.com.
  12. ↑ Lucas, Amelia (2021-01-26). "Beyond Meat shares soar 26% as company teams up with PepsiCo to make plant-based snacks and drinks". CNBC.
  13. ↑ Staff, Fast Company (2014-01-29). "Most Creative People In Business 1000: The Complete List". Fast Company.
  14. ↑ "Ethan Brown". AGLN - Aspen Global Leadership Network.
  15. ↑ "Tackling the world's most urgent problem: meat". UN Environment Programme. September 26, 2018.
  16. ↑ "Ethan Brown, Beyond Meat CEO and Fake Meat's Real Winner". Bloomberg Businessweek. December 4, 2019.
  17. ↑ "These are the 27 most influential people in wellness". Well+Good. 2019-12-23.
  18. ↑ Fitzgerald, Maggie (2020-09-29). "Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Beyond Meat, United Airlines, JPMorgan, Penn National Gaming and more". CNBC.
  19. ↑ Gelles, David (2021-08-27). "The 'Hedonistic Altruism' of Plant-Based Meat". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-08-28.
  20. ↑ Park, Alice (2019-06-06). "Why We Don't Need Animals to Keep Enjoying Meat". Time. Retrieved 2021-08-28.
  21. ↑ Stoll, John D. (2020-09-25). "Beyond Meat's Pitch for More Customers: It's Not Just Good for the Planet, It's Also Good for You". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2021-08-28.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.