Last week the hottest IPO of the year came on the stock market. Beyond Meat (symbol sticker BYND) was priced at $25/share but opened at $46 a share and closed the week at $66.79, up a whopping 163%.

Are you ready for your next soy based “Beyond Burger,” now available at TGIFridays, Del Taco and your neighborhood Safeway?

The push to plant-based foods has its origins in many places. Of course, healthier eating is usually cited first and foremost, but environmentalists like to point out that 25% of all greenhouse gases are contributed by livestock flatulence and decomposing poop. Cattle housed in close quarters are fed low doses of antibiotics raising concerns about antibiotic resistant germs and finally animal welfare advocates talk about animal cruelty as another factor in moving away from our meat-based diet.

Regardless of the reason, the times, they are a changin’. Even just a few short years ago, not even my vegetarian friends wanted to eat a veggie burger. Soon, we’ll all be trying out these new versions and if they have the sizzle and taste, it may be easy to become a convert.

We usually think of change as being really hard but what happens is that as ideas are socialized, articles are read, YouTube video are posted, and samples are tried at Costco, we see that beliefs that were once anathema to us are really not too difficult to alter and that the new can be really tasty.

Your Challenge this Week: Try out something new that you convinced you would never do. It might be a new taste treat or reaching out to a customer who you were all but ready to give up on. What does it say about you when you try out something new and take a bit of a challenging risk? Let me know how it turns out and what you learn?

© Richard Citrin, All rights reserved, 2019

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