Beyond Meat, the food company that manufactures, markets, and sells plant-based meat products, is changing the image of Dunkin’ Brands from a donut to a “vegan” company.
For years, Dunkin’ Donuts—the Mass.-based franchise — was known for its donut collection; and the coffee that makes a nice addition at breakfast time.
That was back in the 1960s and 70s, when young baby-boomers visiting Dunkin’ Donuts stores had little concern about calories and cholesterol. Starbucks wasn’t around. McDonald’s wasn’t serious about the coffee business.
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Nowadays, Dunkin’ Brands is still selling donuts. But they are low priority on the company’s branding campaign, as evidenced by the move of leadership last year to drop the word “Donuts” from its logo.
As we wrote in previous pieces here, that was a strategic move by the company to “modernize” its value proposition from “donuts first” to “coffee first,” or espresso drinks first to be more precise.
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Though this change in the focus of the company’s value proposition sounds like a word-game, it isn’t. It tells a great deal about the new focus of Dunkin’ Brands.
Coffee brings in the traffic and helps sell more donuts and other breakfast items in the process. But while that change in the marketing focus helped Dunkin’ Brands compete in the new market environment crowded by Starbucks, McDonald’s and the like, it did very little to change the company’s image as a donut company.
And that’s a big problem in today’s world where baby-boomers are no longer young, and tend to care about every gram of cholesterol they consume.
Then there’s the millennial generation, which cares about calories and much more. Like sustainable food—food that helps save the planet from all sorts of “externalities,” as economists will say.
That could, perhaps, explain why Dunkin’ Brands has been teaming up with Beyond Meat to offer vegan-based breakfast items. And change its image from a donut company to — a vegan company.
Ted Bauman, economist and senior research analyst at Banyan Hill Publishing, thinks that’s a good strategic move for Dunkin’ Brands.
“I think for a legacy company like Dunkin’ Donuts, adding a vegan “meat” alternative is a no-brainer, says Bauman. “Any company has to adapt to changing consumer preferences, and in many affluent urban areas in the U.S., meatless alternatives are in demand. In this respect, Dunkin’ Donuts is following a similar path to McDonald’s, which has revamped its consumer-facing image to adapt to a millennial consumer base. That’s reflected in the switch to “Dunkin” as its current branding, dropping the donuts part.”
He thinks it’s an easy strategy for Dunkin’ to execute because “it involves adding a Beyond Meat-based alternative to existing menus,” he adds. “The company is certainly not jettisoning actual meat products to adopt this, so there’s very little downside.”
Disclosure: I own shares of DNKN