A12 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022
BY LAURA REILEYIn an unusual ad campaign —
with a full-page in the New York
Times and a billboard in Mid-
town Manhattan — a plant-based
food company is claiming that
“plant-based lovers do it better.”
This Valentine’s weekend blitz
is the latest sign of the increas-
ingly vitriolic rhetoric between
plant-based food companies and
mainstream meat industries, one
that could even be considered
below the belt. The alternative
egg company Eat Just uses the
ads to direct people to its cam-
paign’s website, which claims
men who eat a healthy plant-
based diet are less at risk for
erectile dysfunction, citing re-
search.
Erectile dysfunction tends to
go with age. But it can also
commonly occur in men with
high blood pressure, a history of
heart disease or diabetes. These
health problems have in turn
been linked to higher red meat
consumption. But there is by no
means universal consensus on
this.
And the National Cattlemen’s
Beef Association has declared the
campaign as having “no basis in
fact.”
Before we get any further,
understand that Eat Just, based
in San Francisco, is in the busi-
ness of selling its plant-based
JUST Egg and is trying to peck
away at sales of traditional chick-
en eggs, much in the way that
Impossible Foods or Beyond
Meat are trying to woo animal-
based meat eaters.
“Using Valentine’s Day as a way
to open this conversation in a fun
way is something we wanted to
do,” said Tom Rossmeissl, Eat
Just’s head of global marketing
and creator of this new market-
ing campaign.
“This checked off all the boxes,
as something meaningful and
provocative that would get eye-
balls. We’ve learned you have to
make it personal: Do you want to
live longer, perform better and,
yes, have better sex?”
During the coronavirus pan-
demic, alternative protein prod-
ucts soared in sales and populari-
ty, prompting nearly every giant
food company to hustle its own
versions to market. More than 70
companies are working on the
“next generation of” meat and
seafood products made with cul-
tivated cells, and dozens more are
aiming to sell alternative meat
and dairy products made
through fermentation. Indeed,
the influx of so many new choices
combined with supply chain
problems weighed on all plant-
based protein sales, which fell in
late 2021.
In the midst of all this, tradi-
tional animal agriculture has
pushed back against alt-meat,
claiming common nomenclature
— words like “meat” or “milk” —
confuses consumers, prompting
a flurry of legislative activity and
lawsuits around labeling.
To the carnivores’ trouble-
with-love claim, the National Cat-
tlemen’s Beef Association, a trade
group for American farmers and
ranchers, dismissed the ad cam-
paign with more than a hint of
annoyance.
“This marketing campaign has
no basis in fact, to the point that
it’s comical,” said Danielle Beck,
the association’s senior executive
director of government affairs.
“We respect consumers’ ability to
do their own research and make
choices about what they put on
their plate, and it’s sad when
others choose deception over
fact. America’s beef producers
will continue to be transparent as
we share the overwhelming bodyof scientific evidence that sup-
ports beef’s continued role in a
balanced diet.”
The company behind the bra-
zen ads, Eat Just, was founded
back in 2011 under the name
Beyond Eggs and then later
Hampton Creek Foods by child-
hood friends Josh Balk and Josh
Tetrick. The name changed to Eat
Just in 2017. While the private
company is not yet profitable,
JUST Egg distribution to grocer-
ies and other stores doubled last
year, and the company raised
$467 million in investments, ac-
cording Andrew Noyes, head of
global communications.
Using newspaper ads to poke
at the competition isn’t new. The
Center for Consumer Freedom, a
nonprofit that lobbies for fast
food, meat, alcohol and tobacco
industries, placed ads in The Wall
Street Journal and New York Post
in 2019, as well as a Super Bowl
commercial in 2020, highlighting
many of the ingredients in fake
bacon and fake sausage, pointing
out that many of the plant-based
meat options are highly pro-
cessed and often higher in sodi-
um, suggesting this might fly in
the face of what folks think of as
“healthy.”
Josh Tetrick grew up in Bir-
mingham, Ala., and said that
when he thinks about what kind
of things would convince his dad
or the kids he grew up with to
adopt a plant-based diet, it’s not
information about climate
change or animal welfare — it’s
about how a diet will benefit their
health.
Declaring that what you eat
directly impacts what happens
between the sheets isn’t a novel
strategy for anti-meat activism.
PETA has been making “vegans
do it better” billboards and vid-
eos for several years.
“If Eat Just is now spending
resources parroting laughable
PETA stunts, investors should
demand their money back,” said
Will Coggin, managing directorof the Center for Consumer Free-
dom. He points to studies linking
soy, an ingredient in JUST Eggs
and other meat alternatives, to
low libido and erectile dysfunc-
tion.
To be sure, some physicians
point to links between overall
diet and erectile dysfunction.
Danielle Belardo, a cardiologist
in Newport Beach, Calif., said
erectile dysfunction can be a
harbinger of future poor heart
health.
“Tell someone in their 20s to
do all kinds of things to prevent a
heart attack in their 50s,” and it’s
a harder sell, Belardo said. “This
is sparking conversation — a lot
of men don’t know diet can help
with erectile dysfunction and
that underlying it are the same
causes as heart disease.”
Bad diet is a top cause of poor
health, and criticisms have in-
creasingly been leveled at red
meat, with studies associating
increased in red meat consump-
tion with mortality in American
men and women. The World
Health Organization and the
British medical journal the Lan-
cet have issued strong messages
about the dangers of red meat.
One nutritional expert ques-
tioned the ad campaign. Leslie
Bonci, a sports dietitian for sev-
eral universities, national base-
ball teams and the Kansas City
Chiefs, said she agrees a plant-
rich diet is good, but she sees
erectile dysfunction frequently
associated with alcohol con-
sumption, medications, high cho-
lesterol and stress.
Her bottom line is that the
growing acrimony between
plant-based companies and tra-
ditional animal agriculture may
not always benefit consumers.
“A plate is more than macronu-
trients,” she said, adding that a
satisfying diet is also one that is
accessible, affordable and plea-
surable — and, she said, pleasure
should be a central part of the
Valentine’s Day playbook.Mudslinging between alt-meat and traditional agriculture is getting dirty
BRANDON COBALT/EAT JUST
E at Just’s billboard in New York. Eat Just claims its alternative to
chicken eggs is healthier and can help better balance people’s diets.Eat Just’s ad campaign i s
stirring controversy for
its claims about libido“This checked off all the boxes, as somethingmeaningful and provocative that would geteyeballs. We’ve learned you have to make itpersonal: Do you want to live longer, performbetter and, yes, have better sex?”
Tom Rossmeissl, Eat Just’s head of global marketingthe executive editor at Autotrad-
er. Car sellers have watched EV
start-ups march through state
legislatures defeating franchise
laws that require automakers to
sell through dealerships and not
directly to consumers.
Legacy automakers have great
incentive to replicate that tech-
nique, given the significant prof-
its they could enjoy by cutting out
dealers that some see as middle-
men.
Traditional carmakers “are fi-
nally realizing that commerce
changes... there are new ways of
doing business,” said Jim Chen,
vice president of public policy at
Rivian and a former Tesla lawyer.
“This is not because Rivian and
Tesla are demanding this,” he
said, “it’s because consumers are
demanding choice. They’ve got-
ten used to buying online.”
Dealers are sometimes skepti-
cal of EVs, too, Moody said. Elec-
tric cars have higher upfront costs
than gas-powered vehicles, and
though government incentives
are available, they’re usually
through tax rebates; consumers
often wait months before they
recoup the savings from those
programs. EVs also require far
less maintenance than conven-
tional autos, meaning dealers lose
long-term revenue when a cus-
tomer chooses an electric car.
But just because legacy manu-
facturers are pivoting to EVs, ex-
perts say, they cannot simply
ditch their dealer partners. Car-
makers mostly don’t want to han-
dle the real estate obligations of
sales or the logistics of moving
finished products. Dealers also
have deep expertise in direct sales
and local marketing. In other
words, they know how to get
customers in the door and into
new cars. Manufacturers in many
cases don’t want to take on those
specialties.
GM President Mark Reuss said
at a Post Live event in 2021 that
the company was committed to
the franchise sales model but that
EVs were “going to change the
way people buy vehicles.”
Deep, the Ford spokesman,
said the automaker wants to get
more involved in the EV sales
process because of the vehicles’
growth potential in the American
market and the experience con-
sumers expect when purchasing
an electric vehicle. Dealers, he
said, remained a crucial part of
the company’s approach.
More than three-quarters of F-
150 Lightning reservation holders
are new to Ford, Deep said, many
coming from EV start-ups that
have direct-to-consumer sales.
“The dealers all know that this
is a different customer,” he said.
“They want to do it right.”Ford, meanwhile, saw a $
add-on to MSRP, on average,
while GM’s Chevrolet and GMC
brands sold $625 and $677 high-
er, respectively. Those numbers
are still lower than the industry
average, underscoring just how
much of a threat Ford and GM
find dealer markups to their new-
ly launching models, said Jessica
Caldwell, Edmunds’s executive
director of insights.
That kind of price volatility —
along with the industry’s pivot to
more eco-friendly models — has
manufacturers looking to reposi-
tion themselves in the market.
“With the industry changes to
product itself,” Caldwell said,
“you can’t just change that. You
have to evaluate the way things
are sold as well.”Automakers, dealers consider
electrified future
Ford chief executive Jim Farley
told investors this month that 10
percent of the company’s nearly
3,000 U.S. dealerships consistent-
ly priced vehicles above MSRP in
2021.
In response, spokesman Said
Deep told The Post, Ford reserves
the right to “redirect their alloca-
tion” of F-150 Lightning electric
pickups for the 2022 model year.
F-150 Lightning customers
have only recently been able to
convert their reservations into
firm orders, Deep said, and Ford
was receiving complaints that
certain dealerships were raising
prices above MSRP that custom-
ers ordered under. Overpricing
the vehicles could dent the repu-
tation of the truck, Ford and its
new EV offerings, the company
reasoned.
“The Lightning is a big deal for
us,” Deep said. “It’s a leap ahead in
innovation for any of our trucks.
It plays such a critical role for our
brand and all our dealerships.”
If dealers continue pricing
above MSRP, he said, Ford may
reallocate their assigned invento-
ry for forthcoming electric releas-
es, including the Bronco SUV and
Maverick pickup.
To some dealers and auto in-
dustry experts, those moves por-
tend a wholesale shift in how
carmakers envision the future of
sales.
Farley told investors that the
profitability of Ford’s
g as-powered models gave the
company the resources not only
to scale up EV manufacturing
capabilities, but also to increase
margins on EVs “through things
like vertical integration and new
customer experiences, accelerat-
ing our physical experiences to
the dealers on both businesses.”
Talk like that could have deal-
ers spooked, said Brian Moody,right now,” she told The Washing-
ton Post.
She turned to David Eagle, a
Los Angeles-based auto broker, to
help her scope out the market. His
company, Current EV, helps shop-
pers navigate electric vehicle re-
bates and incentives, and negoti-
ate price with dealers.
But even Eagle couldn’t get the
number McNary wanted. She is
still driving her Honda hatch-
back.
Since the pandemic began, Ea-
gle told The Post, the auto market
has swung from one extreme to
another. Carmakers cut produc-
tion in 2020 during the initial
waves of coronavirus infections.
Prices fell, and perfectly good
autos sat on dealer lots for
months.
Then in 2021, buyers’ appetite
roared back just as supply chain
snags, especially in microchips,
hampered manufacturers. Some
15 million vehicles were sold last
year, up from 14.6 million in 2020,
according to Cox Automotive. La-
bor shortages and soaring infla-
tion also weighed on the indus-
try’s output. And there was a
trickle-down effect on the used
car market, where prices climbed
40 percent in January compared
with the same period last year,
according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics.
Auto dealers across the price
spectrum see new business im-
peratives to cope with the short
supplies, Eagle said, and they
have every right to set the price of
cars they purchased wholesale.
Jeff Aiosa, who owns a
M ercedes-Benz dealership in New
London, Conn., said he normally
has two to three months’ worth of
vehicle inventory. But in the past
several weeks it’s been closer to a
20-day supply. A growing number
of cars are sold before they reach
his lot, and there aren’t many
others for a customer to claim.
Fewer sales mean he has to mark
up prices on what he does have.
“I think that a lot of the high
line luxury buyers understand
that, ‘Look, your volumes are
down and you historically always
discount,’ ” Aiosa said. “ ‘If we
need now to pay a little bit of an
upcharge for something that we
want and need right now, we
understand that that’s the envi-
ronment that we’re in. And you
have to stay in business, and we
want you to stay in business be-
cause we don’t want to come back
and see the lights off and not be
able to service our car.’ ”
Rising dealer prices have swept
across nearly all brands. GM’s
luxury Cadillac line had an aver-
age $4,048 markup in January,
according to Edmunds. Kia, Ko-
rean automaker Hyundai’s bar-The premium set consumers
back $728 on average, though
industry experts say four-figure
markups are common on popular
sedans and compacts, including
Hyundai and Honda. Some car
shoppers reported that the extra
cost can run $10,000 or more for
sought-after electric vehicles and
hybrids.
Ford and GM’s warnings expose
tense undercurrents between leg-
acy carmakers and dealers, which
have grown more fraught in re-
cent years as upstart electric vehi-
cle manufacturers like Tesla, Rivi-
an and Lucid sell directly to con-
sumers. Legacy manufacturers,
which often are required by state
law to sell through dealerships,
have conspicuously eyed direct-
to-consumer sales strategies in
recent years.
Analysts say higher prices at
the dealership plus conflict over
the future of sales could slow
expansion in the nation’s sti-
ll-nascent EV sector, which cli-
mate scientists say is crucial to
tamping down carbon emissions
from transportation. Sticker pric-
es for hybrid and electric vehicles
have fallen significantly over the
past decade but remain out of
reach for the typical car buyer.
Last summer, the Biden admin-
istration said it wanted half of all
new cars to be battery-powered or
plug-in hybrids by 2030. As of the
second quarter of 2021, EVs ac-
counted for about 3.6 p ercent of
U.S. vehicle sales, according to a
report from McKinsey & Co.
Tesla leads that market by a
wide margin, though traditional
automakers like Ford and GM are
introducing new battery-pow-
ered vehicles of their own. Volvo,
the Swedish carmaker founded in
1927, announced last March that
it plans to be a fully electric car
company by 2030 and sell online
only.
Legacy automakers are bank-
ing on consumers to migrate to
electric vehicles even as dealers
worry they will follow the direct-
sales path of EV start-ups, edging
them out of a market that’s pro-
jected to balloon to nearly $
trillion by 2030.
Price markups pinch
consumers
Sharon McNary, an amateur
triathlete in Los Angeles, went
looking for a hybrid Ford pickup
in early January to better carry
her bicycle to scenic locales out-
side across California. A Ford
dealership in Orange County
asked for $12,000 above the hy-
brid’s MSRP.
No deal, she said. “The car
market is completely bonkers
CAR PRICES FROM A
Consumers left in limbo as automakers, dealers grapple over vehicle pricing
Source: Edmunds THE WASHINGTON POSTDealership prices for popular car models
exceed industry averageHyundaiPorscheHondaToyotaNissanGeneral MotorsAverage sticker priceMercedes-BenzVolkswagenSubaruMazdaMitsubishiFord+$1,+1, 721+1,+++++++++20 7+Average difference between manufacturers' suggested prices
and dealers' prices for car sales in Januarying and “strongly reinforce[s]”
that prices advertised online for
vehicles should align with retail
prices. “We strongly discourage
our dealers from charging prices
above MSRP,” the company said.gain brand, had a $2,289 markup.
GM did not respond to a re-
quest for comment. Hyundai in a
statement said it “consistently re-
minds its dealers of the need for
complete transparency” on pric-Source: Edmunds THE WASHINGTON POSTJanuary
2021April July October January
2022020406080100%82%17%Under MSRPOver MSRP97%3%Demand for cars more than a year into the pandemic
emboldened dealers to inflate pricesMonthly share of cars sold under or over the
manufacturers' suggested retail price (MSRP)