brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Mon Nov 30, 2020 9:07 pm
I realized how important bulk purchases are for these companies with the Tetrick Just Mayo scandal, where he was paying vegan activists to go out and buy just mayo and do whatever with it (eat it, donate it to a food bank, flush it) so it had high turnover at stores and looked popular. If it's so incredibly important for maintaining presence in stores and getting investment that it makes sense for a company to spend money buying its own products at retail, I have the feeling just buying mockmeats and eating them or sharing them with non-vegans is one of the most reliably effective forms of animal charity.
Oh yeah, it's very important to have revenue flow.
There have been cases in history of companies creating illegal cycles of money to increase revenue.
One of the main reason why they do that, is because revenue is the main factor that's looked at when a company wants to go public, and the main thing that investors go off of and that determines whether something may become popular among investors - and then you also have a stronger consideration that you'll receive from retailers once your revenue shows the demand is high.
One example of this is Crazy Eddie (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eddie), where by cycling the money he had hidden and not declared (selling to himself the money he had stashed in black, back into his business as revenue), he managed to grow his company from 8$ share to 75$ share in 2 years.
It's sure that increased revenue flow is a major asset, and can quite literally make the company or break it.
For buying mock meats, it would be:
Pros:
- proof of concept and market size, by showing the market is big and there are a lot of opportunities, other companies will include vegan options and investors will invest, which only goes to favor further development and accessibility of vegan options (which would lower the barrier of entry to veganism, and reduce recidivism)
- lowering the cost of vegan options directly, by increasing revenue and eventually profit margins with bigger and better production, therefore increasing accessibility
Cons:
- it costs more for now, and the money difference could be used to donate to a charity that would further spread veganism
- it's less healthy than whole foods options, and veganism is under a giant magnifying glass for any imperfections, so being as healthy as possible is a good practice (however, a little amount of mock meats won't do much)
So, overall, it seems like mock meats would be good to buy consistently in small amounts (for health reasons).
But definitely a very good buy as a gift for non-vegans.
I'm not sure if the money difference given to an animal charity would be better, it depends fully on the price of the mock meats where you live - but then again, if the price of the mock meats where you live is very high, the place could very well benefit from a higher demand.
It's really going to depend whether the future food demand will be more whole foods based, or more animal products replacements based.
There's also something to say about which companies you should buy from to increase impact, as with companies that are public or are planning to go public you'll probably have the most effective result.