Protein Pioneer: Eshchar Ben-Shitrit

Eshchar Ben-Shitrit believes the future of meat will be judged not by process but by taste, trust, and cultural resonance. Nick Bradley discovers how Redefine Meat is building a company around that conviction

There is a clarity to Eshchar Ben-Shitrit’s thinking that feels rare in food tech. He is not trying to win a vocabulary war about what to call the category, nor to sell a technology story that cannot be tasted. He is building a meat company and wants people to love the meat. The distinction matters.

“We’re a new meat company. We produce meat products that people love, enjoy, and experience as meat – only we use technology instead of animals,” says the company’s CEO at the outset, setting the rules of engagement. “Our flagship product is steak – the first to be launched using our technology – but we also make incredible burgers, pulled meat, and a range of other products. Today, we’re still a very small meat company, but we’re growing fast and on track to become the world’s biggest meat company by around 2040.”

That ambition does not read as bluster. It reads like a plan. For seven years, Redefine Meat has been amassing patents while pushing into the toughest dining rooms in Europe, spaces where plant-based brands rarely last. The company has since stepped into retail, but the ethos remains chef-sharp: flavor, texture, repeat purchase. And beneath it is an insistence on a simple, demanding North Star.

“I want people to experience a really great meat dish that satisfies them as meat eaters or meat lovers – and it just happens to be plant-based,” he says. “I don’t want people to say, ‘Wow, this is the best plant-based meat I’ve ever had’, because that’s not the target. What I want them to say is, ‘This is good meat – great meat – and I’m surprised it has no cholesterol, very low saturated fat, and didn’t involve the killing of any animal’.”

From alternative to new meat

That line encapsulates Redefine Meat’s cultural wager. If the product clears the meaty bar, category baggage fades. But the company is not asking diners to abandon the meaning of meat. It is asking them to reframe how meat is made.

“We’re not called ‘Redefine’; we’re Redefine Meat,” he says. “Meat is at the core of what we do. Most people in the company eat meat, and when we develop products, we use animal meat as a benchmark. But the point is to change the perspective on everything we do – to redefine what a meat company is, what technologies the meat industry uses, how you brand a new meat product, and how you create it.”

I want people to say, ‘This is good meat – great meat – and I’m surprised it has no cholesterol and didn’t involve the killing of any animal’

That insistence on redefining, not replacing, gives the brand its tone. The goal is not to make a better ‘alternative’. The goal is to make meat that is better, full stop, and to do so in ways that allow chefs and consumers to cook, plate, and enjoy in familiar rituals. The challenge is wide: technology, portfolio, retail learning curves, brand language, even the colors on pack. The response is equally comprehensive.

“When we first 3D-printed steak for a consumer, the fact that it was printed was irrelevant,” he recalls. “The product had to stand on its own, based on the human experience of putting it in your mouth and enjoying it.”

Trust as the metric that matters

That realism extends to the way Redefine Meat measures progress. Patents are necessary. Breakthroughs are exciting. But adoption happens one bite at a time, then one repeat purchase at a time. “Food companies know that having great texture, taste, and price isn’t the whole story. You also need to convince consumers to trust you – to pay for your product and choose it again and again, multiple times a week or month,” he says. “That’s as important as making it taste great.”

If the corporate arc is grounded, the personal origin story is disarmingly intimate. Ben-Shitrit stopped eating meat a decade ago, a decision that reoriented his life around two moments that matter: the births of his sons.

“I had a major change in my life when I stopped eating meat myself about 10 years ago,” he says. “That change happened when my first son was born. Becoming a father gave me a new perspective – it made me make different choices and look at life differently. Then, when my second son was born in 2017, I felt there was going to be a reshuffle in the meat industry.”

The result was conviction, not just about a business opportunity but about a generational responsibility. “I said to myself: there is going to be a revolution, a generational shift in how meat is consumed, and I need to take this opportunity to build a better world for my boys,” he says. “Since that click in my brain, I honestly haven’t been able to think about anything else but Redefine Meat and what we’re doing.”

Lessons from the kitchen

Conviction, however, is not a shortcut to market fit. Ben-Shitrit is candid about the biggest early assumption that turned out to be wrong. “Like many others, when we started working on the technology, we thought that one day we’d have a great product – a great steak – and that would be the moment we changed history,” he says. “What I learned is that it doesn’t matter how good your product is in the lab. That’s critical, of course – you need it – but the real journey only begins when you start feeding people.”

Here the founder’s humility is practical. In food, specifications are not the same as satisfaction. “My father and my kids don’t judge our products by the same criteria,” he notes. “That’s when you realize it’s much more of an art than a science.”

The art has been honed in kitchens that do not award points for effort. Redefine Meat built its name in restaurants before it moved to retail, an inversion of the typical growth playbook. The reason was strategic discipline more than contrarian theater. “Chefs, on the other hand, are far more demanding, critical, and tough than any home consumer,” he says. “Working with chefs when our products weren’t good enough gave us immediate, honest feedback – rather than the false excitement of seeing sales for a few months in retail.”

The hardest feedback often came from the least likely allies. “Some of the best advice and most useful criticism came from people who said, ‘I will never serve this. I believe in meat, and I’ll never have a plant-based steak or vegan option’. But they would still tell us, ‘Here’s why your product is inferior to meat’. And we said, ‘Okay, that’s good feedback. Let’s try again’.”

That loop of critique and iteration shapes the portfolio as much as it sharpens the hero products. “Our rule is simple: every product must set a new benchmark in taste and texture,” he says. “We would never launch something just because it could sell a lot, or because it’s a big category. The question is always: what innovation can we bring? What will make this product truly stand out?”

It is a high bar that forces trade-offs. Breadth without depth is a shortcut to disappointment, but too narrow a focus can miss the meaning of meat in people’s lives. “If you focus on too few products, you fail to understand what meat really means to consumers,” he says. “We don’t just look at the individual product – we think about the whole portfolio.”

You also need to convince consumers to trust you – to pay for your product and choose it again and again

Brand, meanwhile, is not treated as a costume. It is taken as a promise to be kept in the pan and on the plate. “We try to lead the brand through a meaty, culinary experience first,” he says. “When you see Redefine Meat on a shelf, you won’t see green packaging – you’ll see black and red. We say: we are meat. We’re proud of that.”

That pride is tempered by an honest admission many founders would dodge: the product is still improving. “The reason we’re not yet on every plate in the world is simply because we still need to improve the product,” he says. “And chefs, as well as consumers, resonate with that honesty. They understand it’s a journey. In three, five, or 10 years, our products will only get better and better.”

Winning the shelf, earning the kitchen

The journey also runs through consumer psychology at retail, where a brand must win the shelf and the home kitchen. It is here that trust becomes the currency that matters. Ben-Shitrit rejects the idea that the category “exploded” and then deflated. “What happened was a spike – many new products came to market in a single year,” he says. Too many did not deliver. “That’s why trust is so important. Once you earn it, there’s a huge opportunity for consumers to enjoy products that feel like a second wave of plant-based meat – more indulgent, high-quality, culinary, versatile, and tasty.”

The target consumer is explicit. “We want people to understand this is new meat,” he says. “We’re not trying to get vegans to eat more of our products – we want people
who buy meat to choose ours instead. That’s tough, and it’s never really happened before.”

If Redefine Meat’s product philosophy is crisp, its social aim is unambiguous. Ben-Shitrit is direct about what success should mean for the world his sons will inherit. “When people talk about sustainability, it’s usually framed in terms of emissions – how much CO₂ you save, or how much water you save,” he says. “But for me, on a personal and impact level, it’s about animals. It’s really hard to comprehend the scale of the industry today – around 300 million cows slaughtered every year. I hope my kids will live in a world where we simply need fewer cows, where we kill fewer animals each year.”

Meat, in this telling, is a cultural constant. The variable is method. “We don’t want people to stop eating meat, and I don’t want to convince anyone that meat itself is bad. What we want is to give people an option,” he says. “The way to get there is to tell people: meat is good, we’ve just changed how it’s made.”

That change will not happen by rhetoric. It will happen by taste memories formed at tables and passed across generations. “Kids already understand this,” he says. “If you tell them, ‘This is made from plants, this is made from animals’, most will pick the plant option. For people who have eaten animal meat for 30, 40, 50 years, it’s harder. But when they do try it, many are surprised.”

From taste to policy

The surprise is what opens minds. Ben-Shitrit tells a story that is both playful and pointed, a reminder that taste can do what lectures cannot. “What I’d put on the plate is easy,” he says when asked who he would serve to win the argument. “I love cooking our products, but I especially love cooking our pulled meat. It’s so meaty, so tasty, and so easy to prepare. It’s also highly nutritious. For me, it’s the killer dish. Usually, I make it in a tortilla – you get a rich, indulgent, meaty experience.”

There is a politician he has in mind for that plate. “As for who I’d serve it to, I think world leaders need to understand this isn’t a fight against culture or heritage – it’s just delicious food,” he says. “So yes, let’s have President Trump try a Redefine Meat steak. Although I’ll admit, I don’t cook our steak quite as well as I cook pulled meat. So maybe imagine a beef-style taco in the White House.”

It is a mischievous vision with a hard policy edge. “And from there – why not make the ‘deal of the century’? Redefine Meat subsidized at least as much as the beef industry in the USA.”

The laughter line lands, but the intent is serious. If the real competition is the animal’s remarkable but costly bioconversion, then the answer is not to shame people out
of meat. It is to beat the cow on performance where it counts for the planet, while matching the cow on performance where it counts for the palate. Do that, and culture will meet science halfway.

Between those endpoints, Ben-Shitrit keeps circling back to the same test. Tell the story you like, pitch the vision you like, raise the capital you like. None of it matters if the bite does not land. “Everything we do today is guided by the consumer biting into our product,” he says. “What matters is delivering a product that convinces people.”

He knows the work is not finished. He is comfortable saying it out loud. The company will keep listening to chefs. It will keep pressing its portfolio to set new benchmarks. It will keep earning trust one pack at a time in retail. And it will keep insisting that the future of meat belongs on the plate, not just in slide decks.

“My goal isn’t just that we succeed in what we set out to do – it’s that we also succeed in things we never imagined possible,” he says. “I think people will come to understand that you can enjoy great meat without compromising the planet or your health.”

That reads like an ending, but Ben-Shitrit leaves one more line that snaps the purpose into focus. “I don’t eat meat myself, but I believe our species enjoys eating meat,” he says. “When you deliver that experience in the right way, people will enjoy our products, want to eat them more, and keep coming back.”

It is a fitting conclusion for a company that refuses to define success by the novelty of its process. The measure is joy on the tongue, multiplied across millions of meals,
until the way we make meat has changed and the word meat still means what it always has.

‍