If Ethan Brown gets his way, within the next few years, his now-tween kids will drive themselves to McDonald’s, Burger King or Wendy’s to order a plant-based burger made by his company, Beyond Meat.

Brown founded Beyond Meat in 2009 to present consumers with a good alternative to meat to solve one of the biggest problems facing the world today: climate change. That’s based on the fact that one of the biggest choices an individual can make toward helping the planet isn’t buying an electrical vehicle, but cutting down their consumption of animals. It’s a topic Brown had been intimately familiar with, as he spent part of his youth helping his dad on the family’s Maryland milk farm.

“With that exposure and interest in clean tech and climate, I thought that I could solve things that I cared about by focusing on protein in the plate.”  

After years of experimenting with the process on imported plant protein from Taiwan, the company released its first product, Chicken-Free Strips, which landed on the shelves of northern California Whole Foods stores in 2012. The product proved to be a hit, and started selling in other Whole Foods regions. Now Beyond Meat’s product offerings include a plant-based beef crumble, burger and a sausage, which debuted in December.

The company has caught the eyes of big-name investors, including Bill Gates – who wrote he “couldn’t tell the difference” between Beyond Meat and real chicken – Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and Tyson Foods, which purchased a five percent stake in the company in 2016.

Beyond Meat’s products are now available at more than 19,000 retail stores and restaurants nationwide, with the burger specifically available in the meat case at more than 5,000 grocery stores and on the menu at more than 4,000 hotels and restaurants.

“We have to use technology to get us on a path to a solution. The second thing about coming from the energy sector is that I’m not afraid to spend a lot of money on research and development. Why are we spending so much money on lithium ion batteries for cars and so little money on creating plant-based meat? That’s a mistake, and we’re trying to remedy that.”

“Don’t follow the herd. The problem with venture investing is there’s so much of that going on. Really marinate in the problem, try to figure out exactly what you’re trying to solve and how you uniquely can help solve that. Stick to a problem that you feel personal about because then you’ll work hardest to solve it.”

From Entrepreneur.com