Plant-based egg company cuts labor to grow profitability

Plant-based company Eat Just Inc. is cutting approximately 18% of its workforce in its JUST Egg division.

Meredith Johnson Headshot
Courtesy of JUST Inc.
Courtesy of JUST Inc.

Plant-based company Eat Just Inc. is cutting approximately 18% of its workforce in its JUST Egg division.

The cut will affect over 40 employees, mostly in the U.S., across the company’s JUST Egg sector, explained Eat Just Chief Executive Officer Josh Tetrick in an interview with Bloomberg.

Despite JUST Egg’s sales volume and household penetration being at their highest levels to date, the company’s egg product portfolio is not currently profitable.

According to Tetrick, there are many other ongoing initiatives in the company to increase profitability, in addition to the layoffs, including efforts to cut spending on ingredients, consolidating operations and increasing production efficiency.

“We should be at the place where it’s (the division) able to operate profitability without the need for any external capital,” Tetrick stated.

According to food industry journalism company FoodDive, JUST Egg has sold the plant-based equivalent of about 360 million eggs since it launched, and sales were up by 85% during the last 12 months. This is most likely due to the U.S.’s highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak that caused the depopulation of over 43 million layers. 

Because it takes time for producers to repopulate their flocks, the egg supply has been under pressure, which has been reflected in current egg prices at the grocery store over the last several months.

Andrew Noyes, Eat Just Head of Global Communications and Public Affairs said to FoodDive, “Given the economic environment, we need to focus even more on building a high-impact company for the long-term, one where JUST Egg sales can fund our work in the future.” 

“This difficult decision, along with cost reduction measures across our upstream and downstream operations, is necessary to make that happen,” Noyes added.

Other plant-based companies are laying off employees

In February 2023, plant-based protein company Impossible Foods announced it was cutting 132 jobs in California, affecting 20% of the company’s overall workforce. The layoffs are expected to take place April 11.

This will be the second round of layoffs for the company in the last year. In October 2022, Impossible Foods reduced its workforce by 6% as part of a company reorganization to support its future growth. 

Page 1 of 358
Next Page