“If We All Ate Seven Meals a Week without Meat, Our Carbon Footprint Would Change Immeasurably”

Why Now, A Resonance Test Podcast, 1: Ayr Muir

Pull up a seat, sit down, and prepare to devour the first course of Why Now, a production of EPAM Continuum’s Resonance Test podcast. Why Now, which is hosted by our Megan Welker, explores the relationship between cultural trends and disruptive innovations.

Our first topic: the rise of alternative proteins. You can’t go out for a meal today without bumping into Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods somewhere on the menu. Why are meat-based meats seeing all this competition? To dig into the context, we asked Ayr Muir, Founder and CEO of Clover Food Lab, the Boston-based vegetarian food chain that’s been hawking Impossible meatball sandwiches since 2017: Why now? Muir was refreshingly open in his responses. “We're in the food industry, and I think it's the most dishonest industry,” he said, adding that “It's a space where there's a lot of opportunity for creating real relationships. I think you have to start with trust to do that.” In the process, we learned what goes into Impossible meatballs and what they do for his business, the value of publicizing one’s mistakes, and the ways in which our food choices today are really about “voting for a certain future.” Curious to learn more? Listen to Why Now—now.