Unlocking the value and transitional purpose of plant-based meat alternative companies in the German market

•Meat alternative firms‘ transitional ambitions are critical for sustainable diets.•Firms mostly do not orient activities to comprehensive ideals of sustainable diets.•Firms mostly seek to change how “meat” is being supplied.•Firms mostly do not seek to change consumer demand beyond meat alternatives.•Meat alternatives’ potential to enable sustainable diets merits further attention. Meat-free foodstuffs that emulate key properties of meat, meat alternatives, are portrayed as instruments to contribute to a dietary transition towards more protein from non-animal sources, a protein transition. Although they promise the large audience of meat-eating consumers easy sustainability gains, truly sustainable diets require changes beyond the replacement of animal by other proteins, a full-fledged protein transition. Meat-alternative companies are in a central position to support and to shape the form of the protein transition. So far, however, it is not entirely clear for “how much transition” enterprises actually aim, what activities they engage in to get there, and what limits their efforts. Our research contributes to elucidating these questions. Drawing from the concept of organizational purpose and from sustainability marketing scholarship, we investigate the transitional purpose of companies in the German market for plant-based meat alternatives. Through a series of semi-structured interviews and by studying the websites of key firms, we find that enterprises indeed largely aim for a protein transition, which replaces meat by meat-like substitutes. Also, there seems to be little company activity to facilitate dietary changes at the level of consumers or society. Nonetheless, our work indicates that wider changes are possible - e.g., even firms’ standard marketing activity could stimulate changes. In doing so, it lines out a path for future research that could help to better assess the potential role of meat-alternative businesses for a full-fledged protein transition.