Last updated: 16-07-2026

Lucas Metsaars on Positioning, Pricing, and Placing Hybrid Foods in European Retail

Lucas Metsaars, business development manager at Aviko Rixona, argues hybrid foods win or lose on three retail decisions: whether the word "hybrid" appears on pack, whether cost savings reach the shelf price, and whether the product sits in the meat aisle or a separate plant-based bay. His public commentary across trade press and LinkedIn treats these as a connected strategy, not three isolated marketing choices.

Metsaars has spent his career moving between plant-based and hybrid formulation, from Bonduelle to PLANT B Egg to Aviko Rixona's Potato Cheezz and TexaPure ingredient lines. That commercial vantage point, selling ingredients into retailer and manufacturer reformulation projects, shapes a retail argument that is unusually specific for a LinkedIn commentator: he names the lever, the retailer, and the risk of getting it wrong.

Positioning: Why "Hybrid" Stays Off the Pack

Metsaars' central positioning claim is that hybrid products are already common on Dutch shelves but rarely labelled as such, because retailers fear a negative consumer reaction to the word "hybrid." In his interview with Levensmiddelenkrant, he named Lidl, Dirk, and Poiesz as the first Dutch chains to actively introduce hybrid mince, while noting most other hybrid listings go uncommunicated. He expects the category to keep growing into dairy and fish precisely because silent positioning avoids the backlash retailers dread. That tension between silent scaling and transparent category building is exactly what the Strategic Consumer Challenge session with Lidl and Wageningen University at Hybrid Foods Europe is built to resolve.

Pricing: The Beknibbelflatie Test

On pricing, Metsaars' rule is direct: if hybrid formulation lowers production cost, retailers must pass that saving to the shelf price, or risk being accused of "beknibbelflatie," shrinkflation dressed up as sustainability. This is a pricing-integrity argument as much as a commercial one. The most recent Eiweet Monitor, published by the Green Protein Alliance and ProVeg Nederland, found the combined animal-plant product category, which includes hybrid formats, grew in 2025 even as overall plant-based share slipped slightly to 42.6 percent, evidence that hybrid is scaling in volume ahead of full transparency on pricing (Eiweet Monitor 2025, via eiwittrends.nl). Metsaars' pricing rule is the retailer-side complement to the ingredient-cost story Circana tracks across European plant-based and hybrid demand; the Circana session on demand trends at Hybrid Foods Europe covers the same pricing data from the category-forecasting side.

Placing: Rethinking the Meat Aisle by Use, Not Species

Metsaars has highlighted PLUS Retail's shelf reorganisation as the clearest placing signal in Dutch retail: PLUS now groups meat by product use, mince with mince, sausage with sausage, rather than by species, and integrates meat alternatives directly into that reorganised aisle. The stated aim is to reach flexitarian shoppers who decide what to cook only once they are in the store, and convenience-led shelf logic makes a hybrid or plant-based swap an easier in-aisle decision than a separate destination bay would. This placement argument connects directly to the regulatory naming, claims, and labelling session at Hybrid Foods Europe, where FarmDairy, Eurofins, and ProVeg address how far retailers can go in blending categories before EU naming rules intervene.

Promotion Discipline: Retiring Kiloknallers and Meat Leaflets

Metsaars credits Jumbo's 2024 decision to stop discount-driven fresh meat promotions, so-called "kiloknallers," as a more consequential move than any single hybrid product launch, arguing no retailer hits a 50 percent plant-based protein target while still running meat and dairy leaflets at the same intensity as before. He has been publicly critical that no other major Dutch chain followed Jumbo's lead. The Eiweet Monitor 2025 lends this some support: it found meat and dairy still dominate consumption, offer, and marketing focus, and that supermarkets took comparatively few large-scale promotional measures in 2025 versus prior years.

Comparison: The Three Levers, As Metsaars Frames Them

Take-Home Messages

Commercial

• Silent hybrid positioning may be scaling volume, but it limits the pricing transparency retailers need to defend margin decisions.

• Cost savings from hybrid formulation should reach the shelf price, or retailers risk a beknibbelflatie backlash.

• Shelf reorganisation by use rather than species is a low-cost lever brand owners can pitch into category reviews now.

• Promotion intensity on meat and dairy works against stated 2030 protein-ratio targets, per Metsaars and the Eiweet Monitor.

  
  

Technical

• Hybrid formats increasingly sit inside the combined animal-plant product category tracked by Eiweet, not the plant-based core category.

• EU naming and labelling rules constrain how far placement integration (meat aisle blending) can go without mislabelling risk.

• Ingredient cost reduction from hybrid formulation is the mechanism that makes the pricing argument viable in the first place.

• Category-level sales data from Circana and Eiweet both show hybrid volume growth outpacing full plant-based share gains in 2025.

  
  

Verdict & Next Step

Gerard Klein Essink's advisory work with Protein Industries Canada has shown the same pattern Metsaars describes in Dutch retail: ingredient economics move shelf price faster than sustainability messaging ever does. Metsaars' three-lever framework, positioning, pricing, placing, gives retailers and brand owners a concrete checklist rather than another appeal to consumer values. The same positioning, pricing, and placement questions sit at the centre of the retail and food service track at Hybrid Foods Europe, Van der Valk Zuidas, Amsterdam, 14-16 September 2026. Places on that track are filling ahead of the September dates. Register now to bring these three levers into the room with the retailers and category managers deciding them.

About Gerard Klein Essink

Gerard Klein Essink is Founder & CEO of FoodConNext Foundation. He has run an international plant-based foods and proteins community for more than 20 years, published numerous industry reports, and written innovation reports on proteins for the Dutch government. He has advised the Canadian government on its pulse strategy, produced strategic outlook reports for Pulse Canada and the Australian Grains Research & Development Corporation, and leads FoodConNext Foundation's 100+ member Global Research Ecosystem. He has led multiple Horizon EU protein-transition projects, including Metaphor, Prominent, Plenitude, Profuture, HealthFerm, and Giant Leaps, and spoke at the European Parliament and European Commission in June 2026.

About FoodConNext Foundation

At FoodConNext Foundation, we believe that the future of food lies at the intersection of innovation, sustainability, and global collaboration. Our foundation is dedicated to accelerating the transition toward more resilient and responsible food systems by connecting key stakeholders across the agri-food ecosystem.

Our Mission

FoodConNext Foundation exists to bridge gaps in the global food system — bringing together entrepreneurs, researchers, policymakers, and investors to co-create solutions that address some of the world's most pressing challenges, including food security, sustainability, and nutrition.