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Starbucks to debut Beyond Meat products on new China menu

Beyond Meat's cowless beef products will officially be available at Starbucks cafes in China starting Wednesday.

Sareena Dayaram Senior Editor
Sareena is a senior editor for CNET covering the mobile beat including device reviews. She is a seasoned multimedia journalist with more than a decade's worth of experience producing stories for television and digital publications across Asia's financial capitals including Singapore, Hong Kong, and Mumbai. Prior to CNET, Sareena worked at CNN as a news writer and Reuters as a producer.
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Starbucks  introduces a new menu in China that will feature Beyond Meat burgers and pastas for the first time.

Screenshot/ Beyond Meat

Starbucks' menus in China will feature Beyond Meat products for the first time beginning Wednesday.

The world's largest coffee chain said it's rolling out a new vegetarian menu across most Starbucks locations that will include pastas and wraps made with Beyond Meat's plant-based beef products, according to a statement. It will also add a meatless pork alternative known as Omnipork and a popular non dairy milk called Oatley.

It comes as Starbucks has reopened a large majority of its roughly 4,300 stores in China, where the coronavirus outbreak appears to be slowing down. 

Read more:  Plant-based pig out: This startup is making pork that's better for the planet

Through its launch with Starbucks, Beyond Meat has entered the China market for the first time. The Los Angeles-based company has shown interest in expanding into Asia, where modern plant-based meat products are not as widely available as in the US or Europe. 

Plant-based meat makers like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods market their products as more sustainable and environmentally friendly than conventional meat. They're hoping to convince meat eaters around the world to reduce their consumption of meat or ditch it entirely in favor of a plant-based diet amid rising awareness of climate change.

As part of the launch, Beyond Meat says it has launched a Chinese-language website  and plans to take advantage of popular social media channels in China like WeChat and Weibo.