Beyond Meat, Inc. is a Los Angeles–based producer of plant-based meat substitutes founded in 2009 by Ethan Brown. The company's initial products were launched in the United States in 2012. The company went public in 2019, becoming the first plant-based meat analogue company to go public.

A meat alternative or meat substitute, is a food product made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients, eaten as a replacement for meat. Meat alternatives typically approximate qualities of specific types of meat, such as mouthfeel, flavor, appearance, or chemical characteristics. Plant- and fungus-based substitutes are frequently made with soy, but may also be made from wheat gluten as in seitan, pea protein as in the Beyond Burger, or mycoprotein as in Quorn. Alternative protein foods can also be made by precision fermentation, where single cell organisms such as yeast produce specific proteins using a carbon source; as well as cultivated or laboratory grown, based on tissue engineering techniques.