Vegan at Walmart: Own-Brand Chicken Patties and Tenders Hit the Shelves

You can now buy own-brand Walmart vegan chicken products.

Walmart just added even more vegan products to its affordable Great Value range. These include vegan meat “chick’n” patties and tenders, as well as the “original” beef-style veggie burger and a chipotle black bean patty.

All four products are high in protein, with the vegan chicken containing 12g per serving and the veggie burger and black bean burger containing 18g and 10g, respectively. The chicken patties and tenders combine wheat protein, faba bean protein, pea fiber, and chickpeas to create their nutritional profile and texture.

The Great Value range offers affordable food options, in addition to its new chicken products, Walmart also stocks three varieties of Great Value vegan cheese.

Other U.S. supermarkets, including both Kroger and Target, produce a variety of private label vegan products, with plant-based patties and meat some of the most common alongside milk and other “dairy” products.

Walmart, chicken, and demand for vegan meat

A report by market research firm MarketsandMarkets predicts that the global vegan meat market could be worth $8.3 billion by the year 2025. And as demand for plant-based meat increases, Walmart is not the only company to recognize vegan chicken as a particular area of potential future growth.

In the U.S., LikeMeat’s vegan chicken launched at Sprouts Farmers Market earlier this month with four distinct products: grilled, BBQ, pieces, and nuggets. Even Disney is getting involved in the vegan chicken sector, and introduced Morningstar Farm’s Mickey Mouse-shaped nuggets (also stocked by Walmart) in September last year.

Vegan chicken is coming t fast-food chains, too, and Next Level Burger’s owners recently announced plans to launch a thousand plant-based chicken restaurants over the next 10 years. While KFC — the most popular fried chicken brand in the U.S. — has now trialed vegan chicken at various locations nationwide.

According to the USDA, the average American eats approximately 98 pounds of chicken per year, and poultry is currently the second most widely consumed meat in the world. But while plant-based beef products are already widespread, the chicken sector is catching up.

According to an image shared by the Instagram page Big Box Vegan, the new Walmart vegan options cost around $3 per 283g box (with the chicken patties coming in at $2.98).