Welcome to the Beyond Meat, Inc. 2021 first quarter conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the one followed by the four on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star and zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Fitzhugh Taylor of ICR. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome. On today's call are Ethan Brown, founder, president, and chief executive officer of Beyond Meat, and Lubi Kutua, the company's vice president of FP&A and investor relations. By now, everyone should have access to the company's first quarter earnings press release and investor presentation filed today after market close. These documents are available on the investor relations section of Beyond Meat's website at www.beyondmeat.com. Before we begin, please note that all of the information presented on today's call is unaudited, and during the course of this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements.
Forward-looking statements in the earnings release that we issued today, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today and will not be updated as actual events unfold. Please refer to today's press release, the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2020, the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 3rd, 2021, to be filed with the SEC, and other filings with the SEC for a detailed discussion of the risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made today. Please also note that on today's call, management will refer to adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income or loss, which are non-GAAP financial measures.
While we believe these non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information for investors, the presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Please refer to today's press release or the investor presentation for a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income or loss to their most comparable GAAP measures. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Ethan Brown. Ethan?
Thank you, Fitz, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I dive into our business highlights, let me begin with a few comments on Mark Nelson, our Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer for the past five and a half years. Though Mark will stay on as advisor to me, yesterday, as planned, he officially transitioned from the role of CFO at Beyond Meat. I and Beyond Meat have benefited greatly from Mark's leadership during a critical time in our growth. His impeccable integrity, his expansive knowledge of and great facility with all financial matters, large and small, his tireless work ethic and operational bent were just some of what recommends Mark. Mark worked side by side with me throughout so many important moments in our history, and no matter the background noise, he delivered.
Mark is also a close friend of mine, and as such, I hope he will not mind me sharing an example of his legendary personal frugality. The office Mark chose is across the hall from a small kitchenette here at our headquarters. I love poking my head in when grabbing water or the like. I felt as if I was getting a glimpse of a CFO in his natural habitat. Larger than a closet but smaller than a freshman single, Mark's office had the elements of survival, but little more. His own small coffee pot, a fan, a dog bed, a desk with four skinny legs, and two chairs. All he needed was a few posters, and I would've felt like I was back in a dorm room, which is how I referred to his office.
I'm going to miss Mark in the day-to-day excitement of building our business, and I'm glad we will have his continued support as an advisor. We've run a robust process to identify Mark's successor, and I will make that announcement in the coming weeks. Before I dive into Q1 2021 results, I'd like to share some broader thoughts on context. We've spent the last year investing heavily in our business, establishing infrastructure, personnel, innovation capabilities, partnerships, and product pipeline against our long-term growth and market share objectives. More specifically, we are making a series of investments here in the U.S., in the EU, and in China to be in a position to serve customers and consumers alike and apply increasing pressure on the three key levers of taste, health, and cost that we believe are critical for mass adoption.
Making these sizable investments during a period of serious disruption to important segments of our business impacts our operating margin and important metrics such as gross margin through higher fixed overhead. These outcomes are not unexpected and are a direct result of our belief that it makes little sense to limit our ability to capture future growth due to transient pandemic conditions. We will continue to make such investments, and I'm grateful for all of our team members who work so diligently to keep building our foundation through such a tumultuous time.
Whether it is our ability to compete and win here in the U.S., as evidenced by our leadership position in retail or NPD food service, or in the EU, as indicated by a prestigious win for the Beyond Burger, the strength and breadth of our partnerships with global quick serve restaurants and so many valued retail and food service customers. The latest release of our Beyond Burger 3.0 with its taste and nutrition gains, along with exciting new product launch around the corner, the sizable investments we're making in production infrastructure here in the U.S., EU, and China, our joint venture with PepsiCo, The PLANeT Partnership, and finally, the resources we are adding to the Manhattan Beach Project as we build out our new corporate campus, I have never been more optimistic about the future of Beyond Meat.
It is with this optimism that I am pleased to share that we are seeing enough stability in recent trends to cautiously resume offering near-term guidance, beginning with net revenue for Q2 2021. We, of course, take this step with the understanding that should there be a resurgence of COVID here in the U.S. or in any of our most important economies, we will need to revisit our guidance. Let me now turn to our first quarter highlights. Our first quarter net revenues of $108 million met our internal plan, representing an 11% year-over-year increase. This, despite cycling a quarter that largely proceeded, and as such, was unscathed by COVID-19's disruption of the economy and our business. As noted, we are encouraged by the trends we saw in Q1 revenue. Retail net revenues led our growth, increasing 45% year-over-year.
Although food service net revenues were down 34% versus the prior-year period, the sector appears to be showing directional early signs of recovery from COVID-19. In U.S. retail, each of our key brand metrics of household penetration, buyer rates, purchase frequency, and repeat rates continued to advance. According to SPINS IRI consumer panel data for the 52 weeks ended March 28, 2021, U.S. household penetration for the Beyond Meat brand increased to 5.4%, representing a 10-basis point increase sequentially and 100-basis point increase versus a year ago. Our buyer rate, which ranks highest among all plant-based meat brands in U.S. retail, increased 5% sequentially and approximately 54% versus the prior-year. Purchase frequency was up 3% sequentially and 37% versus the prior-year. Finally, our repeat rate increased to 56.9% versus 55.3% as of Q4 and 44.8% a year ago.
This consistent strengthening across each of these metrics continues to drive our position as the number one brand in refrigerated plant-based meat. Consistent with the strength of these metrics, our net revenues in U.S. retail of $63.8 million were up 28% year-over-year. This performance reflects growth in the sales of Beyond Beef and club pack burgers, as well as contributions from new products, primarily breakfast sausage patties and meatballs. In terms of consumer takeaway, according to SPINS data for U.S. multi-outlet and natural and specialty channels for the 12-week period ended March 21st, 2021, sales of Beyond Meat products were up 16% year-over-year, while the plant-based meat category as a whole was up 6%, contributing to a 160-basis point year-over-year increase in market share for the Beyond Meat brand.
Across MULO, for the same 12-week period, our total distribution points, or TDPs, increased 46% year-over-year, driven by growth in total outlets, as well as the introduction of new items, including the Cookout Classic, Beyond Meatballs, and Beyond Breakfast Sausage Links. As a reminder, while increasing TDTs is a good sign for our long-term sales growth in retail, it typically exerts near-term downward pressure on velocity. In Our case, we saw a roughly 18% year-over-year decline. Turning to international retail, we saw continued momentum in the first quarter of 2021, with net revenues up 189% year-over-year. To put that in context, our first quarter net revenues of $17.2 million in international retail were nearly half of our entire 2020 revenues for that segment. As in the U.S., this growth is driven by the strength of our product quality.
For example, in Germany, the Beyond Burger was recently rated the number one plant-based burger by the renowned Stiftung Warentest organization. This organization is the most prominent consumer advocate group in Germany, originally established by the German Federal Parliament to help consumers by providing objective information on certain goods and services. It enjoys over 97% consumer awareness in Germany and was recently determined to have the highest trust among the population from the 20 most important labels in Germany, according to the Label Monitor 2020 survey. This award was followed by German consumers ranking Beyond Meat in the top five of all innovative companies, according to market research performed for Handelsblatt, a leading German newspaper. More generally, our global progress is driven by increases in both the breadth and depth of our distribution as we enter new doors and add new SKUs to existing outlets.
Regarding our distribution footprint in international retail, we recently transitioned away from a sales and distribution partner in Germany who relied heavily on discounting and limited time placements. This transition, which will better position us for sustained growth in this important market, resulted in what we believe is a largely temporary 10,000 location reduction of our total reported outlets compared to Q4 2020. We've since added our own in-country sales manager and brought on a new distribution partner as part of our overall strategy for certain EU countries. Meanwhile, we have continued to advance distribution gains across the U.K., Austria, Switzerland, and Australia. In Germany, as we layer in more strategic stores, totaling approximately 2,400 new retail outlets for Beyond Meat products during Q1 2021.
Now turning to food service, where Q1 2021 reflects COVID-19's continued impact on away-from-home eating generally, and specifically the segments therein where we are most active. These COVID-related dynamics aside, Beyond Meat continues to hold the number one brand position in terms of dollar sales for our category in U.S. food service, according to NPD data. As a reminder, NPD captures broad line distribution food service sales, generally excluding large chains and other direct shipment customers. Sales of Beyond Meat products were down 22% year-over-year in the quarter, which was roughly in line with the overall category's 20% decline during the same period. This decline reflects the sizable percent of our business that is tied to independent operators, lodging facilities, and recreation venues, and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on these venues.
In aggregate, across food service channels, our U.S. food service net revenues were down 26% year-over-year, as the business continues to contend with weaker away-from-home demand stemming from COVID-19. However, consistent with the slow and steady thaw that we saw throughout Q1, we were up 9% sequentially in U.S. food service from Q4 2020 to Q1 2021. In international food service, net revenues were down 44% year-over-year in the first quarter, as the impact of COVID-19 continues to weigh on food service demand, and in many cases, lockdown restrictions in certain international markets remain more severe than the U.S. Let me now provide a brief update on key strategic initiatives that are, as one might expect, centered around our core levers of taste, nutrition, and cost. First and foremost, as you are likely aware, last week we announced the launch of the latest version of our iconic Beyond Burger.
This 3.0 version delivers on our promise of constantly improving the taste and sensory experience of our products while also seeking to further their health benefits. The 3.0 improvements in flavor and juiciness have been validated through extensive consumer testing, where likability scores have been on par with 80/20 ground beef burgers, and from a nutritional perspective, the new burger contains 35% less saturated and total fat compared to 80/20 ground beef, fewer calories and no cholesterol, and a B vitamin mineral micronutrient profile that is comparable to beef. Of course, sticking to our brand innovation guardrails, our latest burger contains no GMOs or bioengineered ingredients. The 3.0 burger patties began to arrive on store shelves earlier this week and will be sold in our familiar two-pack, as well as our first-ever value four-pack, as we continue our march toward price parity and beyond.
Later this summer, our one-pound ground beef pack with the new 3.0 recipe will also become available throughout retail, with both 3.0 products launching at our U.S. food service partners beginning in June. As we have previously mentioned, and consistent with the importance of human health to our mission, we expect to introduce a second Beyond Burger patty option with fully less than half the saturated fat of 80/20 beef later this year. Our goal with the second patty option is to provide consumers with even greater choice, not unlike the presentation of animal beef with 80/20 and 90/10 cuts. We are supporting the launch of 3.0 with an ambitious marketing program to tell the story of this latest burger's great taste and health advantages.
Specific examples of our 3.0 marketing efforts include our recent mobile pop-ups in select U.S. cities that offered consumers free, exclusive first taste of the new product ahead of its in-store availability, increased social media activity to build consumer awareness and excitement, shopper marketing programs to incentivize consumer trial, among others. Second, we are accompanying the 3.0 launch with the announcement of the plant-based diet initiative at Stanford University School of Medicine. We are establishing and funding this five-year initiative to support peer-reviewed, clinically significant studies on the health implications of a plant-based diet, including plant-based meat. This project will inform Beyond Meat's rapid and relentless innovation initiative and our efforts to continue to optimize taste and health, while importantly assisting in the establishment of a publicly accessible repository of peer-reviewed data and literature on the health benefits of plant-based meats.
Third, we are investing significant focus and spend against our goal of achieving price parity for underpricing animal protein in at least one of our product categories by the end of 2024. We are attacking this objective internally as well as leveraging the support of external global resources that bring many decades of COGS optimization experience to bear in partnership with us. Specific investments and activities include the establishment of more localized production within close proximity of our highest priority markets, more integrated end-to-end production processes across a greater proportion of our manufacturing network, scale-driven efficiencies in procurement and fixed cost absorption, further diversification of our core protein ingredient supply chain, continued improvements in throughput across our manufacturing network, certain product and process innovations and reformulations, and packaging optimization.
Clearly, a critical component of our cost down effort is scale. I'll take a moment here to elaborate more fully on our strategic investments in capacity in the U.S. and abroad. We are continuing to optimize commercial production at the Pennsylvania plant we acquired late last year, and in support of strategic QSR customers in our retail business, we are adding new lines in our Columbia, Missouri facilities. As recently announced, we've commenced full commercial production at our new facility in Jiaxing, China. This new plant represents our first end-to-end production facility outside of the U.S., coming just one year after our initial entry into mainland China. I'm extremely proud of our operations team and our China management, who worked so hard to achieve this significant milestone despite travel constraints and other COVID-related barriers.
We expect the Jiaxing facility to significantly speed our path to market while improving our cost structure and the sustainability of our operations in China. As discussed, we are pursuing the same playbook in the EU, where the construction phase of our new facility in the Netherlands is largely complete. We have been conducting production trial runs over the past several weeks and look forward to full commercial production in the near future. As in China, we expect this local production to make a strong contribution to our cost down and sustainability objectives for the EU. In both economies, the EU and China, we are making investments in strong local teams to further accelerate and help manage our growth therein.
As noted, these forward investment and activities have an impact on today's operating expenses and where we are growing into infrastructure gross margin, but are important pillars in support of long-term cost down and growth alike. Finally, in early March, we completed, under highly attractive terms, our largest capitalization transaction yet. We closed a billion-dollar convertible senior notes offering with a final aggregate principal amount of $1.15 billion after the exercise of the greenshoe option. Net of fees and a simultaneously capped call transaction we entered into, the deal raised $1.04 billion in net proceeds for Beyond Meat. We see a rapidly growing global market for plant-based meats. We recognize our first-mover position, and we will leverage these proceeds to accelerate our capture of market share.
I've touched on many of these initiatives today, thematically or specifically, yet given their importance to our investment strategy and future growth, I'll take a moment to summarize seven core buckets of activities. First, we will further our capacity expansion goals, both at existing and new production sites here in the U.S. and abroad. Second, we will expand the Manhattan Beach Project here in the U.S. and establish innovation centers in the EU and China with the goal of advancing the sensory performance of our existing platforms to other animal protein equivalents, exploring longer-term disruptive technologies and approaches, accelerating and broadening our product pipeline for retail and food service customers, and supporting our cost-down program through ingredient and process innovation.
Third, we will continue to build out of our new campus here in L.A., which will house, along with our headquarter operations, the Manhattan Beach Project and its customer-focused innovation centers. Fourth, we will further scale up and expand our commercialization activities, including our first fully dedicated pilot production facility here in the Los Angeles area. Fifth, we are launching our most aggressive cost-down initiatives yet with the goal of realizing a step-change reduction on a unit production cost within the next two to three years. Sixth, we'll be investing more heavily in our marketing activities around the taste and health attributes of our product lines. Seventh, we will continue to bring in talent required to strengthen critical areas in our business operations, both domestically and abroad.
In summary, we believe we are well poised to embark on our mission of driving the next phase of Beyond Meat's growth as we cross the bridge to mainstream consumption. With that, I'll turn it over to Lubi to walk through our first quarter financial results in a bit more detail.
Thank you, Ethan. Good afternoon, everyone. We achieved net revenues of $108.2 million in the first quarter of 2021, representing an increase of 11.4% compared to the first quarter of 2020. Growth in net revenues in the first quarter was driven by a 14% increase in volume sold, partially offset by lower net price realization. The latter was mainly driven by increased trade discounts relative to the prior year and, to a lesser extent, by product mix shifts as we sold a greater proportion of large pack items in retail, which carry a lower net price per unit volume. Overall, net price per pound was $5.70 in the first quarter of 2021, compared to $5.83 in Q1 2020. Looking at our distribution channels in aggregate, retail net revenues increased 45% year-over-year, while food service net revenues were down 34% versus the first quarter of 2020.
In retail, our volume of products sold increased 52% year-over-year, driven by growth in the number of distribution points and contribution from new products. Overall, across U.S. and international retail, net revenue per pound was lower by approximately 5% year-over-year due to increased trade discounts and product mix shifts. In food service, net revenues declined 34% year-over-year as we continue to experience weaker demand due to the ongoing impact of COVID-19. We will face an easier year-over-year comparison in the second quarter of 2021, however, and therefore expect to see year-over-year growth in our sales to food service customers. On a sequential basis in the first quarter of 2021, sales to food service customers continued their steady, albeit moderate, recovery from the Q2 2020 trough.
Although we generally expect continued sequential improvement in our food service business as more of the population gets vaccinated and economic activity reopens, we still anticipate that recovery in our food service business will generally lag the broader food service sector given our exposure to certain channels that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Gross profit during the quarter was $32.7 million, or 30.2% of net revenues, compared to $37.7 million or 38.8% of net revenues in the first quarter of 2020. The year-over-year decrease in gross margin was primarily driven by higher transportation and warehousing costs, which reduced gross margin by approximately 350 basis points.
Lower net realized price, which represented a 150 basis point drag, higher depreciation expense, a 140 basis point drag, and increased fixed overhead costs, roughly a 100 basis point drag. With regard to transportation and warehousing costs, the year-over-year increase was driven by higher lane rates as well as higher inventory levels, particularly for pea protein, as we aggregated larger quantities of pea protein due to 2020 volume shortfalls, primarily in our food service business. We have mentioned before, we do not foresee any inventory obsolescence issues related to pea protein, given its long shelf life, and we are gradually beginning to drive down these inventory levels as our revenue growth recovers. For the increases in depreciation and fixed overhead expenses, the year-over-year increase was primarily attributable to our three newest production sites in Pennsylvania, China, and the Netherlands.
Operating expenses totaled $57.4 million or 53% of net revenues in the first quarter of 2021, as compared to $35.9 million or 37% of net revenues in the year ago period. The year-over-year increase in operating expenses primarily reflects a significant increase in production trial activities, increased headcount levels as we continue to build out our R&D capabilities and support our international expansion plans, higher customer freight costs, which are included in selling expenses, and higher share-based compensation expense. Net loss in the first quarter of 2021 was $27.3 million or $0.43 per common share, as compared to net income of $1.8 million or $0.03 per common share in the first quarter of 2020. Adjusted net loss, which excludes $1 million in expenses attributable to the early extinguishment of our former credit agreement, was $26.2 million or $0.42 per common share in the first quarter of 2021.
Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $10.8 million or 10% of net revenues in the first quarter of 2021 compared to adjusted EBITDA of $13.9 million or 14.3% of net revenue in Q1 2020. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow highlights, our cash and cash equivalent balance, as well as our total debt outstanding, was approximately $1.1 billion as of April 3rd, 2021. During the quarter, we completed a convertible senior notes offering with an aggregate principal amount of $1.15 billion after taking into account the exercise of a $150 million green shoe option. The convertible notes, which carry a 0% coupon, have a six-year maturity and a conversion price of approximately $206 per share of common stock.
In conjunction with the convertible notes offering, we also entered into a privately negotiated capped call transaction, which is generally expected to reduce potential dilution to our common stock up to a price of approximately $279.32 per share. Net of transaction fees and the capped call, the convertible senior notes offering generated approximately $1.04 billion in net proceeds for Beyond Meat. With respect to cash flow, for the three months ended April 3rd, 2021, net cash used in operating activities was $30.7 million, compared to $17.2 million for the prior year period. Capital expenditures totaled $23.4 million for the three months ended April 3rd, 2021, compared to $12.4 million for the prior year period. The increase in capital expenditures was primarily driven by continued investments in production equipment and facilities related to capacity expansion initiatives, primarily in China and the Netherlands.
Finally, with respect to our outlook for 2021, variability of customer demand levels, particularly in food service channels, remains elevated as a result of COVID-19 induced disruption. Given low visibility beyond a limited time horizon, we are continuing to refrain from providing full year financial guidance at this time. In order to provide some degree of visibility into our near-term outlook, we will now provide, on an interim basis, limited quarterly guidance for net revenues. To this end, for the second quarter of 2021, we expect net revenues to be in the range of $135 million-$150 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 19%-32% compared to the second quarter of 2020. As a reminder, recall that our second and third quarters are typically our strongest revenue quarters due to the summer grilling season.
However, softer aggregate demand levels in food service channels may partially offset this typical seasonality. I'll also remind you that we intend to continue our aggressive investment agenda in 2021, laying the foundation for our longer term growth by advancing our most critical strategic initiatives. As such, we continue to expect minimal operating expense leverage this year. While production trial costs tend to be highly variable from one period to another, keep in mind that sequentially, we typically step up our marketing activity in the second quarter as we enter the summer grilling season, and we will of course support the launch of our new 3.0 Burger with a robust campaign. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator to open it up for your questions. Thank you.
Thank you. If you would like to register a question, please press the one followed by the four on your telephone. You will hear a three-tone prompt to acknowledge your request. If your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw, please press the one and three. Our first question is from the line of Bryan Spillane with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. I guess just two questions from me. One, in terms of the launch of the 3.0, Ethan, I think you said that it's hitting store shelves now. Would you expect it to be fully in stock, I guess, for Memorial Day and Labor Day, so the big sort of grilling holidays? Will you be doing a lot more merchandising than maybe you normally do around that period?
Hey, Bryan. Good to hear your voice, appreciate the question and opportunity to talk about 3.0. Yes, we certainly planned this launch to make sure that we were locked in for the summer grilling season. Those dates were very meaningful to us as we pushed the team to finalize. You will see enhanced activity from us from a shopper marketing perspective. One of the things that's been challenging about COVID is the inability to do the robust sampling programs that we usually do. In this case, we have such high confidence in this 3.0 version, that we'd love to be doing that. We'll get at folks in other ways. You'll see promotional activity around 3.0. You'll see social media activity around it and other means of drawing consumer attention toward it.
It's a great advance in terms of the overall sensory experience as well as the nutrition, where we're lowering the total amount of fat. We keep the saturated fat at 35%, less than 80/20, added B vitamins and other micronutrients, so it's a similar profile to beef. Of course, no cholesterol and no GMOs. It's a very strong product, both living up to our promise to continue to improve toward the North Star of making it indistinguishable from animal protein, as well as offering health advantages to the consumer. So excited to hear reactions from it. So far, it's been very positive.
All right. Thanks for that. I guess just to follow, I know there was some guidance around 2Q, but there's going to be a lot of focus on gross margins. Forgetting about absolute EBITDA levels because there's some investment. Maybe Lubi, could you give us a little bit of perspective on how we should look at the first quarter as sort of maybe a benchmark for gross margins? Would they improve maybe off of that as we move through the year because you're going to have more of the sort of capacity in market in Europe and in China, and you're working through some of the inventory. Trying to get a sense for whether or not how we should look at the first quarter gross margins maybe as a benchmark for the balance of the year. Thank you.
Mr. Bryan , I'll have Lubi give more detail on this, but I wanted to set some context around margin. What we're doing now is we're continuing to expand the business for the opportunity ahead, and that relates to all of our strategic partners. It relates to the fact that we're in retail, we're doing very well, the total points of distribution, et cetera. We are running the business according to a plan that has not changed. It's only accelerated. Yet we're doing it in an environment where volume and throughput is contracted due to COVID. You're going to see the impact on margin there. What's interesting about this is, as we continue to expand both infrastructure and personnel to get at some of the scale-driven efficiencies and margin gains, there's obviously a temporary movement in the other direction, right?
That's normal, and that's something that we're very comfortable with, but I don't think it's something that is representative of the future in terms of where we're going on margin. Lubi can unpack kind of where those costs are, whether it's in warehousing or fixed overhead or depreciation, et cetera. That's the general picture that exists. So Lubi.
Sure, Bryan. As it relates to our gross margin performance in Q1, part of the reason why we are not offering specific, or we didn't want to get too specific with guidance around gross margins for Q2 is there's still a lot of uncertainty around the food service side of our business. That obviously can have a potentially significant impact on volumes, which is a large driver of the volume leverage that we get through our facilities. Without getting too specific, there's some things that impacted our margins in Q1, like the warehousing, for instance. We talked about that being impacted by the levels of pea protein that we have on hand. We talked about transportation costs being impacted. I think some of that will continue into the second quarter.
Of course, with the 3.0 product coming out in the second quarter as well, we are looking to support that with some robust marketing and promotional activity. There's a couple puts and takes in there. Like I said, we don't want to get too specific on margins, but I think looking at the first quarter and sort of layering on top those few things that I mentioned is how you should generally be thinking about it.
All right. Thanks, Lubi. Thanks, Ethan. Very helpful.
Yeah. Sure.
Our next question is from the line of Robert Moskow with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for the question.
Hi, Robert.
I hope you can hear me. Yeah, I hope you can give us a little more color on the distribution losses in Europe and how quickly can you regain placement. You're going to switch to a new distributor. Does that take several quarters? Along with that, when you look at your ramp-up from first quarter to second quarter in terms of your sales guide, how much of that assumes that you get a big pickup in food service demand, related either to Europe or even in the U.S.? It looked like you lost some outlets in the U.S. also, I think about 2,000. Maybe you can tell us what's in that assumption sequentially.
Sure. Good to hear from you, and good questions. Yeah, the distribution losses in EU are entirely related to the switching from a distributor and sales partner over there to a new system, putting in personnel of our own in Europe. This is part of a larger program that we have, I think, indicative of our ambition for not only the EU, but for China. We are setting up our own operations. These are very large markets. Obviously, they're very favorable for our products and value proposition. What we're doing is switching from the model we had to kind of feel these things out and get a sense of how well we'll do over there, to one where we're putting in very significant management and facilities, and our own sales team.
This is just a natural progression, kind of maturing of how we're approaching the EU market. I don't view this at all as something that's enduring. It'll be a short-term reduction in outlets. I think even since the quarter ended, I think we've added globally about 2,400 new spots. Those have occurred also in Europe. I don't know if you saw, I think you heard in the script that we've won a really prestigious award in Germany. In the consumer, I think they surveyed 10,000 German representative consumers for most innovative brands in the market, and I think Beyond was within the top five next to Tesla. I think we have a very strong brand resonance with the German consumer.
This was simply a transactional adjustment as we begin to invest more and more in our own team in the EU. You mentioned something about in the U.S. That adjustment on our distribution in the U.S. was really just driven by COVID impact. Those were independent operators that either have been closed or struggling in one way or the other. Did pick up really good partners in the U.S., had a terrific conversation this morning with one that I can't name, but very compelling partner. We will continue to see growth in the food service points of distribution in the U.S. and globally. There was a question on ramping up from Q1 to Q2 and how we thought about that relative to food service. I think just take a look-
Yeah.
at the food service contribution over the last, I'd say, three quarters. We're not expecting some massive uptick in activity there. You can start to sort of back out what the retail impact might be. What's so exciting, I think, for us, and it should be for shareholders, investors, is the numbers that we're committing ourselves to for the second quarter do not reflect any kind of massive onboarding by one of our strategic partners in the quick service restaurant space. This continues to be very good growth with both food service and retail partners that we have today and the products we have out today.
The bulk of it then is ramp up at retail. Does that also include new stores that you're getting into with Walmart and Target? I think there was a press release a few weeks back about that. Is that in those numbers, and is there maybe an inventory build related to that?
I appreciate you picking up on that. We have gotten some really good distribution wins across the first quarter, both in terms of getting new products placed at existing partners, as well as opening up just new stores in general. Whether it's Walmart, Kroger, Target, Wegmans, et cetera, here in the U.S., of course, the CVS win that we had. Even international, we continue to grow at Migros and Albert Heijn and Sainsbury's and things like that. Overall, you see this good expansion in retail, and I think the numbers year-over-year speaks to that, 45% year-over-year in our U.S.-international retail combined. The fact that international is up 189%, we're just kind of getting started, speaks, I think to, or should speak to why we're making on the ground investments in the EU and in China.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Yep. Thank you.
Our next question is from the line of Adam Samuelson with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks. Good afternoon, everyone.
Hey, Adam.
Hi. I guess my first question, Ethan, is thinking about the recent capital raise that you did, the $1.1 billion from the convert.
Right.
I guess I'm trying to wrap my head around what you're gonna be using the cash for, because you've been burning a little bit of cash. There's still some investment in the business, but the business model to date has been fairly capital light in terms of how much of your manufacturing and supply chain you actually bring in-house. The amount of investment that's implied with the amount of capital you brought in would imply there's a big step change about how you're structuring your production, your supply chain, and would just love to dive into that a little bit if you can provide any more color.
Yeah. No, thank you. It's a very good question, and I'll walk through kind of the key buckets, but I also want to walk through and set context for the overall philosophy of why we did this. This is truly a moment in time for our industry and for our brand. It's an opportunity to continue to lead the sector, continue to grow and push this value proposition out into the world. We wanted to be as well-capitalized as we could within reason and dilution, et cetera. What this does is it gives us the opportunity to continue to move at a pace that matches the opportunity.
If you look at the relationships we just signed with McDonald's and with Yum! B rands, if you look at a lot of the names that we've been active with even before COVID, and particularly before COVID in the QSR space, none of those have gone away as relationships. I wanted to be in a position where I had the personnel, the facilities, and the research and development to be the best partner they can possibly have, even as we continue to grow in our retail space. That was the reason and large part for gaining the capital. If you look at the very specific spend, it is as we articulated in the sense of we are continuing to expand our capacity. If you look at some of these opportunities, even a single QSR has a potential impact on us of adding many more lines both downstream and upstream.
We want to continue to have capital available to respond to their needs. We'll also continue to add new sites over the years into our production network. The facility we built in China is a state-of-the-art facility, but it won't suffice to feed the market that we envision there. We'll be building another one as a follow-on item. Our L.A. campus, we put a state-of-the-art innovation center in, as well as headquarters. That's not only for us, but it's for our key customers. They'll be able to come and use our innovation facility and participate in what we're trying to do. Cost down is enormously important to us. We're going to spend there to continue to drive cost out of our system.
That gets back a little bit to this kind of strange position that we're in today, where we're continuing to expand our production capacity and personnel to be in a position to serve our customers and to serve consumption and retail, which is burdening margin a little bit. It will come back and pay us back quite a bit as throughput starts to increase throughout those facilities. We want to continue to cost down and build the right facilities in the right locations, get local market access, things like that. That's why you've seen us invest in the Netherlands and invest in Beijing, and we'll keep doing that. Finally, marketing. We have a story to tell. There's still a lot of noise out there about the ingredient, things like that.
We want to get out there and be very focused on making sure the consumer understands that the products are healthy and are a way to continue to advance some of their own health goals. I think the work we're doing with Stanford over the next three years is representative of that. We're not looking to hand wave and amplify that. We're looking to get data that allows us to help the consumer understand just how powerful this tool can be in their own personal health. Talent. We keep building out talent. We keep investing in the best people in the market. The innovation group we have here is going to expand dramatically over the next several years. In Asia and in the EU, we're putting in innovation groups.
We're ready to go, and the market's ready for us, and we've just got to get through this COVID period, and you'll see those funds, I think, very well deployed from a shareholder perspective.
Well, that's really helpful color. If I could just follow up on something you talked about in terms of cost down, it kind of follows onto Bryan's question earlier. As we think about the capacity that you have in place today, clearly you're running well below your full capacity utilization. If we thought about your kind of unit cost per pound, just at the COGS level, if you were running more like a 90%, 95% capacity utilization, what would your unit cost per pound be today? I guess the point there isn't so much the % gross margin. I'm just trying to think about how much room does that give you to drive price lower to try to broaden out the potential addressable market with consumers.
That's a very good question. We certainly do a lot of modeling over different volume scenarios. That's not something that we can answer on this line. We would be happy to kind of maybe walk through the overall reasoning and then how we're thinking about it on a percentage basis. We'd be wary of putting a number out there that people hold us to for right now. I don't know, Lubi, do you want to add to that?
No. Figured I'd try. I appreciate it. I'll pass it on.
Lubi, you were more succinct than I was.
Our next question is from Ken Goldman with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Oh, hey, everybody. Thank you.
Yeah.
Ethan, thanks for the clarity on the Germany situation. That's helpful. On a related note, I think your slide deck is indicating that you have around 3,000 fewer U.S. food service locations now than you did a quarter ago. If that's right, is it mainly because of your customers closing altogether, the independent operators? Or is there a business loss for Beyond in there in particular?
Yeah, it's absolutely COVID related, and these are very small independent operators that I'm sure you've seen this in your community, where after a certain point folks are having trouble continuing to make a go at it. Those, as I mentioned, are picking back up. We picked up about 2,400, as I mentioned, right after the quarter doing good to the end of the quarter and today. It's, I think just very much a COVID related phenomenon.
You're assuming I ever leave my home. That's not a fair assumption to make at this point.
Sorry. That's true. That was very.
Right. I wanted to ask, your main competitor, in retail, their share gains were decelerating for a couple of months there, then their product price got slashed in March, at least what we're seeing in scanner. Their share gains re-accelerated. I know you've said not to expect your pricing to be reactive to competitors. I totally get that. Just seeing these share trends, does it make you any less likely to stand your ground here, or are you still sort of saying, "Look, we're going to produce to our costs and price to our costs," rather, and base it, mainly on what we're seeing in our business rather than competitors?
Yeah, no, it's a great question. Thank you. I believe so strongly in running this business for the long term and not reacting to any short-term issues. I think our reaction to COVID has been somewhat painful to the business in that regard, and that I've been continuing to invest even though the revenue's contracted. It's the only way to do things in my view. Same thing on pricing. It's really interesting to see what's going on with competition, and you mentioned one of our competitors. We're continuing to outgrow the category. I think we're up 16%, category's up 6%, gaining market share. The most recent market data actually went up quite a bit. 18.7, I think, in April. Gaining all these different points of distribution, like 46% over last year. Yet all this competition is occurring, right?
The kind of things I look at, and I'll get to your question, but the buyer rates, the frequency rates, the repeat rates, and household penetration, all those are going in the right direction. The buyer rate's the highest in the category among plant-based meats, that's a really gratifying number for us. Yet there's this competition and there's this massive discounting. Yet we're still the number one product as of the last four-week data. Beyond Burger's still the number one product. We're four of the top six, yet there's all this discounting. The discounting is deep. If you look at the competitor that you mentioned, they're discounting 65% of their sales are done on discount. Right? That's like two-thirds. We're about a third, which is consistent with the category. Right?
I'm not going to react and get into some sort of discounting war with them. What's interesting about our category and our products, we just did some comparative data analysis where we looked at their consumer and our consumer and takeaway and things of that nature. What's really interesting is, while they're doing a really good job building category interest and bringing new people into the category, they're not sourcing a lot of our consumers. There's tremendous brand loyalty to Beyond. It's a really small number, actually, in terms of the amount of share that they're sourcing from us. All in all, it's pretty good, right? They're spending a lot of money. They're marketing a lot. We're keeping a pretty consistent price point, and continuing to grow in distribution and continuing to grow in market share. So far so good. We'll keep looking at it.
Thank you for the color.
Yep.
Our next question is from Rob Dickerson with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks so much. I guess, first question, Ethan, I just saw the release, I think it was maybe last week, two weeks ago, a lot of releases. It's just incremental distribution of retail in Europe. Sounds like that's healthy. Your commentary today kind of implicitly saying, kind of more of that bump coming in Q2, maybe in Q3, is more retail driven. I'm just curious, like if we think regionally, should we be expecting a little bit more of a bump, let's say, in international off of some increased distribution in Europe relative to what we're seeing in the U.S.? That's the first question. Thanks.
I think we're going to continue to see some strong growth out of Europe for sure. There was some statistic that I was looking at the other day where our international, in this first quarter alone was like, it said half of our 2020 number. I mean, it's half of our 2020 number in total. International just keeps to be very strong for us, and that's why I'm putting so much money behind Europe and China and trying to get market share as quick as I can over there. Yes, I do think you'll see a relative uptick, but we're also getting distribution here in the U.S. so it's hard to predict what level of relative gain you'd see.
All right, cool. I guess just kind of the standard pricing question. Realize obviously, investing in an effort to reduce costs or reduce price. If we think about kind of the cadence of that pricing decline, and I'm speaking just to beef, because I feel like that's kind of what you've spoken to before. Would you say that the rate of that price decline potentially tracks more closely to the rate of that reduction in costs, so therefore, there could be some price reduction this year, but, if I'm thinking forward three years right, there could be even more, or more of that price reduction would maybe come later as you continue to bring manufacturing in-house?
Absolutely right. I don't want to imply that we're not going to discount this year. As the summer months come on, you'll see us do what any brand would really do. We'll increase activity there. Overall, our approach to pricing is to try to do it in more of a lockstep. I think you'll see, whether it's some of these long-term initiatives we're working on around the alignment of our production and, as you mentioned, bringing it more in-house, but also integrated production lines and continuous production lines, and then going from there to local sourcing and some ingredient innovation, things like that. Those do tend to kick on toward the latter part of that three-year period. My expectation is you'll see greater step change during that period than cheaper.
Okay. Makes sense. I guess just lastly, I obviously appreciate the Q2 revenue guide and all the color around that. Lubi, thank you for all the comments you made just in terms of trying to piece the different moving parts of the expense line together. I guess just to ask more directly, if I'm just thinking about EBITDA, right, in Q2, I feel like normally you do tend to guide EBITDA. Not guiding EBITDA this time. Is there anything in those expense lines that could face more volatility that just caused you to refrain from guiding EBITDA? Frankly, you're just not guiding EBITDA because optically, it doesn't always look great if expenses are up, even though you are investing for the future. I'm just trying to gauge any of that variability just in the near term and how you're spending, and that's R&D, advertising, what have you. That's it. Thanks.
No, sure. I'll let Lubi expand on the details, but we are doing it for the former reason, but of course, enjoy the benefit of the latter.
I get it.
There's a lot of scaling and expansion going on, and we can't always, like, for example, putting China, standing that up while we couldn't fly over there and things of that nature. It's really hard to provide exact budgets in an environment like this when we're being responsive to opportunity and large capital projects and things like that. That's the primary reason, but Lubi can expand on it.
Yeah, sure, Rob. If you look at our operating expenses, and the change that we've seen from going from the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of this year, obviously the increase is fairly substantial. Roughly half of that is just due to increase in head count alone, right? We are a growing organization. We're adding additional capabilities internationally, domestically, et cetera. Half of that is just related to head count. Another big portion of that is all of this scale-up commercialization activity that we are doing to be able to get products out the door, whether it's to some of the large QSR partners that we obviously hope to do business with in the future, or whether it's potentially readying products for the retail channel. That particular expense bucket, namely the scale-up, there is variability in that, right?
We are scaling up some products that have never been commercialized yet. We definitely wanted to err on the side of caution and not provide an EBITDA target because we know that there's still a ton of commercialization activity that needs to be done, and that can be relatively variable.
All right. Perfect. Thanks so much, guys. I appreciate it.
Yeah. Thank you.
Our next question is from the line of Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you. Just wanted to come back to U.S. foodservice, just to make sure I can understand this a little bit better because the trajectory over the course of 2020 for the outlet build was pretty positive, even really in the worst of COVID, going from like a 34 to 39 to 42 and 42,000, and now down to 39. I know New York isn't typical of the country, but it's fun again here, and if anything, everything is opening or reopening, exactly the kind of independent operators it seems like you would be referring to. Just curious if you can really help us understand what happened now that those places would all be closing.
My sense is it's probably a catch-up number in the sense that this isn't the most real-time information we're getting. We will distribute through distributors, and these are broad line distributors. I don't think it's March 31st, all these guys closed down or decided to skinny their menus or things like that. That happened over a period of time. Again, as I mentioned, we're gaining distribution back very quickly. We do feel this volume that's occurring. The mix of our business continues to really be disproportionate over into retail. I think we're 75/25 on that current retail to food service base. If you look back to the really pre-COVID, it was so much stronger on the food service side, 50/50, and even before that, it was even higher on food service. It's just a period where we have to let this thawing occur.
As an example, we sell to a lot of stadiums and institutions. In fact, I'm going to the Lakers game tonight, and it's 20% capacity. You got to show all this proof that you've been vaccinated. It's still a very sticky environment in terms of going out and using the type of venues that Beyond Meat sells into. I don't know. New York may be different, but that's kind of the feeling we still got here. That doesn't concern me, that number, at all. In fact, this morning, as I mentioned, I usually like to get ready for this call, but I had two very important customer calls that were new customers in this space. We feel pretty optimistic.
Okay, that's helpful. Just a question on international, looking at some of the same metrics with the outlets and sales, those sales per outlet are around half of what you see in the U.S. Should we expect that gap to narrow, or is it more maybe a little bit of a burger, which is obviously your main product, is just a more culturally relevant occasion in the U.S.? How do you think about that, and is it the nature of those outlets, or is it consumer, and should that evolve over time?
I think, first the consumer, the EU is so I don't want to say advanced, but the consumer has an appetite for these types of products in a way that's really recognizable and strong. Our challenge has been just getting over there quickly enough with enough product. We're so small in terms of our overall distribution there, but these things, like I mentioned in Germany, they're so reassuring because again, people are saying there are very large CPGs in Europe and globally that are going to really create issues for Beyond Meat, and here we are on some of their home turf and beating them. Beating them with a product that we are still importing. As we get production up there and begin to really invest in our own team there, I'm really excited about what we're going to see out of it.
Right now, it's simply a function of how small we are relative to what's going on here in the U.S., and that's something that we look to correct over the next year.
Okay. Well, thanks a lot.
Mm-hmm. Thank you.
Our next question is from Jon Andersen with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, Ethan and Lubi.
Hey there.
I have a couple of quick questions. Given that you're on the kind of word launching 3.0, the new burger at present, I'm wondering if there's anything we can take from the introduction of 2.0, which was a big move forward in terms of taste and other sensorial aspects. I'm just thinking here, are there any learnings around potential acceleration in the business that drove either through household penetration, spend rate, opening up new distribution opportunities, et cetera?
That's a good question. To give you real insight onto that, I'd have to go back and look at that period. That's a really insightful question. I think what it does for us, one, it is just a better product. We did extensive CLT, which is central location testing with a statistically significant population of consumers. Did it against 80/20 beef, did it against our 2.0 product, and did it against competitors. The results were obviously strong enough for us to launch it. What I like the most about this product is that it gets closer from a sensory experience to 80/20 beef. It has probably a bit of a more neutral taste to it because the underlying flavor chemistry is just better. I think I've talked about this a lot.
There's over 4,000 molecules that make meat taste like meat, and we have chemists here that are trying to isolate those molecules and then find them in plants and then put those into the right flavor profile. They're getting better at doing that. To your question, what this allows us to do and what 2.0 let us do is to create another moment to bring the consumer into the brand, right? It gives us something to really market around as we head into our most important months of the year, and bring in new consumers into the space. We've had some terrific earned social media recently. I mean, just fantastic driven by the people that have been willing to post and talk about us, not as a ambassador, but just as a partner to the brand from a consumer perspective.
I think with the 3.0, you'll see us get really active in that area, because we want a much broader swath of consumers to experience this product. It's better.
That's helpful. Thank you. If we think about the EU and Asia, I'm really interested to get your perspective on to what extent there are differences in those markets relative to the U.S. I'm thinking about things like consumer awareness and receptiveness to plant-based meat. Is there more or less education you think required or more marketing required to prime the pump on awareness and trial? Is it more or less competitive in terms of fragmentation and players? It would be really interesting to kind of just understand what and how you're going to need to play in those two markets relative to the way things have developed in the U.S.?
Yeah. Good question. Here's how I think we see it. Europe, very well developed, consumer understanding, very high. Competitive environment, also high. All of those, it's a much more mature market. By the way, some of the technology in Europe, one of the reasons I want to do innovation over there is that they've got some pretty good technologies and some good universities working on things and stuff that we'd like to get a hold of. That I think is a European market. In China, it's kind of maybe a little bit different in the sense that the awareness in the general population is not as high. Now, of course, the Asian markets have a long history of using kind of plant-based meat-like products.
This new generation that we're part of plant-based meats, I would say there's not as much recognition and a lot of education required. One of the reasons we picked the general manager that we did for China, which she came out of Beyond Meat and was a very high-placed executive there, was she had a marketing background. I wanted to make sure that we understood the China market well and could help capture the imagination and opportunity there. From a competitive perspective, it's more like startups. I think Cargill is also over there doing some things, but it's a different environment. It's not as mature from an understanding perspective or a competitive. Our spend there is going to be different than it is in the EU.
That's really helpful. If I can squeeze one more in. On the McDonald's partnership, are there any lines you can draw for us with respect to the approach that you expect that customer to take to introducing the McPlant? I'm just trying to, again, get a sense for, is it big bang versus very phased? Who's dictating it? Is it centralized or is it going to be really determined by the operators in each region and how that can ramp for you?
First of all, I'm superstitious, and so I was very worried that we'd have one analyst call where McDonald's wasn't mentioned. Thank you for mentioning McDonald's. They're such an important customer to us, such an important partner to us. Our relationship with them has been great for a long time. We had to just keep reassuring people that was the case, and I'm glad that they finally allowed us to talk about that publicly. What I don't want to do is speak for them. They're going to take an approach that fits their style of introduction. I think you'll see some tests go on, but it's really up to them and nothing good can come from me commenting on how they want to roll things out.
Okay, makes sense.
I appreciate your time.
Good luck going forward. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Thanks so much.
Speakers, I would like to return the call back to you. You may continue with your presentation or closing remarks.
Yeah, I'd just like to close it up and listen, appreciate everybody's patience. This has obviously been a difficult time for a lot of businesses, including Beyond Meat. As I said, we have not deterred from continuing to invest in the opportunity that everybody sees and that we have a special position as a first mover on. Like everybody else, we're very much looking forward to COVID being a thing of the past. Look forward to rejoining with you guys in the next call and hopefully reporting some good results. Look forward to it and thanks again.
Thank you.
That does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you all for your participation and kindly ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day.