Danone is the newest entrant into the meal replacement category in Europe,  where for a decade brand-owners have been wondering how they could replicate the success of brands like Huel and Athletic Greens. Their interest was spurred once formerly DTC-only brands like Huel began to show up in the supermarket chiller cabinet.

The finances of companies like Huel, founded back in 2015, make meal replacement look like a tempting prize: Huel's annual sales are over $290 million/€259 million and it generates a healthy 8.5% operating profit. Many companies, like Mars and Nestlé, have already tried to enter the category through acquisition - only for them to fail and then withdraw their expensively-acquired brands

Danone is the newest entrant, leveraging its Alpro brand - Europe's biggest plant-based dairy alternative brand - to create Alpro Meal To Go, a plant-based drink positioned as "a nutritionally complete, ready-to-drink meal" in a 500 ml bottle.

Meal To Go is a "complete meal" and communicates that it offers:

• Up to 20g plant protein

• 26 vitamins & minerals

• Omega-3

• Fibre

• No artificial sweeteners

It comes in four flavours: Chocolate-Banana; Mango-Passion Fruit; Coffee-Caramel; Vanilla. We found it in several German supermarket chains, such as Rewe, priced at around €3.99 ($4.69) per 500 ml bottle. As well as Germany the brand is in Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and four other countries.

Meal Replacements are tempting for brand owners dazzled by the success of Huel and Athletic Greens and their profit margins. But so far in Europe they are "big niche" rather than mainstream. Meal replacements appeal most strongly to consumers who:

• are Tech Bros or Finance Bros and therefore have good disposable income

• have busy lives

• are gym-goers

• are low-information consumers, with limited knowledge of food, cooking or nutrition

• are not motivated by "real" and are not deterred by the "UPF"-type ingredient list of meal replacements. A guaranteed shot of nutrition is what they prioritise most.

Huel, Athletic Greens and others centred themselves on the "plant-based is heathiest" message ten years ago, when that was still gaining consumer consciousness, and that remains their position. Thanks to them it has become a category standard. Hence Danone's leveraging of Alpro makes sense.