Somewhere in North America, a consumer is sitting in a NECTAR booth tasting her seventh coded sample of the afternoon. She scores it zero to nine for acceptability and writes one sentence about texture. What she is doing is the most serious consumer sensory work in alt-protein. What the booth does not see is whether she ever buys the product again.

This episode argues that the industry has been reading the wrong half of the sensory data. The NECTAR 2025 panel shows taste parity is closing across plant-based categories. Texture parity is not. And even where texture is approaching parity, the measurement that actually predicts commercial outcome is not the blind panel score. It is the repeat-purchase rate sitting in scan panels that most brand teams do not track with the same discipline they apply to taste tests.

Twelve minutes. Two reversals. One counterintuitive call on the category type investors keep mispricing. Press play.

The diagnostic question from this episode:"If the only thing you could measure about your product was repeat purchase, would you still be making the same formulation decisions?"

This episode continues a four-piece FoodEdge arc. Issue 20 (rent before build), Issue 21 (downstream processing moat), Issue 23 (platforms should start as ingredient companies), and now S02E06 (taste, texture, repeat purchase). Each one is about commercial discipline coming before optionality. Read the prior posts on FoodEdge before or after listening.

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