Arby’s is betting $3.9 billion that its customers don’t want fake meat

“We have the meats!” The unmistakable Arby’s tagline is voiced by Golden Globe–winning actor and unmistakable baritone Ving Rhames, who has saved the world time and again by crafting spy gadgets as Luther Stickell in the Mission: Impossible franchise. For Arby’s, he presents “the meats”—an equally essential weapon in the fast food arms race. “We put a bold flag down,” says Jim Taylor, Arby’s chief marketing officer, of the tagline that launched in 2014. “If you are someone with us, who shares a passion for high-quality meat cooked the right way as deliciously as possible, we’re going to be a place you can get an abundance of different types of meat as a centerpiece for every sandwich.” Indeed, in the age of plant-based Impossible burgers and Beyond Meat, Arby’s has not only decided to resist the rising tide of veganism and flexitarianism, it’s positioned carnivory as a “with us or against us” values system, going so far as to recently launch its first “megetable,” which it called a “marrot”—a shameless troll of a carrot that’s made entirely out of meat...MORE