I think lab grown meat will replace the farmed stuff once they perfect the process.
Can't see it myself, maybe for people that want ethical meat or something it will be an option but it's never going to replace a premium cut of meat, with all its varieties and flavours. From what I've read as well it only creates the meat, it doesnt create the fat which is where majority of meat gets its flavour from. All the stuff they've made so far has had to be either heavily seasoned and specially prepared to compete in a proper test, or meat has been ground up and served plain and hasn't had the right texture. Farmers aren't going to stop being farmers and start a lab, so the slight problem of the massive global industry to replace them, we of course use cows for many other things but if thats the case where is the gain if we still need to farm cows for everything else? very little ethical gain there.
Even fake meat - we were told that beyond meat were the future only a few years back - sales were rocketing, share price massive, sky is the limit. Since then the wind has gone out of their sales and they've made mass redundancies several times.
They're not particularly healthy themselves, people see meat free and they think healthy eating - impossible burger for example is full of vegetable oil and coconut oil , beyond burger is full of canola oil and coconut oil and both are highly processed whereas you can make a burger in a few minutes with with just beef, onion, egg and seasoning. how you going to make
The burgers they make are expensive and are only "ok", so can't say I'm surprised. Anyone who thinks they are as good as an actual burger I would contest has never had a burger before. I read on here that you'd never know the difference they were that good. I'd say that a Tesco value burger would probably be better. But, again, good if you want to stop eating meat and have something meat-like
I don't mind meat free stuff but fake meat is generally poor. I'd rather have proper vegetarian stuff. Fake meat is at best "less bad", but even actual grown meat will never be a premium product and probably always be a lot more expensive than the real thing. I can not imagine a time where people are buying extremely nice tasting lab grown meat from Iceland or B&M. I'd rather be eating stuff like india, thailand etc kick out with their vegetarian stuff where its designed from the ground up to be a vegetarian meal than eat sub par pretend meat.
In the above example with cauliflower curry, I suppose its because few people will order it but they have to have it on hand and prepped as well as extra cooking items out & work space so that theyre not contaminated. Fixed costs will be the same and youd ideally get a profit per table, not having the meat in there probably doesn't save them money as they probably have to throw meat away regularly anyway as better to have too much than too little.