WeWork was also never a tech company but pushed really hard to brand themselves that way. If evaluated truthfully as a real estate company, the money they raised was hilariously idiotic.
So much of this world is driven by idiotic speculation based on slick websites and charismatic presenters.
There's a ton of tech behind Beyond Meat. Their core science is based on research from an RNA professor at Stanford. That proteomics research is the reason their burger tastes so much better than previous generation veggie burgers.
I think it depends purely on your definition of "tech".
Impossible engineering soybeans to produce more heme to make fake meat behave more like meat is a technology, in that it is a novel innovation applied to solve a real world problem.
But in modern common parlance "tech" tends to mean either that a company's offering is either entirely or heavily augmented by new software, or that the company has ties to a specific network of talent/investors/etc, or that the company has very low incremental costs per user. In those cases, they might not be a tech company.
It's technology innovations in food rather than electronics, but it's still technology innovations that are based around disrupting the existing industry.
Marketing companies would be my opinion. Fake meat has been around for years, but has become trendy again in the last couple of years. (Maybe it's better now, but that is subjective).
So much of this world is driven by idiotic speculation based on slick websites and charismatic presenters.