The share price of Beyond Meat surged 163 percent on Thursday in the company’s first day of trading on Wall Street, signaling surprising interest in a new generation of companies that are creating plant-based alternatives to meat.

Beyond Meat, which makes vegetarian burgers and sausages, began trading at $25 a share on the Nasdaq stock exchange and ended the day at $65.75.

The stock’s first-day pop is one of the biggest in recent I.P.O. history. In the last decade, only two other companies — both of them biotech start-ups — had bigger increases on their first days of trading on major American stock markets, according to data from the University of Florida professor Jay Ritter.