Impossible Foods Inc. is a company that creates plant-based products to replace meat. The company's most famous product is the Impossible Burger. It was introduced in July 2016 as a meat-free option to a beef hamburger.
Working with Burger King, Impossible Whoppers were sold in the United States by summer 2019. The company also makes plant-based chicken products and pork products.
Company and product history
Impossible Foods was started in 2011 by Patrick O. Brown, a professor of biochemistry at Stanford University. At first, the company worked on plant-based products that mimicked chicken, pork, fish, and dairy, but it chose to focus first on making a substitute for ground beef used in burger patties.
In July 2016, the company released its first meat substitute product, the Impossible Burger. This product is made from ingredients derived from plants. The company reports that producing the Impossible Burger uses 95% less land and 74% less water than making a ground beef burger patty from cows. It also produces about 87% fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to traditional beef production.
On January 7, 2019, Impossible Foods launched the Impossible Burger 2.0.
In May 2019, Little Caesars began offering Impossible Foods' first plant-based sausage on pizzas in Florida, New Mexico, and Washington state. Patrick Brown explained that the product required testing 50 different sausage prototypes before it was made available to the public. In January 2020, Impossible Foods expanded the sale of Impossible Sausage, also called Impossible Pork.
In late 2021, the company introduced Impossible Chicken.
Production and ingredients
The Impossible Burger is different from most plant-based products that try to copy meat because it contains heme. Heme is the molecule that gives blood its red color and helps carry oxygen in living things. It is found in animal muscle tissue and in all living organisms. Some plants, like nitrogen-fixing plants and legumes, also have heme. The heme in the Impossible Burger is the same as the heme found in meat.
To make heme from non-animal sources, Impossible Foods used a molecule called leghemoglobin, which is naturally found in the roots of soy plants. Scientists at the company altered yeast to produce large amounts of leghemoglobin. They used a fermentation process, which is similar to how some types of beer are made.
The Impossible Burger has more protein, less total fat, no cholesterol, and less energy than a similar-sized beef hamburger patty. However, it has more sodium and more saturated fats than an unseasoned beef patty.
In 2014, Impossible Foods said that leghemoglobin is safe to eat after tests were reviewed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company provided updates to the FDA in 2017 and 2018. In July 2018, the FDA gave a "no questions" letter, agreeing with a group of food-safety experts that the heme protein is safe to eat.
The FDA’s approval in 2018 applied only to Impossible Burgers cooked in restaurants. It did not allow the sale of uncooked Impossible Burgers until soy leghemoglobin was reviewed as a new food colorant. In July 2019, the FDA approved soy leghemoglobin as a colorant for uncooked products. This allowed Impossible Burgers to be sold in grocery stores in September 2019. In December 2019, the FDA confirmed this decision after reviewing an objection, stating that Impossible Foods had addressed safety concerns about soy leghemoglobin.
In May 2021, a federal appeals court in San Francisco supported the FDA’s decision, saying the agency had enough evidence to confirm that heme in Impossible Burgers is safe to eat.
In January 2020, Health Canada approved the Impossible Burger patty for sale, telling the company it had "no objection" to the amount of soy leghemoglobin in the product.
Product availability
In 2016 and 2017, Impossible Foods made Impossible Burgers in Redwood City, California, and at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Because the company made small amounts of burgers, they were not sold in stores.
The restaurant Momofuku Nishi in New York, owned by David Chang, started serving the Impossible Burger in July 2016. In October 2016, the burger became a regular menu item at other restaurants in California, including Jardinière and Cockscomb in San Francisco, and Crossroads Kitchen in Los Angeles. The Michelin-starred restaurant Public, run by Brad Farmerie, added the Impossible Burger to its menu in January 2017.
In March 2017, Impossible Foods announced plans to build its first large factory in Oakland, California, to make 1 million pounds of plant-based burger meat each month. By mid-2017, the Impossible Burger appeared on menus at chain restaurants, such as Bareburger in New York City, Umami Burger in California, and Hopdoddy in Texas. In April 2018, White Castle began selling Impossible Burgers. This partnership later included all 377 of White Castle’s locations.
By July 2018, two years after its first appearance in New York, the Impossible Burger was available at about 3,000 places in the United States and Hong Kong. By the end of 2018, 5,000 restaurants in all 50 U.S. states offered the burger.
In April 2019, Burger King began testing the Impossible Whopper, a burger with the patty, at locations near St. Louis. Later that month, the company said it would sell the Impossible Whopper nationwide by the end of the year. In August 2019, the burger was available in all Burger King locations.
In October 2019, Impossible Burgers became available in grocery stores for the first time at Gelson’s, which only operates in Southern California.
In May 2020, Impossible Burgers were sold at Fairway Market, Wegman’s, Jewel-Osco, Vons, Pavilions, Albertsons in California and Nevada, Safeway in California and Nevada, and other chains owned by Kroger. In April 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA allowed restaurants to sell Impossible beef substitute to customers, as long as they included a printed label with required information.
In July 2020, Impossible Burger patties were sold at Trader Joe’s and about 2,100 Walmart stores in the United States.
Financing
Impossible Foods received funding from investors, including Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Viking Global Investors, UBS, Horizons Ventures (owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing), and Bill Gates. In 2015, Patrick Brown, the company’s founder, refused an offer of $300 million to buy the company.
In August 2017, Impossible Foods raised an additional $75 million after achieving important goals, with Bill Gates contributing more money. In April 2018, the company raised $114 million, led by Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Hong Kong-based Sailing Capital. This brought the total funding to $372 million. In May 2019, the company raised $300 million, increasing its total value to $2 billion. On March 16, 2020, Impossible Foods raised another $500 million.
Overall, Impossible Foods has raised $1.3 billion through 12 funding rounds. In August 2020, the company raised an additional $200 million in a round led by existing investor Coatue.
Popularity and cultural impact
Business Insider has called the Impossible Burger "a burger that satisfies even the most passionate meat lovers." Vox has said that it "tastes pretty beefy," and many food lovers now see its products as not only acceptable but also popular.
The Impossible Burger received Kosher certification in May 2018 and Halal certification in December 2018.
In 2019, TIME listed the Impossible Burger 2.0 as one of the 100 Best Inventions of 2019. That same year, Engadget gave the Impossible Burger the titles of "Most Impactful Product" and "Best of the Best" at CES 2019. Also, at COP25, Impossible Foods received a UN Global Climate Action Award in the category of "Planetary Health."
In 2020, TIME listed Impossible Pork as one of the 100 Best Inventions of 2020.
LightLife, a brand that makes meat alternatives, criticized its competitors, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, in an open letter published in The New York Times. The letter asked these companies to use fewer "highly processed" ingredients. Impossible Foods responded by calling the criticism a "disingenuous, desperate disinformation campaign."
The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), a nonprofit group that receives funding from the meat industry, has run advertisements targeting Impossible Foods and other meat alternative producers. These ads included a commercial during Super Bowl LIV that criticized meat alternatives for using additives. Impossible Foods replied with a parody commercial that highlighted that fecal bacteria has been found in ground beef.