Well, that was quick. Less than a month after testing out the Impossible Whopper in St. Louis, Burger King said today that it will expand the availability of Impossible’s plant-based burger to all of its 7,300 locations by the end of this year.
The BK Lounge becomes the latest in an already impressive list of 5,000 restaurants to go in on Impossible. Other chains using Impossible’s heme-based burger “meat” include Qdoba, Red Robin, and White Castle. For all of these chains, adding a plant-based burger that looks, tastes, feels and even “bleeds” like the real thing opens up new customers bases in the growing market of vegetarians and flexitarians.
For those following the fake meat industry, the Burger King/Impossible announcement comes right before plant-based burger rival, Beyond Meat, is set to go public this week. The two companies have been in a bit of a tit-for-tat news battle throughout this month. While Impossible grabbed headlines for the BK test and now rollout, Del Taco announced it would serve Beyond Meat at all its locations nationwide and Beyond expanded overseas into Belgium and the Netherlands.
Will the BK deal help make Impossible the “king” of plant-based burgers? From the looks of it, we have a Game of Thrones-level battle brewing ahead as the competition between the two fake bleeding burger giants will only intensify over the course of this year. Both companies debuted new burger recipes this year. As noted earlier, Beyond is going public this week, which could raise $184 million for the company to expand its restaurant initiatives more aggressively. But Impossible is also taking the fight to the grocery aisle this year, where Beyond has focused much of its efforts and is well established.
If you’re into Impossible and Beyond burgers, you should definitely subscribe to our new Future Food newsletter, which covers and breaks down all the news in the emerging plant-based food world.
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