Impossible Foods announced yesterday that it was cutting the wholesale prices of its plant-based burger and sausage products, giving the meat alternatives more price parity with traditional, animal-based meat.
CNBC reported that domestic food distributors will now pay 15 percent less for Impossible’s burger and sausage alternatives. International distributors will also get price cuts.
An Impossible spokesperson told CNBC that the price for Impossible Burger is now down as low as $6.80 per pound. The average price for a pound of animal beef patties at the start of this year was $5.32. This is the second price drop for Impossible meat over the past year.
Getting price parity with animal meat is essential for mainstream adoption of plant-based alternatives. According to a report from the Good Food Institute in March of 2020, sales of plant-based meat grew more than 37 percent from 2017 to 2019. Early on in the pandemic, sales of plant-based meat skyrocketed 264 percent as traditional meat supply chains were disrupted by COVID-19 and ethical issues arose around the treatment of workers at meat facilities.
Last summer, Impossible Foods rival Beyond Meat brought the price of its plant-based burgers down through its Cookout Classic SKU. That packaging made each Beyond Meat patty $1.60, compared with $2.42 per patty in its other packaging at the time.
The $1 billion plant-based meat industry is still dwarfed by the market for traditional animal meat, which is valued at $95 billion at retail. However, plant-based meat as we now know it is still a nascent category that has only been around for a couple of years, and Impossible only started making its major push into retail last year. Bringing the price of Impossible burger down to a price point the same as animal meat will remove at least one barrier for those interested in switching (or staying with) plant-based alternatives.
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