After a massive expansion at retail last year, Impossible Foods is heading into a new market: the school cafeteria. The company announced today that its plant-based Impossible Burger received the Child Nutrition (CN) Label, which is a voluntary food crediting statement authorized by the USDA. Carrying the CN label means schools participating in federal Child Nutrition Programs like the National School Lunch Program can determine how Impossible’s products contribute to federal meal pattern requirements to aid in any purchasing decision.
According to the USDA, schools served 5 billion lunches and 2.4 billion breakfasts in fiscal year 2019. Now that Impossible carries the CN label, public schools can more easily purchase the company’s plant-based burger and sausage to include on their menus.
In a corporate blog post, Impossible said it is starting a number of K-12 pilot programs with school districts across the U.S. including in Palo Alto, California; Aberdeen, Washington; and Deer Creek and Union City, Oklahoma. Impossible will offer schools in these trials free cases of its plant-based meat to make things like Impossible tacos and spaghetti.
There are more than 98,000 elementary and secondary public schools in the U.S., representing a sizeable new market for Impossible. At the risk of sounding mercenary (selling to kids!), getting in on school lunches does couple things for the company. On its face, selling into school districts is another revenue stream for Impossible. But it also gets kids used to the flavor of Impossible’s plant-based instead of Beyond Meat. If that preference sets in, Impossible could have generational customers who grow up eating its product. (Though, given my memories of cafeteria food, kids could just as easily get turned off by it.)
Of course, since we are talking about plant-based meat, the federal government and schools, there is bound to be some ginned up outrage. Meat is a new front in the supposed culture war, so it probably won’t be long until we hear certain voices pipe up decrying coastal elites forcing Impossible’s plant-based burger and sausage agenda on kids.
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