This week Impossible Foods announced that founding CEO Pat Brown is stepping down from his current role and assuming the new role of Chief Visionary Officer. The company’s new CEO will be longtime Chobani exec Peter McGuinness, who recently served as the yogurt pioneer’s president and COO.
Explaining the move in a company blog post, Brown said that as Impossible has grown in size and scale, he’s had less time to devote to strategic initiatives, communicating the company’s mission to the public and policymakers, and guiding R&D for new products. Brown said the demands on the role of CEO at Impossible Foods will only continue to grow, which means now is the time to appoint a proven executive to lead the execution of the company’s day-to-day business.
From the post:
Peter and I will work together to lead Impossible and its long-term strategy, combining our complementary strengths and experience. Peter will be our CEO and a director, and will report to the board. I will continue in my role as Founder and director, and take on the role of Chief Visionary Officer reporting to the board, leading research and technology innovation, strategic initiatives, public advocacy and, most importantly, our mission.
McGuinness comes aboard at a time of uncertainty for the plant-based meat industry. Starting last fall, we began to see signs of a potential slowdown in sales across the segment. This year, companies like Kellogg’s are warning of continued soft sales and predicting a possible shakeout.
It’s important to note that Impossible has signaled their sales are doing fine. They very well could be, but there’s no way to have 100% certainty around the health of Impossible’s income statement since we don’t have any real visibility into the company’s numbers since they are still private. Still, it’s hard to see how Impossible could completely sidestep what seems to be a growing set of concerns for the space.
One potential concern is consumers’ growing questions about the ingredient lists for plant-based meat. With Impossible’s genetically engineered heme and a long list of other ingredients, they are one of the companies whose products might get a hard look from a segment of consumers who are looking for simpler, clean ingredients.
There’s also growing evidence of consumer apathy towards plant-based meat. At this point, most alt-meat curious consumers have tried it out, and some are not coming back for seconds. This might be for various reasons, including they don’t like the taste, the higher price tag or they just prefer animal meat. Whatever the reason, plant-based meat companies need to figure out how to make their products a mainstay on the weekly grocery shopping list.
Finally, while a large pipeline of interesting plant-based (and cell-cultured) meat products is coming to market, there’s been an over-saturation in a few categories like burgers and chicken nuggets. While Impossible is likely a market leader in the burger category and seems to hold a decent shelf share for their nuggets, there’s lots of competition for their flagship products.
All of which brings us back to Pat Brown. By clearing his schedule of running the company day-to-day, Brown can now focus on what he is no doubt good at (and I assume probably prefers) in innovating new products. The company has teased new products ranging from whole cuts to a new milk product, and imagine we might see even more as Brown sets his sights full-time on building out the product roadmap.
And while he’s famously opinionated, Brown is also one of the industry’s best ambassadors. The plant-based meat industry owes him a debt of gratitude for much of the early excitement built around the category, so having him focus on messaging could help both Impossible and the rest of the industry as consumers cast a more discerning eye on plant-based meat.
Impossible has raised a massive amount of money, and its investors have big expectations of seeing a return on their capital through the equity markets. I am pretty sure this is one of the rationales for transitioning to a food industry executive with experience in growing a brand. And so, while McGuinness has his work cut out for him running a company that has exited the honeymoon phase of the market, his job will no doubt be made easier by letting Pat Brown do what he does best.
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