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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Burger King

Floating Kitchens of Burger King

Now that its apparent even contactless tech won’t bring back the glory days of the dining room, restaurant chains are on a tear to refit their existing stores to better serve to-go formats. Efforts run the gamut, from dumping the front of house altogether to geofencing the premises for faster pickup orders to building more drive-thru lanes.

Burger King just one-upped all those efforts. The decades-old burger chain has has compiled all of the above and then some into a whopper of a design prototype for future restaurants. Per a BK press release from this week, the new design — which hasn’t actually been implemented yet — is meant to serve multiple order and delivery formats and will be 60 percent smaller than a traditional BK location.

BK plans to accomplish that with the following:

  • A drive-in area where customers scan a QR code then order and pay through the app. Food is delivered to the car. 
  • Curbside delivery and pickup lockers for customers who order ahead via the BK mobile app. The only element missing from this is geofencing tech for the curbside service, which other QSRs are now using to speed up operations.
  • On-premises service. No surprise that this will be a much smaller part of the overall plan moving forward. In one design, BK swapped out the traditional dining room for a covered patio. See below for the other option.
  • Double- and triple-lane drive-thrus. There will also be a walkup window and a view of the kitchen inside.
  • Suspended kitchens and dining rooms are by far the most intriguing addition, and one we haven’t yet see from another QSR. The kitchen and dining room will hang above the drive-thru lane, cutting down on the restaurant’s overall physical footprint. For drive-thru guests, at least, orders are delivered via a conveyor belt system. This particular design also includes a dedicated drive-thru lane for delivery drivers and is, according to the press release, “a 100% touchless experience.”

The first real-life buildout of these designs will be in Miami and the Caribbean in 2021. 

And while we wouldn’t expect other QSRs to produce a carbon copy of the design, it does feel that BK has raised the bar in terms of both standards and innovation when it comes to reformatting the restaurant experience. Some of the elements, like curbside pickup, are already fully established formats across most QSRs. Others, like triple drive-thru lanes, are more an anomaly. The hanging kitchen is, to the best of my knowledge, unheard of at any other QSR. 

The design does raise some questions around what the company will expect of its franchisees. As we saw last year with McDonald’s, retrofitting stores is an expensive, sometimes frustrating endeavor for franchisees. If Burger King wants this wonder of the QSR world to set the new standard for restaurant chains, it will need to ensure new build outs and existing store updates are as pleasant an experience for franchisees as they seem poised to be for customers. 

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NPD: Drive-Thru Visits Increased 26%

If there’s one true off-premises lifeline for QSRs during the pandemic, it’s the drive-thru. (Sorry not sorry, delivery.) The NPD Group underscored that point this week when it announced that drive-thru visits increased 26 percent in April, May, and June, and that this format “will be key to the industry’s future.”

It’s common knowledge at this point that those restaurants equipped with drive-thrus are faring much better than those that have traditionally focused on dine-in service. And some QSRs and fast casuals that historically never really offered drive-thru service are now doubling down on that format, including Chipotle and Shake Shack. 

Even in July, when more restaurant dining rooms were opened, the number of drive-thru visits increased by 13 percent, according to NPD. That number represents the highest increase among all service modes in the restaurant (e.g., dine-in, takeout, delivery).

David Portalatin, a food industry advisor to NPD, said we should expect to see more chains switching to drive-thru in the future. Whether all of them come with a hanging kitchen and conveyor belt setup remains to be seen. 

Fee Caps ‘Round the Web

This week, Santa Clara, CA moved to finally cap the commission fees third-party delivery services charge restaurants at 15 percent. The ordinance is effective immediately and will last “until the end of the pandemic.”

NYC extended its own emergency fee cap of 20 percent to be in effect 90 days after restaurants are allowed to operate dining rooms at full capacity. Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to that distant day.

Back on the Left Coast, Los Angeles also extended its fee cap with the same criteria as NYC. Fees must remain at 15 percent or lower until LA restaurants can operate dining rooms at 100 percent capacity.

Burger King Doubles Down on Tech, Delivery to Lure Finland Away From McDonald’s

Burger King Finland is at it again. The same QSR chain that brought us the “silent drive-thru” last year is now offering free delivery to Helsinki residents who are physically close to a McDonald’s but instead choose to order Burger King.

The so-called conquesting campaign uses out-of-home advertising and mobile technology to target McDonald’s users in an attempt to win them over to BK’s side of the fence. To do that, BK placed outdoor ads strategically near McDonald’s locations (see image above) and then partnered with local delivery service Wolt to turn these areas into delivery hotspots. The stunt was publicized with an influencer campaign, which ended July 1.

This isn’t the first time BK has employed tech to lure would-be McDonald’s customers away from the Golden Arches. In 2019, the chain used geolocation technology to prompt customers already inside McDonald’s to leave within a certain timeframe and get a 1-cent whopper. That promotion featured a whole tie-in with Pennywise the clown and the release of It Chapter Two, further gamifying the experience.

The Finland campaign comes at a time when  many places in the world are just now easing up on their lockdowns. Prior to this, out-of-home advertising hasn’t been all that effective since everyone’s been at home. One research firm predicted a decline in out-of-home advertising over the next few years, since this particular ad type relies on places like subway cars and bus shelters. But on that note, Adweek noted in April that brands were shifting their out-of-home advertising spend to focus on areas still getting foot traffic. Given the uncertain trajectory of the coronavirus and the threat of another lockdown ever present, it remains to be seen how effective this style of advertising will be over the long term.

One thing that could have a major effect: dining rooms shutting down again. McDonald’s has already announced it is halting its reopening plans for another three weeks in the U.S. BK’s contesting campaign is only focused in Finland right now, and wouldn’t actually rely on in-restaurant foot traffic at McDonald’s to work. Nonetheless, it’s another example of the pandemic’s far-reaching effects on the restaurant industry, right down to its advertising tactics.

In the meantime, the Finland campaign is at least an amusing tactic to lift the spirits. It’s also a way for restaurants to promote delivery at a time when many dining rooms are still shuttered and customers are still wary about actually setting foot in a restaurant. 

Impossible Sausage Sandwiches Now Available at Starbucks and Burger King

Starbucks announced today that it has added the Impossible Breakfast Sandwich to its menu. The sandwich, which Starbucks says is now available at “the majority of Starbucks locations across the US,” features Impossible’s plant-based sausage.

This is the second move into breakfast for Impossible in as many weeks. Burger King, which launched the Impossible Croissan’wich earlier this year, announced last week it was going national with the item for a limited time.

Impossible is really starting to flex it plant-based muscles and it expands its heme-pire at just the right time. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused production shortages and raised new ethical concerns about eating meat, and during this time, sales of plant-based meats have taken off.

For its part, Starbucks has more than one plant-based partner on its dance card. While the company is launching an Impossible sandwich in the U.S., it has hooked up with Beyond for a breakfast sandwich in Canada, and Starbucks in China will be using Beyond meats as well.

Getting on the menu at Starbucks will certainly give Impossible’s brand a boost. And if people like Impossible, there are more options than ever for them to eat it at home. Impossible has, err, beefed up its retail pipeline over this year, and launched its own direct to consumer sales site earlier this month. Though the sausage only just debuted at CES this year (which feels like a lifetime ago), the Starbucks and Burger King partnerships show that it has scaled up production fairly quickly.

Now we’ll see if the Impossible breakfast sandwich rises and shines.

Welcome to Burger King. Did You Have a Reservation?

This is the web version of our newsletter. Sign up today to get updates on the rapidly changing nature of the food tech industry.

Things I never thought I’d live to see: a global pandemic shutting down the economy, the McDonald’s snuggie, and fast food restaurants requiring reservations to dine in. But with the restaurant biz on the brink of catastrophic meltdown and businesses slowly reopening under strict social distancing practices, we can expect lots of new versions of the on-premises experience over the next few months — and probably a total redefining of what it means to be a restaurant. 

News landed this week that Burger King is testing an app for dine-in reservations at three stores in Milan, Italy that are expected to fully reopen on June 1. Reuters reports that the app lets customers order food and book a table before ever setting foot in the restaurant, which will operate at less than half its pre-pandemic capacity. During peak hours — 12–2 p.m. and 7–9 p.m. — roughly one-third of those tables will be reserved for customers using the app.

The company says it expects the new booking system to keep its revenue stable in the face of reduced in-house seating. Previously, BK in Italy got about 70 percent of its revenues from dine-in customers. Social distancing won’t allow for that now, and BK said it hopes to make up some of those lost sales with drive-thru.

Reservations are one way to keep crowds at bay in QSRs. Another is to build social distancing features into the actual store layout and operations, as McDonald’s has done in The Netherlands. The mega-chain is trialing a few initiatives at one store in the city of Arnhem, including table service, where burgers are delivered on trolleys, designated waiting spots for the line, and hand sanitizing stations at the store’s entrance. There may also be a host behind a plexiglass-shielded station, directing people where to stand in line.

There’s no word yet on whether this McDonald’s prototype will make its way to the U.S., though I wouldn’t be surprised if some social distancing elements wind up in the chain’s ongoing Experience of the Future store remodels. Burger King, meanwhile, has said if the trial of its app is successful in Italy, it could be used in other countries. 

And while QSRs are busy adopting features we’re most used to seeing at casual dine-in joints, the latter continues to adjust its format to be more to-go friendly. This was already happening B.P. (before pandemic). Now, sit-down restaurants are accelerating the addition of things like drive-thru lanes and self-service kiosks to keep business moving and socially distant at the same time.

All this suggests some seriously blurring lines between the normally siloed types of restaurant experiences. Going to a McDonald’s might suddenly feel like a more formal affair, while family dinner night at The Melting Pot might feel strangely casual without the usual person-to-person formalities. Tech tools that automate the order and pay process, and redistribute the tasks of servers, food runners, and cashiers, will only further change the now-fluid definition of the restaurant. 

We’re only at the start of things when it comes to these new dining out formats. Expect many more iterations of the restaurant to surface in the coming weeks. 

Grubhub Responds to Commission Fee Caps.

Meanwhile, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the ongoing smackdown between third-party delivery services and governments mandating caps on the commission fees these tech companies charge restaurants. That was a hot topic this week as more cities joined the list of those either considering caps or already implementing them. 

Grubhub responded this week via its Q1 2020 earnings call. CEO Matt Maloney said these fee caps force the company to increase fees for consumers, lessen marketing spend, and are ultimately resulting in fewer orders for independent restaurants. “Our preliminary data shows that on average, our independent restaurants are seeing over 10% fewer orders since the fee cap and many of these orders have shifted to a large brand or QSR restaurants that were not impacted by the emergency ordinance,” he said.

Note that he said “orders” not “revenues.” There’s no question that being on a platform like Grubhub makes a restaurant more visible to more potential customers. That in turn would hopefully fuel more orders for, say, your local pizzeria instead of Papa John’s.

But with Grubhub et al. taking an up to 30 percent commission of each restaurant transaction, more orders does not translate into significantly more revenues for restaurants. See this gem of a receipt, courtesy of one independent business, as proof of how little restaurants make on third-party platforms. 

On the call, Maloney said one-size-fits-all model “will not work.” And yet one independent restaurant owner who testified at a public hearing last week about NYC fee caps suggested there was virtually no negotiability when it comes to commission fees, suggesting Grubhub runs its own one-size-fits-all model when it comes to food delivery.

The debate around commission fees has been building momentum for some time. The pandemic has effectively stripped any remaining gloss off the facade of third-party food delivery and put its unsavory insides on full display. That the sector will need to make a pivot of its own if it wants to stay relevant seems more and more a question of “when,” not “if.” 

Amazon Returns to Restaurant Delivery. Sort of

But let’s end the week on a less-infuriating note, like Amazon running a makeshift third-party delivery service for restaurants in its corporate buildings. Drivers that used to transport the Seattle tech giant’s corporate employees are now running food from restaurant to customer, according to Eater Seattle.

Deliveries are contactless, meaning the restaurant packages up the order and sets it in the delivery driver’s trunk. Said driver then leaves the food on the customer’s doorstep. 

Once upon a time, Amazon ran a restaurant delivery service, which it shuttered in June of 2019. At the time, Amazon cited competition from the likes of Grubhub, Uber Eats, and other third-party delivery services. The new endeavor doesn’t appear to be a play by the company to get back into that space. Rather, it seems to be a temporary lifeline for local restaurants, not to mention a way to keep drivers who once ran corporate employees around working now that those employees are under stay-at-home orders.

On that note, have a good weekend, and don’t forget to tip your drivers.

Jenn

Food Tech News: CRISPR Blackberries and a New Nordic FoodTech Fund

Are you baking bread this weekend? (Hot tip: Even if you can’t find yeast at the store, there’s a simple way to make your own at home.)

In between your dough prooves is a great time to catch up on your latest dose of food tech news. This week we’ve got stories on fresh varietals of gene-edited berries, a new Nordic FoodTech VC fund, Burger King’s trouble over its plant-based burger ads in the UK, and more.

Pairwise partners to breed new type of berries
Agriculture and biotech company Pairwise forged a partnership with Plant Sciences Inc (PSI) this week to create new types of berries (via WRAL TechWire). Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Pairwise uses CRISPR gene editing to develop new varietals of food that are optimized for nutrition, have longer shelf lives or grow more quickly. First up, Pairwise and PSI will focus on black and red raspberries, as well as blackberries. They’re hoping to have their first round of berries on shelves within the next few years.

Lyft launches delivery program for orgs affected by COVID-19
Rideshare and last-mile logistics company Lyft launched a new COVID-19-related initiative this week. Essential Deliveries is a program that partners with businesses and nonprofits to help them deliver staple goods like groceries, prepared meals, and cleaning and medical supplies (h/t Techcrunch) to consumers. Partners can tap into Lyft’s platform to set up deliveries or schedule rides. The program will be available in at least 11 cities nationwide and drivers will be alerted about the nature of the goods they’re delivering. All deliveries will be contact-free.

Nordic FoodTech VC launches with €24.55 million
Nordic FoodTech VC, a new venture fund targeting early-stage tech companies making the food system more sustainable and nutritious, has launched this week. The fund will begin investing with €24.55 million ($26.7 million USD) in capital. It’s the first fund in the Nordic countries and plans to invest in “dozens” of companies innovating to improve the global food system.

Burger King’s Rebel Whopper (Photo: Burger King)

Burger King’s plant-based Whopper ads banned in UK
Three ads from Burger King in the UK promoting its Rebel Whopper have now been banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority. Burger King launched the Rebel Whopper, which features a plant-based burger from Unilever-owned Vegetarian Butcher, back in January 2020. Since then, complaints came in stating that the ad was misleading consumers by suggesting that it could be eaten by vegetarians, vegans, and people with egg allergies, despite the fact that it’s cooked on the same grill as meat products and features mayonnaise. The ASA has sided with the complaints, stating that the small print at the bottom of BK’s ads stating that the Rebel Whopper is cooked alongside meat products was not sufficiently in informing consumers.

Future Food: Is the Honeymoon Over for Fast Food and Meatless Meat?

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Valentine’s Day is coming up, and love is in the air — but it looks like the once hot-and-heavy relationship between plant-based meat and fast-food is experiencing some bumps.

This week Burger King reported overall sales growth of 0.6 percent for Q4 of 2019, which fell short of Wall Street estimates. That’s a marked dip from just a few months ago, when BK’s sales increased roughly 15 percent globally, in large part due to the success of the recently-launched Impossible Whopper.

It was with a much more muted tone that Jose Cil, CEO of Burger King’s parent company Restaurant Brands International, mentioned the plant-based burger on the company’s most recent earnings call (h/t CNBC):

… the Impossible Whopper was a big highlight of 2019 and continued to be an important sales driver in the fourth quarter, generating healthy levels of incrementality at a premium price point.

The dip in excitement could be attributed to a confluence of several factors. First and foremost, the novelty of plant-based meat is starting to wear off across the QSR space. When Burger King first decided to start selling the Impossible Whopper, the news made headlines everywhere (including here). That media blitz likely attracted lapsed vegetarian/vegan consumers as well as consumers who were curious to try this whole fake-meat-that-bleeds concept. In all likelihood, at least some of those diners tried the Impossible Whopper then decided that it wasn’t worth reordering, or that they preferred their regular beefy order.

Another issue is over-saturation. Burger King was one of the first (and the largest) fast-food chains to embrace meat alternatives on its menu. Now it’s becoming the norm for QSR’s, from Dunkin’ to KFC, to serve vegetarian meat — with the noted exceptions of McDonalds (in the U.S.) and Arby’s.

We also can’t discount price as a factor in this decline. Depending on the location, Impossible Whoppers cost one to two dollars more than a regular Whopper. Overall that’s not much, but it’s a heckuva lot more significant in a fast food context where an extra buck can get you anything from fries to a large soda. Maybe the price difference didn’t scare off people who wanted to try the next buzzed-about burger, but was too much for them to justify paying on the regular.

Burger King is clearly aware that the Impossible Whopper’s cost is a problem. That’s why they recently added the plant-based offering to its 2 for $6 menu, but it may be too late for those who have already categorized the Impossible Whopper as an expensive option.

Photo: Burger King.

In a Future Food newsletter last year, just as QSRs were starting to debut meat alternatives left and right, I asked a question: Is fast food’s love affair with plant-based meat going to last?

To continue with the romance analogy, I don’t think the two are ready to split up. Instead, they’re settling into coupledom — things are less hot-and-heavy but more consistent.

So it might be time for fast food and plant-based meat to spice up their relationship and experiment by introducing new products (fried chicken! bacon!) or trying cost-saving promotions (like Burger King is doing now).

The honeymoon period might be over, but the foundation is still there. Time for phase two of the relationship.

Should we be discussing plant-based dog food?
Meatless meat may be cooling its love affair with fast-food, but it’s heating up in a very different space: pet food. According to market intelligence agency Mintel, roughly one third of all U.K. dog food buyers want to purchase more plant-based food for their pets.

I’ve considered covering meat-free pet food in this newsletter before, but something always stopped me. We at the Spoon cover human food tech news, right?

But then I read a crazy statistic, that in the U.S., dogs and cats are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of total meat consumption. If they were their own country, they would rank fifth in the world. That’s huge! And as the population grows and pet ownership increases in developing countries, the total meat consumed by dogs and cats will only go up. It might make sense to start thinking seriously about the future of pet food, after all.

What do you think? Would you be interested in coverage on pet food — new ingredients (cell-based meat!), distribution methods, etc? Tweet your thoughts to @TheSpoonTech and let me know!

Alpha Foods

Protein ’round the web

  • Alpha Foods raised $28 million for its frozen plant-based proteins and premade meals.
  • FUMI Ingredients, an ingredient developer which has made plant-based egg whites, snagged a €500,000 ($552,000) investment (h/t AgfunderNews).
  • Meatless Farm has partnered with meal kit company Gousto to create kits featuring its beef alternatives.

Burger King, Tim Hortons Aim for Faster Drive Thrus and More Personalized Tech in 2020

Restaurant Brands International (RBI), parent company of Burger King, Tim Horton’s, and Popeye’s, is doubling down on its efforts to modernize its brands and in doing so keep pace with competitors in the world of quick-service restaurants. On its earnings call this week, RBI’s CEO José Cil highlighted several milestones as well as goals for the future around making the drive-thru line faster, stores more digital-friendly, and individual customer orders more personalized. 

Tim Horton’s, a chain largely based in Canada and with a scattering of U.S. locations, is currently testing new digital menu boards in drive-thrus, using technology to gather information like weather, time of day, location, and more, and use it to better tailor offerings to each individual customer. If that sounds like a familiar story, it is. McDonald’s more or less started this wave of AI-powered drive-thru efforts last year when it acquired Dynamic Yield in 2019. Others, including KFC and Dunkin’, are also testing their own iterations of the drive-thru of the future.

Beyond the fact that personalized menu boards are supposed to improve order accuracy and offer more relevant upsell items to each customer, they are also practically speaking, a little easier for the restaurant to manage. Speaking on this week’s call, Cil pointed out that the company’s current menu boards cost “millions of dollars each year” to print and update, and that they are time-consuming to change out, as the task has to be done manually by staff members multiple times per day. “Switching to digital menu boards in the drive-through will free up time for team members to focus on serving guests while ensuring that the proper information is always on display,” he said.

Tim Horton’s already has these menu boards in “several hundred stores” and the company will install them “across most drive-thru locations over the next 12 to 18 months.” As well, the company is revamping its loyalty program for digital orders, moving it into its second phase where rewards and offers will be more tailored to the individual customer. Cil noted that this second phase will “drive digital registration and a lot of powerful tools like sales intelligence and one-to-one marketing that we’ll use to develop stronger relationships with our guests and drive incremental sales over time.”

Getting more intelligence behind its digital platforms to improve personalization is a goal for RBI across all its brands as the company strives to compete with the McDonald’s and Starbucks of the world. At Burger King, this will be in the form of the brand’s Burger King of Tomorrow Restaurants, the chain’s newly redesigned store format that emphasizes things like digital ordering via self-service kiosks and double drive-thru lanes. Cil said on the call that the company opened more than 800 of these stores in 2019.

Burger King of Tomorrow joins a long list of restaurants revamping their store formats to be more tech-centric and better able to fulfill delivery and takeout orders, which will account for the lion’s share of restaurant sales in the coming years. To that end, Burger King also offers delivery at 4,200 of its stores and works with multiple third-party services (DoorDash, Postmates, etc.) to fulfill orders.

As mentioned earlier, a large part of this technology push is to keep up with other QSRs running billion-dollar-plus digital businesses, namely Chipotle and McDonald’s, which are making AI and more customized menus a major part of their strategies. If 2019 was the year off-premises ordering became table stakes, 2020 will (probably) be the year personalization takes that title. RBI’s latest moves and future plans underscore how much the company wants its brands to be ahead, or at least with, the pack when that happens.

Speaking of personalization, you can hear my conversation about how it will change the restaurant business at Customize, the Spoon’s food personalization summit, in just two weeks.


A Snapshot of the 6 Biggest Fast Food Companies’ Sustainability Pledges

Environmental issues are no longer an invisible threat. With temperatures warming, oceans are heating up and extreme weather events such as hurricanes and forest fires, as we’re currently seeing in Australia, are happening more frequently.

There’s only so much individuals can do to lessen our impact on the warming planet, including flying and driving less and cutting back on meat. It’s on governments and businesses, especially corporations, to stave off catastrophe.

As we start off a new decade, let’s take a look at the sustainability pledges of the top fast food companies by revenues. As emissions that result from meat and dairy production are on track to contribute 70 percent of the total allowable greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the BBC reports, fast food chains’ decisions have a lot of impact on the planet, although most pledges have centered around packaging. As some of the largest brands on the planet, these moves will not only cut back on climate change causing emissions and pollution, but provide an example to other businesses.

1. McDonald’s

The world’s biggest restaurant company in 2018 was the first fast food company to commit to sustainability. McDonald’s pledged that by 2025, “100 percent of McDonald’s guest packaging will come from renewable, recycled, or certified sources,” and also “to recycle guest packaging in 100 percent of McDonald’s restaurants.” For this year, it also set a goal that “100 percent of fiber-based packaging will come from recycled or certified sources where no deforestation occurs.” The company has also invested in a wind farm and a solar farm that it said will produce “more than 2,500 McDonald’s restaurants-worth of electricity.” As far as plant-based options, the Golden Arches is expanding its Beyond Meat test in Canada.

2. Starbucks

According to the coffee giant, “an estimated 600 billion paper and plastic cups are distributed globally,” and Starbucks accounts for an estimated 1 percent of that total. It has set a goal to “double the recycled content, recyclability and compostability, and reusability of our cups and packaging by 2022.” It plans to phase out straws this year. (A small competitor of Starbucks, Blue Bottle, plans to eliminate disposable cups entirely.) Starbucks, which said it has invested in renewable energy, has also set a goal to design, build and operate 10,000 “Greener Stores” globally by 2025. Starbucks offers several plant-based milks, and is expanding its lineup of non-dairy drinks.

3. Subway

The sandwich company hasn’t made any specific pledges, and pins a lot of the responsibility of energy conservation on its franchise operators. Subway offers a meatless Beyond Meat meatball sub. The company says its paper products, including towels, tissues and napkins, are made from 100 percent recycled material. As for the rest of its materials, including cups, wraps, bowls and lids, Subway makes no further commitments to make them more sustainable.

4. Chick-fil-a

The popular chicken restaurant that closes on Sundays also hasn’t issued any major sustainability pledges. The company said last year it is “thoughtfully searching for sustainable design solutions that are recyclable, compostable or contain recycled content — starting with new bowls” made of recyclable PET plastic. Chick-fil-a has committed to reducing construction waste for its new locations. The chain offers no plant-based options.

5. Taco Bell

The Mexican-inspired food chain is the latest to issue a big sustainability pledge. It has committed to “making all consumer-facing packaging recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2025 worldwide,” as well as adding recycling and/or composting bins to all restaurants, “where infrastructure permits.” Last year, it committed to more sustainable beef. Taco Bell has long featured vegetarian and vegan options, and recently made them more prominent on its menu.

6. Burger King

The other burger chain also hasn’t set any firm sustainability commitments for the decade. Rather, it said it will “continuously review our policies on animal welfare, sourcing and environmental impact to ensure that we remain good corporate citizens in the communities we serve.” The company, responding to a Change.org petition, said it will stop giving out plastic toys, but only in the U.K. At least you can get the Impossible Whopper at every U.S. store.

Of course, the companies who did make pledges are not beholden to them. It’s up to investors and consumers to hold each company responsible to do their part to reducing their contributions to climate change.

If any company updates their pledges, we will revisit and update this article.

Burger King to Launch New Impossible Sausage Croissan’wich to Compete with Dunkin’

When it comes to breakfast, Burger King diners will soon be able to have it their way with meatless Impossible sausage.

Last night at CES, Impossible Foods unveiled its plant-based pork, its second product since it launched its meatless “bleeding” beef in 2016. (We tasted it, and it was awesome.) Amid samples of meatless banh mi and dumplings, the company dropped one more doozy of an announcement: It had also developed plant-based pork sausage, which would start selling at select Burger King locations later this month.

Impossible sausage, which is essentially a pre-seasoned, pre-formed patty of its plant-based pork, will feature in the Burger King Impossible Croissan’wich, which will also include egg and cheese (so it’s not vegan). It will hit the menus of 139 Burger Kings in Savannah, Georgia; Lansing, Michigan; Springfield, Illinois; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Montgomery, Alabama starting on January 13. Pricing was not disclosed, though it’s worth noting that the Burger King’s Impossible Whopper is priced at only $1 more than a meaty Whopper.

This move is almost a no-brainer for Burger King. The fast-food chain has benefitted from media buzz plus increased foot traffic and check size ever since it unveiled the Impossible Whopper back in August 2019. It’s no wonder that the fast-food giant wanted to expand that popularity to its breakfast menu.

It’s also a way for them to challenge Dunkin’, which rolled out its Beyond Breakfast Sandwich nationwide a full three months ahead of schedule due to high demand. As I’ve noted before, breakfast is a lucrative, relatively un-crowded space primed for plant-based products. 2019 may have been the year many fast-food restaurants introduced meatless burgers, but I think 2020 will be the year they expand the offerings to vegan sausage, eggs, etc. Impossible also has an advantage since Burger King is a national chain, while Dunkin’ is mainly on the East Coast.

Those eager to try the Impossible Croissan’wich will have to hope that Impossible won’t run into production issues, which the startup has struggled with in the past. Impossible is very aware of the risk. At CES Pat Brown admitted to the audience that “production capacity is our biggest challenge right now,” but was confident that the company wouldn’t face a shortage again.

That remains to be seen, as does the quality of the Impossible Croissan’wich. But what’s not in question is that breakfast is a hot play for the meatless market — and Impossible/BK are smart to tap into it sooner rather than later.

Burger King Is Launching 3 New Impossible Burgers, Expanding Plant-based Offerings in Europe

Burger King’s meatless meat selection just got bigger, as the chain is expanding its family of Impossible burgers in the U.S. On Monday, BK announced it will test three new offerings made with the plant-based “bleeding” burger at 180 restaurants.

The Impossible Whopper Jr. is a smaller version of the wildly popular Impossible Whopper, which BK released nationwide in August and which has been such a hit with customers it recently boosted the chain’s sales by 5 percent.

For those craving simpler sandwiches, The Impossible Burger and The Impossible Cheeseburger are pared-down offerings that come with just ketchup, mustard, and pickles on the plant-based patty.

Burger King will initially test the new burgers at restaurants in Milwaukee, Cedar Rapids, Augusta, Cinncinnati, and Buffalo. Given how ridiculously popular the chain’s first Impossible offering was, a nationwide release of these latest three patties will no doubt follow soon.

And while Impossible isn’t yet available on the other side of the Atlantic, that hasn’t stopped BK from doubling-down on its plant-based offerings in Europe. The company is launching its Rebel Whopper, made with plant-based patties from Unilever-owned The Vegetarian Butcher, to more than 2,400 European locations today.

So far, none of BK’s direct competitors have embraced the plant-based meat concept as rapidly or widely, though that is finally starting to change. McDonald’s is testing a plant-based burger that uses Beyond Meat, though that’s only available in Canada at the moment. McDonald’s also has a plant-based burger in Germany, that one made with Nestlé’s incredible patty. Carl’s Jr., too, is working with Beyond and has had a plant-based patty on its menu for some time now. Wendy’s, meanwhile, is semi-secretly testing a plant-based burger, though we don’t know yet if it’s made with Beyond, Impossible, or some other alt-protein.

What we do know is that the list of QSRs offering plant-based meat items is only going to get bigger and that chains will keep expanding their menus to accommodate consumers’ growing demand for alt-protein options.

Report: Impossible Whopper Boosts Burger King Sales, Will Popeyes Embrace Plant-Based Meat?

Yesterday Restaurant Brands International (RBI), owner of fast-food chains Burger King, Popeyes, and Tim Horton’s, announced its Q3 2019 Earnings Results.

The report showed that Burger King’s sales increased roughly 15 percent globally for the quarter. In the U.S., the launch of the Impossible Whopper drove 5% comparable sales growth, which Jose Cil, CEO of RBI, noted was the “strongest level since 2015.”

This isn’t exactly surprising. Impossible Whopper sales reportedly boosted traffic by over 18 percent to the BK in St. Louis which first tested the plant-based burger. Reports show, that the alt-meat burger is also leading to higher ticket sales and attracting more millennials and lapsed visitors (like The Spoon’s Chris Albrecht) to the fast-food giant. The RBI Earnings Results seems to indicate that this boost in traffic/ticket amount has continued as the Impossible Whopper rolled out to all Burger Kings nationwide.

Not all was rosy in the report, though. Tim Horton’s had what Cil called “a challenging quarter,” reporting only 0.1 percent growth compared to 2.8 percent growth in the same quarter a year earlier. This comes at the same time that the Canadian fast-food chain nixed Beyond Meat products from its menu, except in Ontario and British Columbia, just months after adding the plant-based meat to 4,000 of its restaurants.

These two facts might have nothing to do with each other. However, the report shows a rapid downturn for Tim Horton’s after the chain had a surprisingly strong Q2, in which its success was attributed, at least in part, to its adoption of Beyond Meat patties. Tim Horton’s rolled out the plant-based meat nationwide in July (that is, during Q3), so maybe consumers across Canada didn’t flock to the Beyond Meat offerings in the same way they did in the initial test markets?

Interestingly, Popeyes had one of its best quarters in nearly two decades, thanks to the viral popularity of its chicken sandwich. Next up, RBI might well continue its history of experimenting with alternative protein and launch a plant-based chicken sandwich. But it better hurry if it doesn’t want KFC or Chick-fil-A to beat it to the punch.

Amid Layoffs, Uber Eats Partners with Burger King

It’s been a bit of an up and down week for meal delivery service Uber Eats. On the upside, Burger King just announced it was partnering with Uber Eats for nationwide meal delivery starting today. However, this comes on the heels of news yesterday that Uber Eats is laying off one percent of its workforce including workers on the Uber Eats team.

People hungry to eat an Impossible Whopper (or any BK sandwich) from the comfort of their home can now place an order within the Uber Eats app. As part of the promotion, the Uber Eats is offering free delivery on orders of $15 or more through October 27.

BK’s partnership with Uber Eats isn’t an exclusive one. If you go to Burger King’s site, the “BK Delivers” link actually takes you GrubHub. Though when we searched for Burger Kings in a few different cities, there were no results, so GrubHub’s partnership may not be implemented nationwide.

The addition of Burger King to its roster also comes after McDonald’s ended its exclusive delivery relationship with Uber Eats in July of this year. Bringing on BK helps bolster Uber Eats at a time when DoorDash (which also delivers for McDonald’s and Burger King) leads meal delivery space with 35 percent market share of consumer spend, followed by Uber Eats, which has 25 percent.

With so many players in the space, meal delivery has become a cutthroat business, and Uber Eats is in a bit of flux as it works to stave off the competition. Uber has been under pressure after a lackluster IPO and racking up financial losses. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that while there is a lot of growth ahead for Uber Eats, profitability for the division is still a ways off. To help stem the bleeding, Uber announced yesterday that it was laying off 350 people across the company, including Uber Eats. The company didn’t provide details on how many from Uber Eats were being let go.

We’re still early in the meal delivery game and Uber Eats isn’t on life support yet. The company has a “preferred” delivery partnership with Starbucks, and has been experimenting with drone delivery of burgers. Perhaps an Impossible Whopper by air isn’t that far off.