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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Impossible Foods

Impossible Foods Drops its Prices, Bringing More Parity with Animal Products

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.

Eat Just and Impossible Foods Both Made Major Expansions to Asia This Week

Two alt-protein heavyweights in the U.S. took major steps this week in their expansions across Asia, underscoring the growing demand (and need) for alternatives to animal protein in that region.

At the tail-end of yesterday, San Francisco-based food tech company Eat Just announced a partnership with a consortium led by food investment fund Proterra to expand JUST Egg across Asia. Via the partnership, Eat Just will build its first production facility in Asia.

The consortium will invest up to $100 million and Eat Just will invest up to $20 million to build the production facility in Singapore. According to the press release from Eat Just, the factory will “generate thousands of metric tons of protein.” From this deal will also come the subsidiary Eat Just Asia, which will serve JUST egg manufacturing and distribution partners across the region. 

The new production facility is the largest of its kind in Singapore and will serve a growing demand for plant-based protein in Asia. Eat Just’s flagship plant-based egg product is already available in South Korea, Thailand, and Hong Kong. The company also mentioned, via the aforementioned press release, a “yet-to-be-announced” partnership in mainland China, where it already sells products via e-commerce. 

Eat Just and Proterra are also in talks to expand commercial production of cell-based meat, which Eat Just is already in the midst of developing.

Also at the end of yesterday, Impossible Foods announced that its plant-based meat products will be available in retail stores for the first time in Asia. Impossible’s Beef product is now available at 200 grocery stores across Hong Kong and Singapore. 

In Hong Kong, consumers can buy Impossible products at 100 ParknShop locations and ParknShop subsidiaries, as well as for delivery online at parknshop.com. Customers in Singapore can find the company’s plant-based beef at 100 FairPrice stores and on grocery e-commerce platform RedMart.

Impossible debuted in the Asian market at restaurants in 2018, but this week’s news marks the first time the company’s products will be available to home chefs.

But while Impossible may be expanding its plant-based empire, one area we shouldn’t expect to see the company branch into is cell-based meat. In fact, when asked about cell-based meat at last week’s Smart Kitchen Summit, Impossible CEO Pat Brown flatly said, “It’s never going to be a thing.” Brown called it “irreversibly expensive” and added that meat grown in a lab would never be a commercial endeavor.

Eat Just doesn’t share the same view. Company founder and CEO Josh Tetrick, who was also at SKS, shared his views on the eventual reality of cell-based meat and gave us a rough timeline and included steps his company and others have to take in order to go from prototype to retail shelves with cell-based meat. It won’t be soon. Tetrick said “north of 15 years” for cell-based meat, and others have cited similar timeframes.

Were cell-based meat to become a commercial reality, Asia is an obvious region to aim for. Increasing urbanization and population growth, particularly in Southeast Asia, has led to a growing demand for animal proteins. This demand has consequences both for the environment and for human health.

Those are challenges plant-based proteins can address, too, hence the quickly rising number of companies in Asia, from Omnipork to Black Sheep Foods and now Eat Just and Impossible. While we wait for cell-based proteins over the long terms, we can expect both demand for and production of plant-based products to continue rising in Asia and beyond.

SKS 2020 Day Three: Food Robots, Ghost Kitchens & a Tour of the Modernist Cuisine Kitchen

Yesterday at SKS was jam-packed with great insights and conversation.

Novameat printed meat for us, we learned Pat Brown believes cell-based meat will never be a thing, and Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick outlined a four-phase plan to bring — you guessed it — cell-based meat to market. We also heard from Wired’s Joe Ray and ATK’s Lisa McManus on the proper way to use tech in the kitchen and headed into the labs, homes and headquarters of our Startup Showcase finalists to see what they’re building.

And we’re not done! Here’s what we have lined up for our final day of SKS 2020 Virtual:

Building Resiliency in Restaurants with Tech: We catch up with the leaders of Sweetgreen, Galley Solutions and Leanpath to hear how restaurants are using tech to build more resilient businesses during the pandemic.

The Online Grocery Explosion: Wall Street Journal’s Wilson Rothman talks to Shipt CEO Kelly Caruso about the changing nature of online grocery in 2020 and where it’s going in the future.

I, Restaurant: Chris Albrecht will sit down with the CEOs of Picnic, DishCraft and Bear Robotics to see how the adoption of robotics and automation is changing restaurants in the front and back of house.

The DoorDash Playbook: Brita Rosenheim will talk with DoorDash’s Tom Pickett about lessons learned and new opportunities in the food delivery market.

Ghost Kitchens Everywhere: Jenn Marston will talk with ghost kitchen and virtual restaurant experts about strategies for navigatng this red-hot market.

The OG in Molecular Gastronomy: We just added a early-day debut of my conversation with the guy who kicked off the molecular gastronomy revolution, Harold McGee, about his new book on smells and the state of cooking innovation. (Hint: he’s more excited about some other things going on in food innovation happening outside of the kitchen.)

Let’s Head Into the Modernist Kitchen: Speaking of molecular gastronomy, we’re getting a guided tour of the Modernist Cuisine by head chef Francisco Migoya.

Plus a whole lot more. (See schedule here.)

If you’d like to attend day three, you’re in luck! We’re offering a discounted day three ticket that gets you full access. See all the sessions, network with the community and more for just $99.

SKS 2020: Impossible Foods CEO on Cell-Based Meat: “It’s Never Going to Be a Thing”

Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown didn’t mince words when asked about the future of cell-based meat today at the Smart Kitchen Summit. “That will never be a commercial endeavor,” Brown said. “The reason has to do with the fact that it’s irreversibly expensive.”

While Brown agreed with the sentiment behind cell-based meat — removing animals from our diets — he doesn’t think the concept is a viable solution. Brown said that if companies were able to recreate muscle cells, that technology would be used first for therapeutic purposes, which would be much more lucrative than selling a facsimile of animal products.

Brown went on to create a hypothetical example. If 200 years ago, he theorized, you tried to develop new transportation by recreating the muscle cells of a horse, “you miss the real opportunities” because you’d be “stuck with limitations of animal cells.”

Brown’s fiery assertion is bound to ruffle some feathers in the cell-based meat world, which is full of companies hard at work re-creating meats in the lab. Startups in the cultured meat sector have raised a lot of money just over this past year: Memphis Meat raised $161 million in January, Integriculture raised $7.4 million in May, New Age Meats raised $4.7 million for its cell-based pork in July, and Mosa Meat raised $55 million for its cell-based burgers just last month.

In addition to raising money, cell-based meat companies are busy developing a variety of products including briskets, shrimp, yellowtail, bacon and even kangaroo.

Though Brown definitely has a plant-based horse in this race, his point is something we at The Spoon have pondered before. If plant-based meat tastes this good, do we even need to make meat in a lab? The plant-based ground beefs and pork from both Impossible and Beyond Meat are delicious. Should more resources be funneled into the cultured meat space, which, according to the companies making cell-based meat, is still years away from commercial availability at scale?

As if to erase any doubt about his position on cell-based meat, Brown said “It’s never going to be a thing. I’d put any amount of money on that.”

Day Two @ SKS: Meet Impossible Foods’ CEO, Print Some Meat & Talk Asia Food Tech

Wow, what a first day at Smart Kitchen Summit. We learned that the recipe is alive and well (sorry, Tyler Florence), hacked together new kitchen products with Scott Heimendinger and saw a live debut of a new pizza robot, not to mention all the great in-person meetings, breakout sessions, vendor demos and more.

And we’re just getting started. Here are a few of the things we have in store for day two:

Impossible’s Pat Brown: Washington Post’s Maura Judkis will talk to Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown about a year of massive growth for the company, the rapidly changing alt-protein market and more.

Eat Just’s Josh Tetrick: We’ll hear from the CEO of Eat Just, Josh Tetrick, about why they are one of the very few companies trying to build both plant-based and cell-based meat products.

Food Waste Innovation: The Spoon’s Jenn Marston will talk to Apeel CEO James Rogers, Chiara Cecchini of the Future Food Institute and Alexandria Coari of ReFED about the impact of COVID on food waste innovation

Meat Printer! We’ll head to Spain for a live demo as Novameat CEO shows off his plant-based 3D meat printer in action

Startup Showcase Show & Tell: The show and tell portion of our Startup Showcase will allow you to head into the labs, home offices and headquarters of the 10 finalists where you’ll get to see things like contactless food kiosks, cellular aquaculture, food robots and much more.

Book Debut: Listen in as IndieBio managing director (and longtime tech journalist) Po Bronson and IndioBio Founder and current partner at Mayfield Arvind Gupta talk about their long journey around the world as they worked on their book, Decoding The World.

Table Talk about Cell-Based Meat With Paul Shapiro : I’ll lead an interactive conversation with the author of Clean Meat and CEO of Better Company about the market dynamics around the cell-based meat industry.

Build a Connected Kitchen Product: Microsoft principal IoT engineer Larry Jordan will show you how to build your own smart kitchen device and show off his newly open-sourced hardware and software that will help others get going.

Asia Food Tech: Join us at the end of the day as we head to Asia to talk with others about the fast-changing food tech landscape across Asia and get an update on the Japanese food tech scene from SKS Japan’s Akiko Okada.

If you’d like to join us, you can buy a discounted ticket for days two and three here.

If you missed our coverage from yesterday, here is some of the coverage from The Spoon:

What Does It Take to Build a Cell-Based Protein Business? – What can companies in the space do to help cell-based protein scale to address issues like global food security and environmental sustainability? That’s a topic FTW Ventures’ Brian Frank discussed at this week’s SKS 2020 show, where he was joined by Benjamina Bollag, the founder and CEO of HigherSteaks, and Justin Kolbeck, CEO and cofounder of Wild Type.

Middleby Unveils the PizzaBot 5000, Which Assembles a Pizza in Under 1 Minute – Lab2Fab, a division of Middleby Corporation, unveiled its new PizzaBot 5000 pizza-assembling machine at the Smart Kitchen Summit.

Should We Ditch the Term “Vending Machine?” – Megan Mokri, Co-Founder and CEO of Byte Technologies, Chloe Vichot, Co-Founder and COO of Fresh Bowl, talked with Chris Albrecht about a range of topics impacting the unattended food vending services, including COVID-19, machine vandalism, and whether “vending machine” is a good term.

Impossible Expands Into Canada as its Plant-Based Burger Debuts in Restaurants

Impossible Foods announced today that it is taking off to the Great White North. Starting today, the company’s plant-based burger will be available in a number of well-known restaurants across Canada. This marks Impossible’s first international expansion outside of Asia.

Impossible seems to be following the same playbook that it used to debut here in the U.S.: provide its plant-based burger to a small number of well-known restaurants first, before a broader rollout. Restaurants in Canada that are now serving Impossible include: Bymark, Maker and Patois in Toronto, Hog Shack Cookhouse in Vancouver and North & Navy in Ottowa.

According to Impossible’s press announcement, its plant-based meat will be available to all Canadian restaurants starting next month, with grocery availability to follow later this year.

Up until today, Canada was basically the domain of Impossible rival, Beyond Meat. Beyond has run a number of pilot programs in Canada including with McDonald’s, KFC, Starbucks, and Canadian staple, Tim Horton’s.

Impossible’s move into Canada caps off what has been a busy summer for both it and Beyond. Impossible quickly ratcheted up its retail presence in the U.S. through Walmart, Trader Joe’s and Kroger. It also launched a D2C channel and launched a plant-based sausage at Starbucks and Burger King in the U.S. And oh yeah, it also raised another $200 million.

For its part, Beyond Meat launched its own D2C channel as well, launched a plant-based chicken pilot with KFC in California, and expanded its presence in China.

All this expansion comes at a time when the pandemic is highlighting inequalities in the meat packing industry and spurring a surge in plant-based meat sales.

In other words, Canada will just be one of many battlegrounds around the globe where plant-based burgers duke it out.

Impossible, Brave Robot, Magic Spoon. Are We Near a Tipping Point for New Foods?

To borrow from Phil Collins, there is definitely something in the air when it comes to the food in our kitchens. While I don’t think we are fully there yet, it feels like we are the cusp of major changes to what we eat at home.

I got to thinking about this last week when I noticed my day started eating a bowl of Magic Spoon‘s “healthy” sugary cereal and ended with a few bites of Brave Robot’s non-animal flora-based ice cream.

Neither of these products existed little more than a year ago. Both sell direct to consumer. And both are new formulations of old standbys angling to replace existing products we currently stock in our cupboards.

Oh, and both are delicious.

They are also expensive. It’s $40 for four boxes of Magic Spoon and $58 for four pints of Brave Robot. That’s WAY too expensive to be mainstream right now. So even though my kitchen carries these items, I recognize that I am a very off to the side as an edge case.

It would be cliché to say that we’re in the first inning of this food tech game and that prices will come down as those companies scale up. Of course they will. The point of this post is that we aren’t in first inning any more.

In addition to new cereals and ice cream, my freezer is full of Impossible and Beyond plant-based meat, I drink oatmilk, I enjoy JUST egg products, I’ve become addicted to Pig Out plant-based pork rinds, and I’m anxiously awaiting the day Loca will sell its plant-based cheese online.

All of these products feel mature. They aren’t almost there, they’re here, and they have arrived at just the right time and they are at scale. Sales of plant-based foods were already growing before the pandemic, which added some rocket fuel to the mix. And now, these new foods don’t have to rely on traditional retail infrastructure to reach consumers. Brands can market on social media and sell directly through their own websites. Like Magic Spoon and Brave Robot, Impossible has its own sales channel, as does Pig Out and Beyond will soon be following suit.

This is good because consumers are getting used to buying their food online. The pandemic pushed people into record amounts of grocery e-commerce. And now that we’ve been doing it for months and formed new habits, the idea of buying food — especially non-produce items — online is almost second nature.

There is still a ways to go, I’d call this the end of the first quarter, and dominance perpetuates itself, so existing big CPG players will remain big (think: Oreos and Doritos and such). But looking at where we are now, the next generation of food products becoming our new normal is no longer against all odds (the superior Phil Collins song).

Impossible Foods Raises Another $200 Million

Plant-based meat giant Impossible Foods announced yesterday that it raised another $200 million in funding. According to TechCrunch, the new round was led by tech-focused hedge fund Caotue with participation from XN, another hedge fund. This brings Impossible’s total funding raised so far to $1.5 billion.

This new cash follows a $500 million round of funding Impossible secured in March of this year to weather global volatility (read: impending pandemic at the time). But the company has certainly been spending its money. This has been an, errr, impossibly busy summer for the company. Just since June, Impossible has:

Phew! Hopefully that new money is paying people overtime.

The funding also comes during a time when the global pandemic is highlighting ethical and logistical issues with the animal-based meat supply. That in turn has led to a soaring demand of plant-based meat. As illustrated by the list above, Impossible has clearly been able to scale up production to meet that demand.

Impossible’s main rival, Beyond Meat, has also been busy this summer with China deals, as well as piloting a new plant-based chicken at KFC. The company has also said it will launch its own direct-to-consumer channel at some point in the future.

Impossible said that it will use the new funding to develop new lines of products such as steak and milk, and will continue to build out its manufacturing.

Impossible Burger Now Available at Walmart

Impossible Foods announced today that its plant-based Impossible Burger is now available at nearly 2,100 Walmart stores across the U.S.

Whomever is in charge of retail operations/relations at Impossible has definitely been burning the midnight oil. Today’s announcement comes just days after Impossible announced that it was available at Trader Joe’s stores. Impossible Burger is now available at 8,000 retail outlets nationwide.

Part of what makes this news notable is just how quickly Impossible has ramped up production. In April of this year, just four months ago, Impossible Burger was only available in 1,000 retail locations. This ability to scale is a far cry from the production shortages Impossible experienced in 2019.

Walmart is the largest food retailer in the U.S., with grocery sales of $288 billion and more than 26 percent share of all groceries sold, according to FoodIndustry.com. So it was only a matter of time before Impossible hit Walmart shelves.

This has been a summer of aggressive moves by Impossible. In addition to new retail partners, the company launched its own direct-to-consumer sales channel, partnered with Starbucks and Burger King for plant-based sausage sandwiches, and made its Impossible sausage available to restaurants across the country.

Beyond Meat, Impossible’s rival, has been no slouch this summer either. The company launched another test of its plant-based chicken at KFC earlier this month, created a bulk package SKU that brought down the price of its burger, and made international expansion moves into China.

Both companies are striking while the iron is hot, as it were. Sales of plant-based meat have surged during the pandemic, with the coronavirus highlighting ethical issues around the production of animal meat. A lot is uncertain in these times, but it’s a pretty safe bet that we will be hearing even more news from both Impossible and Beyond throughout the rest of the year.

Impossible Foods Now at Trader Joe’s, Plans to Expand Retail Presence 50x in 2020

Trader Joe’s, the quirky and beloved supermarket chain, announced yesterday that it now carries Impossible Foods’ plant-based ground beef (h/t to Business Insider). But TJ’s is just one stop for Impossible’s aggressive expansion plans this year as the company said as part of yesterday’s news that it plans to expand its retail presence 50x this year alone.

The company has been aggressive with its retail growth throughout this year, and that appears to be accelerating. In April, Impossible was at 1,000 retail locations. In May that number bumped up to 2,700. In June that number reached 3,000, and as part of yesterday’s news Impossible said it was now available in 5,000 stores. (Trader Joe’s has 503 locations.)

Not bad for a product that was only available at select restaurants just last year.

This rapid retail rollout across the U.S. coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic that helped create a surge in consumption of plant-based products. At the same time, the pandemic has resurfaced ethical issues around the production of animal-based meat here in the U.S., especially as meat packing facilities became hot spots for coronavirus transmissions.

In addition to being more available at grocery stores, Impossible launched its own direct to consumer sales channel, allowing consumers to buy its burgers in bulk.

It’s been a busy year all around for plant-based meats. Beyond Meat created its own bulk packaging, bringing the price of its plant-based burgers down closer to traditional meat. Beyond also launched another plant-based chicken pilot with KFC in Southern California, and started selling plant-based sausage at retail. Impossible’s plant-based sausage is now featured in Burger King and Starbucks’ breakfast sandwiches and is available to all restaurants in the U.S.

With a little less than half a year remaining in 2020, I expect the news around plant-based won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

Impossible Makes its Plant-Based Sausage Available to All Restaurants in the U.S.

Well, that was fast. Impossible’s plant-based sausage, which debuted at CES in January of this year and recently rolled out nationally at Burger King and Starbucks, is now available to restaurants across the country, the company announced today.

Impossible is kicking off this expansion by debuting its sausage at 30 of the top diner-style restaurants around the country today. The list of diners was determined in conjunction with Yelp, and helps illustrate that any restaurant, not just the high-end or big brand names, can put Impossible sausage on its menu.

Impossible’s plant-based sausage comes in a 1.6-ounce pre-seasoned patty and arrives fully cooked. According to today’s press announcement, Impossible’s sausage has the same amount of protein, 60 more iron, 45 percent fewer calories, 60 less total fat, 50 percent less saturated fat and 0 mg of cholesterol than traditional meat-based sausage.

The rapid expansion of its sausage comes in stark contrast to the slow rollout of Impossible’s initial plant-based beef burger. The original Impossible burger debuted in 2016 and by the end of that year was still only in four restaurants. Along the way, Impossible ran into production issues before becoming widely available at restaurants, grocers and most recently, a direct to consumer site.

During a virtual press conference to announce the news today, I asked what the timeline was for consumer sales of Impossible sausage. Impossible Founder and CEO Pat Brown said that there is no announced date, but “before long you can count on it appearing in grocery stores.” Additionally, the company said that the consumer sausage would arrive far faster than the three years it took to get Impossible burgers directly to consumers.

Sales of plant-based meat have taken off during this pandemic, and recent moves from both Impossible and its main rival, Beyond Meat, have capitalized on this plant-based boom. As noted, Impossible recently launched a direct to consumer site to sell its burgers. And Beyond, which has its own sausage patty already at retail, launched a bulk package of its burgers that narrowed its price gap with animal based burgers.

With states slowing down or halting re-openings, who knows when we will be able to fully go back into restaurants, but when we do, Impossible sausage might just be on the menu at your favorite local diner.

Planterra’s Plant-based Meat Brand Ozo Hits Retail Store Shelves, E-Commerce

JBS-owned Planterra Foods announced this week it will launch its first Ozo product on grocery stores shelves in June, and will also make them available direct to consumers via its e-commerce site. To start, the brand will launch its burgers (two-4 oz patties), its Ground product (12 oz), and Mexican-Seasoned Ground (12 oz).

Colorado-based Planterra first announced Ozo in March of this year, saying the new line of plant-based products would include burgers, grounds, and meatballs. All Ozo products are a mix of pea protein and rice protein fermented with shiitake mycelia (root). 

According this week’s press release, Ozo products will hit store shelves in several different states:

Albertsons and Safeway locations in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota and Wyoming; Kroger* stores in 12 states (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee) and, as well as military bases across the country.

Customers will also be able to order Ozo’s meatless meat through the brand’s website and through Wild Fork Foods for customers in Florida.

And for those looking to try before they buy, Planterra is also sending out its own fleet of vans to offer curbside-pickup samples of its products during the rest of June. Those vans will make stops in Denver, Boulder, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Additional cities are planned for the next 12 months, including Seattle, San Francisco, and Nashville, among others. Finally, “special deliveries will be made to fire stations, hospitals and other locations to serve frontline workers this summer,” according to the company press release.

Selling meatless meat directly to consumers is fast becoming a standard trend for companies, particularly with the restaurant industry — formerly a key channel for plant-based products — still in the throes of its pandemic-induced upheaval. Earlier this month, Impossible launched a direct-to-consumer channel for its “bleeding” meat products that’s available to anyone in the lower 48 states. Its chief competitor Beyond followed with an announcement of its own forthcoming D2C store, which is slated to launch at some point this summer. 

Meanwhile, demand for plant-based meat keeps rising, thanks in no small part to panic buying sprees and meat shortage scares, and online grocery shopping has hit record numbers in the last couple months. That makes now an ideal time to launch direct-to-consumer stores, and also to get new meat alternatives onto store shelves across the country.

It’s unclear if the demand for online grocery shopping will keep now that economies are reopening, so Planterra’s Ozo shop, not to mention those of other plant-based retailers, may or may not be a hit. That said, Ozo’s website says products can be stored frozen for up to 60 days, so flexitarians wanting to stock up may find a D2C e-commerce site a convenient addition to their online shopping.