INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Five months after launching a pilot program with the iconic White Castle fast food chain, Impossible Foods is taking its meatless burger
substitute to every one of the company restaurants.
Impossible Foods goes to White Castle
With the rollout, White Castle becomes the
largest fast food chain to include the Impossible Burger on its menu and the largest customer for the purveyor of beef-like meat
substitutes.
Where the beef For Impossible Foods it in boosting burger sales and raising hundreds of millions
At a low, low cost of $1.99,
the Impossible Slider does achieve the near impossible of bringing a processed vegan food option to consumers at a price point that everyone
can afford.
The company first unveiled the Impossible Slider at 140 locations in New York, Chicago and New Jersey, and the burger is now
available in 377 restaurants across 13 states.
White Castle is teaching us how to popularize plant-based meat and become a mainstream, mass
market menu item and cultural icon,& said Impossible Foods& founder and CEO Dr
Brown, in a statement.
From its first appearance in David Chang Momofuku Nishi restaurant in 2016, the Impossible Burger is now available in
3,000 locations, including restaurants, corporate cafeterias, universities and food service locations in the United States , Hong Kong and
Macau, according to a company statement.
It has been seven years since the company raised its first $7 million investment from Khosla
Since that time Impossible Foods has managed to amass another $443 million in financing — including a convertible note from the
Singaporean global investment powerhouse Temasek (which is backed by the Singaporean government) and the Chinese investment fund Sailing
Capital (a state-owned investment fund backed by the Communist Party-owned Chinese financial services firm, Shanghai International
Group).
The company built its first large-scale manufacturing plant in Oakland, Calif
last year and expects to add a second shift to the factory to double production.
As we wrote earlier, the heart of Impossible Burger
technology is the heme molecule and the ability to make its vegetable matter appear as bloody as a medium-rare burger.
Heme is present in
most living things and, according to Impossible Foods, it the molecule that gives meat its flavor
The company says that it the presence of the heme molecule in muscle that makes meat taste like meat
Impossible Foods engineers and ferments yeast to produce that heme protein naturally found in plants, called soy leghemoglobin.
It the
iron-containing molecule that carries oxygen in the blood… what makes meat red or pink… It essential for every living cell on earth,&
&The thing that we discovered was that pretty much the entire flavor experience of meat that distinguishes it from all other foods is due to
Heme transforms fatty acids into the bloody flavored odorant molecules, and when you cook meat, the protein that holds the meat at a certain
temperature unfolds and lets loose.
Brown says Impossible Foods can make fish flavors, chicken flavors and pork flavors, but is going to
stick to ground beef for the foreseeable future.
The next trick for the company is to manipulate the flavor profile of its meat substitute
so its burgers can win in blind taste tests against any other combination of meat patty.
The company mission is to completely replace
animals in the food system by 2035,& says Brown
&The only way to do it is to do a better job than any animal at producing the most nutritious, delicious, affordable and versatile foods
And it will be a very interesting proof of concept landmark when we have a burger that is — for flavor and deliciousness — the best
burger on earth… that going to send a very important signal to the world.
