In the ever-growing category of plant-based meats, the Impossible Burger is known as “the one that bleeds.” When I ate my first Impossible Burger at a Bareburger in Brooklyn, I didn’t detect anything blood-like, but absent that, it felt as real as any burger I could remember eating. With a light char on the outside and topped with pickles and American cheese, it channeled the burgers of backyard cookouts in a way that veggie burgers just don’t, which makes sense because as Impossible Foods insists, the Impossible Burger isn’t a veggie burger: It is meat, made from plants.
Impossible is not the only plant-based meat brand making that “meat from plants” claim, though it takes the most subtle middle ground in its branding. Competitor Beyond Meat — who’s crushing it on the stock market after going public in May — peppers its online mission statement with IPO-friendly verbs: It “builds” and “creates” meat that it calls “the Future of Protein®”, a product that just happens to be, by its own estimation, “delicious” and “mouthwatering.” The 40-year-old veggie burger stalwart Boca Foods (now owned by Kraft) also employs the language expected with a food brand (its products, according to its website, are “packed with flavor” and meant to “satisfy junk food cravings”).
But it’s Impossible at the center of conversations among those who purport to be interested in food — vegans and omnivores alike. Like Beyond, it stressed its scientific advancements in its early days, and like both Beyond and Boca, it wants its customers to consider its product “mouthwatering” and otherwise discerningly similar to meat. But Impossible also employed a shrewd campaign that emphasized high-end gloss. It recruited celebrity investors like Jay-Z and Serena Williams and placed famous chefs and restaurants — not grocery stores, direct-to-consumer subscriptions, or university cafeterias — at the center of its strategy. Impossible became the faux-meat burger “worthy” of meat-loving chefs.
“[Chefs] are followed on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook,” says Rachel Konrad, Impossible Foods’s chief communications officer. “We have entire television channels dedicated to them. They are enormous influences, not only in foodie circles, but in broader lifestyle trend circles.” Impossible sought out chefs with widely recognizable names to give the brand cultural capital, thus making it the faux-meat burger that the conscientious, trend-seeking consumer had to try. And the chefs they most wanted to represent their product were those who had no problem whatsoever with cooking meat.
David Chang, one of the most recognizable names in popular food culture, was the first to serve the Impossible Burger at his New York City restaurant Nishi. “We’re always looking to support people who are making the best products in the best ways possible and to me, the Impossible Burger is one more example,” Chang said at the time. “First and foremost, we think this makes a delicious burger.” (...)
Impossible’s rollout followed the lead of other culty food companies: Blue Bottle was a boutique coffee roaster in San Francisco before it was a $700 million brand with more than 70 locations in the U.S. and Asia. Soylent was once the liquid meal replacement of choice for a certain kind of tech industry employee, available for purchase only online. Now, it’s sold at 7-Eleven, corner stores, and at Walmart. The strategy, says Konrad, means that the current Impossible customer tends to be “very literate, highly educated, fairly high-earning, and very disproportionately millennials.” It’s the people who are reading about the Impossible Burger on the Internet (there’s virtually no other way to find out about it), the exact group a startup brand (like Warby Parker or Tuft & Needle before) would want as its taste-making ambassadors. (...)
In early 2019, the company launched Impossible 2.0, a new formula that better mimicked the look and texture of ground beef. Impossible product now forms the sausage crumbles on top of a Little Caesars supreme pizza testing in select markets, it will soon form the filling in tacos and bowls at 730 Qdoba locations, and by the end of 2019, there will be an Impossible Whopper at Burger Kings across the country, eventually replacing the MorningStar veggie burger that’s been on Burger King menus since 2002.
Impossible is not the only plant-based meat brand making that “meat from plants” claim, though it takes the most subtle middle ground in its branding. Competitor Beyond Meat — who’s crushing it on the stock market after going public in May — peppers its online mission statement with IPO-friendly verbs: It “builds” and “creates” meat that it calls “the Future of Protein®”, a product that just happens to be, by its own estimation, “delicious” and “mouthwatering.” The 40-year-old veggie burger stalwart Boca Foods (now owned by Kraft) also employs the language expected with a food brand (its products, according to its website, are “packed with flavor” and meant to “satisfy junk food cravings”).But it’s Impossible at the center of conversations among those who purport to be interested in food — vegans and omnivores alike. Like Beyond, it stressed its scientific advancements in its early days, and like both Beyond and Boca, it wants its customers to consider its product “mouthwatering” and otherwise discerningly similar to meat. But Impossible also employed a shrewd campaign that emphasized high-end gloss. It recruited celebrity investors like Jay-Z and Serena Williams and placed famous chefs and restaurants — not grocery stores, direct-to-consumer subscriptions, or university cafeterias — at the center of its strategy. Impossible became the faux-meat burger “worthy” of meat-loving chefs.
“[Chefs] are followed on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook,” says Rachel Konrad, Impossible Foods’s chief communications officer. “We have entire television channels dedicated to them. They are enormous influences, not only in foodie circles, but in broader lifestyle trend circles.” Impossible sought out chefs with widely recognizable names to give the brand cultural capital, thus making it the faux-meat burger that the conscientious, trend-seeking consumer had to try. And the chefs they most wanted to represent their product were those who had no problem whatsoever with cooking meat.
David Chang, one of the most recognizable names in popular food culture, was the first to serve the Impossible Burger at his New York City restaurant Nishi. “We’re always looking to support people who are making the best products in the best ways possible and to me, the Impossible Burger is one more example,” Chang said at the time. “First and foremost, we think this makes a delicious burger.” (...)
Impossible’s rollout followed the lead of other culty food companies: Blue Bottle was a boutique coffee roaster in San Francisco before it was a $700 million brand with more than 70 locations in the U.S. and Asia. Soylent was once the liquid meal replacement of choice for a certain kind of tech industry employee, available for purchase only online. Now, it’s sold at 7-Eleven, corner stores, and at Walmart. The strategy, says Konrad, means that the current Impossible customer tends to be “very literate, highly educated, fairly high-earning, and very disproportionately millennials.” It’s the people who are reading about the Impossible Burger on the Internet (there’s virtually no other way to find out about it), the exact group a startup brand (like Warby Parker or Tuft & Needle before) would want as its taste-making ambassadors. (...)
In early 2019, the company launched Impossible 2.0, a new formula that better mimicked the look and texture of ground beef. Impossible product now forms the sausage crumbles on top of a Little Caesars supreme pizza testing in select markets, it will soon form the filling in tacos and bowls at 730 Qdoba locations, and by the end of 2019, there will be an Impossible Whopper at Burger Kings across the country, eventually replacing the MorningStar veggie burger that’s been on Burger King menus since 2002.
by Monica Burton, Eater | Read more:
Image: Andrea D’Aquino
