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Impossible Foods’ ‘Bleeding’ Veggie Burger Is Headed to Cafeterias

Desk lunch gets a little more “disruptive.” Photo: Courtesy of Impossible Foods

Rival bleeding-plant-burger-maker Beyond Meat may have Leo DiCaprio, but Impossible Foods has now locked down your college dining-hall and office-building cafeteria. The wheat-potato vegan burger that “bleeds,” thanks to the addition of a compound called heme has invaded menus as high-end as Momofuku Nishi’s and is increasingly being offered by U.S. cities’ most serious burger purveyors — 25 different Bareburger locations, Umami Burger in L.A. and New York, Chicago’s M Burger, Pittsburgh’s Burgatory, the Hopdoddy chain in Texas, and dozens of other places.

That list just keeps growing. Bloomberg News reports that Impossible is “taking its product to universities and company cafes.” The biggest hurdle for veggie burgers — aside from convincing people to eat them instead of regular burgers — has been cost. They’re not cheap! To keep demand from outstripping supply, Impossible is ramping up production at its new square-block-size Oakland plant, which has been open barely a month, but is already edging toward its production capacity of 1.4 million pounds per month. That’s more than 5 million burgers every 30 days, according to the company. CFO David Lee says the price should be coming down soon, their plan is to “expand supply continually,” and that the hundred-plus businesses that currently offer this plant burger are seeing “double-digit” sales growth.

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